Popular Mechanics The CIA is bound by law to declassify all records that are older than 25 years. In the past, these records could only be accessed at a single place, the National Archives in Maryland. However, thanks to a lawsuit by the nonprofit MuckRock, those records have now been uploaded to the internet for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home.
Those records contain a few references to Sun Streak, a secret military unit that investigated paranormal powers throughout the 70s and 80s. Sun Streak went by many different names, and is referred to in the CIA database as Stargate. Sun Streak was initially declassified back in 1995, and was the subject of the 2004 book and 2009 movie, The Men Who Stare At Goats. But the details of the program are scarce.
Included in the recent CIA data dump are files referring to a “Project N-1 X,” which appears to be a Sun Streak effort to train people with psychic abilities to remotely sense the contents of classified documents. Here’s a declassified data sheet that lays out the goals of the project:
According to the document, Project N-1 X was designed to test whether remote sensing is even possible, which, for the record, it almost certainly is not. If N-1 X proven successful, the project would have continued to N-2 through N-5, which likely would have meant the use of psychics in the field.
Additional documents give us a look at what the testing entailed, which was mostly a “monitor” asking questions of the test subject, or “source.” The goal of the monitor was to guide the source into accurately identifying the details of a target document:
It seems the project advanced to at least the N-2 stage, but no further. Another document states that the results from N-2 “[did] not appear as successful” as those from N-1. It’s possible that N-2 had a more rigorous testing environment, and the results from N-1 did not carry over:
Sun Streak was shut down a few years after Project N-1 because the CIA realized it was pretty much useless. Or, perhaps the program was never cancelled and paranormal activity is still secretly being put to the test. The truth is out there!
