Joseph McMoneagle: The Mind's Eye on the Edge of Reality
Joseph McMoneagle - Remote Viewer #001, retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer, and unwitting pioneer of psychic espionage - has spent nearly five decades peering into the shadows of the unknown. Born on January 10, 1946, in Miami, Florida, to a stockman father and homemaker mother, McMoneagle's life reads like a classified dossier: a Vietnam vet scarred by a near-fatal helicopter crash, an intelligence operative who traded binoculars for brainwaves, and a man whose visions allegedly saved lives, exposed secrets, and glimpsed worlds beyond our own. Over his 21-year military career, he estimates conducting more than 2,000 operational remote viewing missions and 4,000 practice sessions, achieving contact rates of 60-65% with descriptive accuracies ranging from 35% to a staggering 98% when hits landed. For his contributions - pinpointing 150 intelligence targets invisible to conventional surveillance - he received the Legion of Merit, one of the U.S. Army's highest honors for non-combat service. It's the kind of résumé that makes you wonder: If the Pentagon bet on this, who are we to dismiss the gamble?
McMoneagle's journey into the ethereal began not with crystal balls, but with grit. Enlisting in the Army post-high school, he rose through the ranks as a non-commissioned officer, serving in signals intelligence during Vietnam. A 1969 chopper wreck left him with severe injuries - shattered limbs, internal damage - and a brush with death that some say unlocked his latent abilities. "I flatlined," he's recounted in interviews, describing a tunnel of light and a choice to return. Reassigned to the Army Security Agency, he spent 15 years in intel, honing analytical skills that would soon pivot to the paranormal.
The Stargate Project: Psychic Spies in the Cold War Shadows
By 1978, whispers of Soviet psychic research - telekinesis for missile deflection, mind-reading for espionage - had the U.S. scrambling. Enter Project Stargate, a black-budget initiative run by the Defense Intelligence Agency and Stanford Research Institute (SRI), later absorbed into the CIA's umbrella. McMoneagle was among the first recruits, handpicked after informal tests revealed his knack for "seeing" blind targets. Alongside pioneers like Ingo Swann and Pat Price, he became RV #001, operating from a nondescript office at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Remote viewing (RV), as McMoneagle defines it, isn't fortune-telling - it's a structured protocol to extract verifiable data about distant people, places, or events using extrasensory perception. Sessions followed Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) methodology: a blind target (e.g., random numbers on a card), a viewer in a Faraday cage to block EM interference, a monitor to log ideograms (quick sketches of first impressions), and rigorous debriefs to sift signal from noise. No leading questions, no feedback until the end. McMoneagle trained under Swann, mastering stages from initial "gestalts" (broad feels like "man-made" or "natural") to sensory details (textures, colors, emotions).
The hits were eyebrow-raising. In 1979, tasked with a Soviet shipyard, McMoneagle sketched a massive submarine with forward-slanted missile tubes - a design defying U.S. naval norms. Satellites later confirmed it as the Typhoon-class, the largest sub ever built, inspiring Tom Clancy's Red October. Another session located a downed U.S. general's plane in Africa; rescuers found it within miles of his coordinates. He aided missing persons cases in major U.S. cities, from Washington to Chicago, and even "viewed" the origins of humanity, tracing early hominids to East Africa with eerie precision. Accuracy? He claims 65-75% on average, though self-reports vary from 5% (tough targets) to 95% (easy ones). Paul H. Smith, a Stargate colleague, corroborates: McMoneagle predicted events months out, from diplomatic crises to tech breakthroughs.
Stargate ran until 1995, when a CIA review deemed it "unreliable for ops" despite statistical anomalies - p-values as low as 10^-20 in lab tests. McMoneagle retired in 1984 but consulted for the Cognitive Sciences Lab, refining protocols. Post-military, he co-founded Intuitive Intelligence Applications with his wife, Nancy (stepdaughter of out-of-body pioneer Robert Monroe), offering RV training to civilians. Today, at 79, he instructs at the Monroe Institute, insisting anyone can learn it - no "gifts" required, just discipline. As he quips in Remote Viewing Secrets (2000), "It's like learning karate for the mind - painful at first, but eventually, you break boards with your thoughts." (And no, he doesn't mean literally - though wouldn't that be a show?)
Peering into the Red Dust: Remote Viewing Mars, 1 Million B.C.
If Stargate was McMoneagle's day job, his extracurriculars veer into cosmic territory. On May 22, 1984, at the Monroe Institute, he was roused from a nap and handed a sealed envelope by an anonymous Army handler. "Go to these coordinates," the instructions read, with a time stamp: one million years B.C. Blind as always, McMoneagle slipped into trance - Hemi-Sync audio guiding his brainwaves to theta - and began sketching.
What emerged was no earthly vista. "Oblique view of a pyramid form... very large, with a flat top," he dictated, describing structures dwarfing Giza's Great Pyramid, clustered amid eroding ruins and obelisk-like spires. The air was thin, dusty, laced with ionized ozone - like a storm-brewed haboob. He "saw" tall, thin humanoids - twice our height, robed in translucent suits - huddled in caverns, their faces elongated, eyes shielded against a dying sun. "They're waiting... for something to return," he noted, sensing desperation. A massive exodus: obelisks as life-support pods, launching toward a blue-green world (Earth?). Catastrophe loomed - a "big object" stripping the atmosphere, dooming the survivors to slow extinction.
