Abstract

Critically assesses a review conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) under the direction of the CIA of a 24-yr, government-sponsored program (Star Gate) to investigate ESP and its potential use within the intelligence community. As a result of AIR\'s assessment, the CIA concluded that a statistically significant effect had been demonstrated in the laboratory but that there was no case in which ESP had provided data that had ever been used to guide intelligence operations. This paper reviews AIR\'s methodology and conclusions. It is shown that there is evidence that the CIA set the outcome with regard to intelligence usage before the evaluation had begun. This was accomplished by limiting the research and operations data sets to exclude positive findings, by purposefully not interviewing historically significant participants, by ignoring previous extensive Department of Defense program reviews, and by using the questionable National Research Council\'s inves!tigation of parapsychology as the starting point for their review. It is suggested that the wrong conclusion was reached with regard to the use of anomalous cognition in intelligence operations, and that the robustness of the basic phenomenon was significantly underestimated.