Why did the Army send soldiers to the Monroe Institute?
Three declassified Army records answer this. The 1978 Gondola Wish Assessment Report chose the Monroe Institute to teach military intelligence personnel out-of-body technique so they could mimic a suspected Soviet "parapsychological" collection method and test US security against it. A 1984 INSCOM chronology shows operatives attending Gateway courses from about 1980 and one-on-one training with Robert Monroe from late 1983. In March 1984 the Director of the Army Staff ordered INSCOM's Monroe ties cut over weak oversight, then allowed some training to continue.
1978: Gondola Wish picks the Monroe Institute
1979 to 1984: Grill Flame and Center Lane
1984: the order to stop, and the exception
Where to read it
What the documents say, and what people claim
1978: Gondola Wish picks the Monroe Institute
The Gondola Wish Assessment Report of 25 August 1978, by the 902d Military Intelligence Group (record CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160001-3), says the office had been studying "the intelligence threat posed by Soviet state-of-the-art parapsychology since September 1977." Its answer was a countermeasures program: train MI personnel in a collection technique "so that they can mimic Soviet collectors in an operations security (OPSEC) support effort."
The technique chosen was the out-of-body experience, and the report is careful to separate it from remote viewing: "An OOBE differs from what Stanford Research Institute (SRI), Menlo Park, CA, calls 'Remote Viewing.'" Robert Monroe's name came up in March 1978 through an article on the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. After checks with the CIA, DIA and the Air Force, the report records that "Monroe has agreed to train three MI personnel in OOBE at his laboratory during October and November 1978, for a fee of $2,000," approved on 19 July 1978. It was "a pilot training program."
1979 to 1984: Grill Flame and Center Lane
The Center Lane Historical Overview of 22 February 1984 (CIA-RDP96-00788R001700280007-8), a memo for Major General Stubblebine, is a chronology from 1977 on. The Army's work was nicknamed Grill Flame in 1978; six people were picked from 251 considered for remote-viewing training at SRI. Alongside that, the chronology lists Gateway course attendance by project operatives: the first between the March 1980 and January 1981 entries, then June 1982 and November 1982.
In 1983 the project became Center Lane. The chronology records Fred Atwater taking over as acting project manager, a contract "with Mr. Robert Monroe for 'One-on-One' training of CENTER LANE operative," and Gateway attendance that year. One-on-one sessions with Monroe ran from 31 October to 4 November 1983, 12 to 16 December 1983 and 6 to 10 February 1984. The 1983 Gateway report fits this picture: it was written in June 1983 for personnel "required to take the Gateway training." See Did the CIA write the Gateway Process report?
1984: the order to stop, and the exception
A one-page memorandum for record dated 16 April 1984 (CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210001-1) says that on 13 March 1984 Lieutenant General Brown, Director of the Army Staff, "directed cessation of all INSCOM involvement with Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences." The reason given was "inadequate oversight of the INSCOM RAPT program with MIAS."
Stubblebine agreed to cancel RAPT but argued that Center Lane's own training with the Institute and Monroe was separate and important. The memo records that Brown "approved the continuation of the ICLP training with MIAS and Mr. Monroe." The record does not define RAPT, and the chronology read for this page does not say how many people attended in total.
The documents: the Army went to the Monroe Institute because it feared the Soviets had a psychic collection method and wanted to test its own vulnerability. It started with three trainees and a modest fee, sent operatives to Gateway courses for several years, bought private sessions with Monroe, and in 1984 was ordered to pull back over oversight concerns.
The claims: that the CIA ran Gateway, that soldiers were trained to astral-project into Soviet bases, or that Gateway was the remote-viewing method. The 1978 report itself says out-of-body training and SRI's remote viewing were different things. What the records show is a small, cautious, and contested training program, not a secret psychic army.
Last updated November 4, 2026.
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The Gateway Process, answered: Page 25, Focus 10 to 21, the frequencies, click-out, who wrote the 1983 Army report and whether it works: short answers with page numbers and CIA record IDs.
Did the CIA write the Gateway Process report?: The 1983 Gateway report was written by a US Army INSCOM officer at Fort Meade and released by the CIA in 2003. What the cover memo and record page show.
Is the Gateway Process real, and does it work?: The 1983 Army report found Gateway plausible and proposed experiments. No declassified record reports results. What the documents do and do not show.