Envelope opened: "The Planet Mars. Time of interest approximately 1 million BC." Furious - he'd assumed Earth targets - McMoneagle stormed NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, demanding negatives of his coordinates (40.89°N, 9.55°W). What he got back? Images echoing his sketches: pyramidal buttes in Cydonia, a 30-mile "straight line" anomaly (possibly a canal scar), bone-like formations, and cavernous voids with "wire-like" protrusions. One photo showed a 3-foot rectangular device with "buttons" - a control panel? He claims four buildings, a subterranean network, and fossilized remains, aligning with Viking Orbiter shots from 1976.
This wasn't isolated. In The Ultimate Time Machine (1998), McMoneagle details viewing Martian floods from a burst aquifer, eroding ziggurat-like fortresses. Recent echoes? NASA's Perseverance rover (2021-) has imaged "repeating linear features" and methane spikes hinting at subsurface life. Plasma physicist John Brandenburg's xenon-129 isotope data suggests a nuclear event 180 million years ago - airburst blasts vaporizing an ancient ocean. McMoneagle theorizes: Refugees to Earth? Genetic seeding? "They look like us because maybe we are them," he muses in a 2004 UFO Congress talk, sketches in hand.
UFOs, ETs, and the Time Machine Hypothesis
McMoneagle's cosmic dossier doesn't stop at the Red Planet. UFOs? He's viewed dozens, double-blind. In the early 1980s, tasked with a "falling star" over an ICBM site, he described a 300-foot disc, humming with plasma glow, disabling nukes mid-flight - mirroring Malmstrom AFB's 1967 incident. Another: A 1966 Bahamas sighting, pre-RV career - a glowing orb zipping over turquoise waters, scorching his skin like a microwave. "UFOs are real," he states flatly. "The question is what."
His hypothesis: They're not interstellar tourists, but time machines - ours or theirs. In a 2001 interview with Richard Thieme, he posits UFOs as "detuned" to our spacetime, piloted by future humans monitoring their past (us). Tic-Tac UAPs? "Grown like crystals," he claims in recent podcasts - organic hulls, not bolted metal, evading radar via consciousness fields. ETs? Elongated Greys in hive-mind pods, rejuvenating in "sleepers" that double as hideouts. He "met" them psychically: A council of 12, scanning cities, their gaze like static electricity.
Pat Price's 1973 RV of four alien bases - Mount Hayes (Alaska), Nunungata (Australia), Mount Perdido (Spain), and Zimbabwe's Mount Inyangani - hinted at hybrid human-ET ops. McMoneagle corroborated: Underground labs, Tic-Tac craft, "men in black" as psychic enforcers silencing witnesses. (One visit? Suited figures at his door post-UFO view, warning: "Stop looking.") His 2015 book Remote Viewing UFOs and the Visitors (with Paul H. Smith) dissects cases like Roswell - debris as metamaterial, bodies as engineered hybrids.
Near-death ties in: That Vietnam tunnel? A preview of OOBE travel, where he "rode" UFOs like cosmic joyrides. Lucid dreaming amplified it - Stargate's Hemi-Sync tech synced hemispheres for 85% signal clarity. Aliens as "teaching tools," he says, expanding sentience: "They're us, from a timeline where we didn't screw the pooch."
The Remote Viewing Hits Table - Key Verifiable Sessions
| Year | Target | Description | Verification/Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | Soviet Shipyard | Massive sub with forward-slanted tubes | Confirmed as Typhoon-class; inspired Clancy's Hunt for Red October |
| 1980s | Downed U.S. Plane (Africa) | Coordinates within miles | Rescue team located wreckage |
| 1984 | Mars 1M BC | Pyramids, tall humanoids, exodus | Echoed NASA Viking/Cydonia images |
| 1980s | ICBM Site UFO | 300-ft disc disabling nukes | Matched Malmstrom AFB 1967 reports |
| Pre-1978 | Human Origins | East Africa hominids | Aligned with archaeological findings |
Notable Figures - The Stargate & Cosmic Circle Table
| Name | Role | Quote/Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Joseph McMoneagle | RV #001 | "It's like karate for the mind." - Remote Viewing Secrets, 2000 |
| Ingo Swann | CRV Developer | Trained McMoneagle; viewed Jupiter's rings pre-Voyager |
| Pat Price | Early Viewer | Identified 4 ET bases; died mysteriously 1975 |
| Paul H. Smith | Stargate Colleague | Co-authored Remote Viewing UFOs; verified predictions |
| Robert Monroe | Hemi-Sync Pioneer | Nancy's stepfather; enabled OOBE tech for RV |
| Edwin May | Stargate Scientist | Oversaw lab tests with p-values to 10^-20 |
Legacy: From Black Ops to Open Source
Post-Stargate, McMoneagle authored five books: Mind Trek (1993) on time-bending views; The Stargate Chronicles (2002), his memoirs; Remote Viewing Secrets, a how-to manual; and more. He's trained thousands - cops finding bodies, CEOs spotting market shifts. Recent gigs? Viewing archaeological sites in Japan (2023), predicting quakes with 70% hit rates. On X, fans dissect his Mars clips, with 2025 posts linking his pyramids to Perseverance's "doorway" rock.
Skeptics? Sure - program closure cited "no actionable intel." But declassified files (CIA's 2000 release) show anomalies: Viewers nailing Soviet subs years early. McMoneagle's retort: "If it's bunk, why the medal?" Today, RV lives in apps, AI hybrids - DARPA's echoes.
In a universe of 2 trillion galaxies, McMoneagle's visions remind us: Reality's veil is thin. Mars' ghosts, UFO sentinels - they're not fantasies; they're data points in humanity's next leap. As he told Jesse Michels in 2025, "We're not alone. We're just late to the party."