The Mars Session: The Day the CIA Psychically Scanned a Dying Alien Civilization
On May 22, 1984, inside a sterile room at Fort Meade, Maryland, the U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency conducted one of the most bizarre, mind-bending experiments in the history of espionage. The mission was part of Project Stargate—the government's highly classified program designed to weaponize the human mind for intelligence gathering.
The psychic selected for the session was none other than Joseph McMoneagle, a highly decorated military intelligence officer and Project Stargate's top asset, known officially as "Remote Viewer #001."
The session handler sat across from McMoneagle and handed him a sealed envelope containing index cards with 3x5 coordinates. The viewer was explicitly told not to open the envelope. He had absolutely zero clue what his target was.
The coordinates inside the envelope read: 40.9 degrees North, 9.45 degrees West.
To a planetary scientist, those numbers are immediately recognizable as the Cydonia region of Mars—the infamous site of the "Face on Mars" and a cluster of pyramid-like geological formations captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter in 1976.
The handler gave a final instruction: "Focus on the coordinates inside the envelope, and travel backward in time to the period 1 million years BCE."
The Trance: Descending Into a Cosmic Cataclysm
McMoneagle slipped into a deep, altered state of consciousness. As his mind allegedly drifted across space and time, anchoring itself to the ancient Martian coordinates, the details he dictated to the handler began to sketch a horrific planetary disaster.
1. The Monolithic Pyramids and Massive Storms
McMoneagle immediately reported looking down on a vast, barren landscape choked by a violent, planet-wide dust storm. But beneath the swirling red clouds, he spotted artificial geometry: "I'm seeing... look like views of a pyramid or pyramids. They're huge... very high. It's like sitting in a shelter from a storm." He described the structures as having smooth, angular faces, polished to withstand a deteriorating environment.
2. The Tall, Thin People
The handler pushed McMoneagle to look inside the structures. The psychic bypassed the heavy stone walls and described the inhabitants of the dying planet: "I see very tall people... they're thin, but they're large. They're wearing some kind of strange, tight-fitting clothes. It's a shadow of a people... they are dying. Their world is past its time."
3. The Deep Underground Shelters and the Ark
McMoneagle tracked the population migrating deep into subterranean vaults built into the planet's crust. He stated that a massive cosmic event or atmospheric collapse had stripped Mars of its protection, turning the surface into a radioactive desert.
According to the declassified transcript, McMoneagle psychically connected with one of the dying Martian leaders:
"They're waiting for something to return... a group of them went off to find a new place to live. It's like they're huddled in a shelter waiting for a spacecraft to rescue them... a long-range voyage to a volatile, green place filled with water and high mountains."
The Paper Trail: Declassified fact
For years, rumors of this session floated around the military-intelligence community like an urban legend. However, in the early 2000s, the curtain of secrecy was officially lifted. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the CIA declassified thousands of Project Stargate files.
The May 22, 1984 Mars Transcript was published directly to the official CIA Electronic Reading Room, where it remains publicly accessible to this day.
Critics and debunkers argue that the session proves nothing more than the wild, imaginative power of the human subconscious when placed under hypnosis. They point out that McMoneagle’s descriptions perfectly mirrored the popular sci-fi culture surrounding Mars and the "Cydonia Monuments" trending in the media during the early 1980s.
Yet, for alternative space researchers and remote viewing practitioners, the document is a staggering, historical smoking gun. The fact that the CIA utilized premier military intelligence assets and taxpayer funding to psychically scan an ancient alien civilization on Mars proves that behind closed doors, the intelligence community viewed the Red Planet as something far more complex than just a dead, rusty ball of rock.
References
- The Official Declassified CIA Transcript: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Project Star Gate: Session Date 22 May 1984 (Mars Exploration). CIA-RDP96-00788R001900760001-9. CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
- The Viewer's First-Hand Account: McMoneagle, J. (2002). The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy. Hampton Roads Publishing. (McMoneagle's personal perspective on how coordinates and blind targets operated during his military tenure).
- The Original Cydonia Imaging Baseline: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). (1976). Viking 1 Orbiter Photograph: Frame 35A72 (The Cydonia Anomalies). NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Archive
- The Project Stargate Congressional Overview: Mumford, M. D., Rose, A. M., & Anescart, M. (1995). An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications. American Institutes for Research (AIR). (The official blue-ribbon panel review commissioned by the CIA that led to the program's ultimate declassification). Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Repository