A declassified United States Army report says a secret 1980s training method could let soldiers sense things far outside the normal limits of sight, sound and touch.
Quick Take
- The report, titled “Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process,” sits in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) FOIA Reading Room as an officially released record.
- It is dated June 9, 1983, and written by Lieutenant Colonel Wayne M. McDonnell for the Army’s Operational Group at Fort Meade.
- The document studies the “Gateway Experience,” a training program meant to alter consciousness through sound.
- The CIA hosting the file does not mean the agency wrote it or confirmed its claims as scientific fact.
What the Document Actually Is and Where It Came From
The file sits in the CIA’s public FOIA Reading Room under the catalog number CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5, titled “Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process”. Archival records tie the same report to a specific author and date. Lieutenant Colonel Wayne M. McDonnell wrote it on June 9, 1983, addressing it to the Commander of the U.S. Army Operational Group at Fort Meade.
The document carries a release stamp marking it approved for public release in September 2003. Outside catalogs, including the New York Public Library, independently describe the same 1983 Department of the Army publication, confirming its identity beyond the CIA’s own posting. Minor differences in listed page counts appear across archives, but the core record and its origin are not in dispute.
Inside the Army’s Assessment of the Gateway Experience
McDonnell was tasked with judging the Gateway Experience “in terms of its mechanics and ultimate practicality”. That program used recorded sound patterns meant to sync brainwaves between the two sides of the brain. The theory claimed this syncing could push a person into deep meditative states where ordinary limits on perception loosened.
Secondary reporting has used dramatic language, framing the document as a guide to escaping the normal bounds of time and space. The report itself is narrower. It is one Army officer’s technical review of a training method already in use, not a finalized scientific verdict declaring paranormal powers real.
A declassified CIA file says the human mind can step outside time and space. Page 25 is missing.
The Gateway Process report, Army Lt. Col. McDonnell, 1983, declassified in 2003.
If it is nonsense, why lose the one page? pic.twitter.com/5FSwzT2bLQ
— Hidden Epoch (@HiddenEpochH) October 12, 2026
Why the CIA Reading Room Is Not an Endorsement
Placement in the CIA’s reading room often gets read by the public as an agency stamp of approval. The record’s own details point elsewhere. The Army Operational Group and the Army Intelligence and Security Command authored the record, not the CIA itself. The CIA’s role here appears to be archival disclosure, not authorship or scientific sign-off.
The Gateway file fits inside a much longer government story about psychic research. CIA historians confirm the agency studied extrasensory perception starting in the 1970s, then handed the work to the Defense Intelligence Agency under what became known as the Stargate program. When oversight returned to the CIA in 1995, the agency commissioned an outside review by the American Institutes for Research, which found no reliable evidence the method had intelligence value and recommended ending the effort. That history shows a consistent pattern: government offices studied these claims seriously, kept records of their work, and ultimately did not confirm them as proven science.
Sources:
cia.gov, archive.org, popularmechanics.com, irp.fas.org
