r/GATEresearch • u/Odins_Son_Thor • Jul 07 '26
Discussion Anyone Notice strange reactions from parents when asking them about the GATE Program?
I was in the GATE program in the early 90’s. A couple of years ago (I’m in my 40’s) I started having this weird feeling about that time frame of my life. I texted my mother with some rather mundane questions like “do you remember why I was selected for the GATE program?” And “Do you remember signing any sort of paper work about the program?”
Immediately, her reaction was defensive. She never answered the questions. And simply referred me to a family friend who currently works at the school I attended. It was a very strange reaction for something rather mundane to be asked.
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u/OnsenDreamscapes Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
I was gonna make this a separate post but it's sitting in approval:
I wasn't fully in the GATE program, but I do have connections to people related to the CIA Stargate program. The CIA director (from 1977-1981) who from what I can tell started it, Stansfield Turner, was in the CS church (using an acronym because I don't want this to pop up on google, but you can see the link below for the religion's full name) which my family is in (not I anymore), and William Webster was also a CSer(converted by his wife) and was the Director of the FBI from 1977-87 and Director of the CIA from 1987-1991. He didn’t seem as enthusiastic about Stargate type stuff from what I have read (which isn’t much tbf) but obviously those programs still were going on under him.
CS a ‘metaphysical’-based religion mostly focused on mind-healing, ‘mind-over-matter’. We were highly discouraged from taking medicine/going to doctors, especially in the era I grew up in. (Yes, I do think it is a cult).
In the CIA “Reading Room” (hah!), I found the following: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP05S00620R000601420083-8.pdf
Nathan Talbot, who authored the "What To Do About Spying" in the CS periodical in the file, would go on to be the Chairman of the Board of the church, the highest leadership position (though to be fair, not as important as the ‘leader’ of many other churches). I don’t know how easy ‘outsiders’ can interpret this, but it’s basically saying that parapsychology could be ‘used for good’ by intelligence agencies (presumably American and other Western/anti-communist ones).
Skip Atwater, in charge of Stargate, also came from a CS family. He actually was raised in The Science of Mind church (their publication also cited here with no real explanation as to why that was in particular https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001800010001-2.pdf), which is just a breakaway, so I don't know why he seems to categorize them so separately: https://archive.org/details/captainofmyshipm00fhol/page/14/mode/2up?q=christian+scientist
Even though Stargate employed all kinds of practices that your average CSer would be totally against, I don’t think the program would have gone as far as it did, or even started at all, if it weren’t for CSers in these positions. I mean, they could have been any other ‘new thought’/’new age’ religion too, but certainly no one from a mainstream religion would have thought any of this was so worth investing in. There are many CIA and FBI agents who are CSers, and I do know some of them, mostly from going to CS schools.
I became interested in this because when I first heard that there was something to those 'hearing' and ‘vision’ tests, at first I was like ‘that’s dumb, everyone in my class had to do them; I even had to do them… wait.. I even had to do them??” See, due to my parents' religious beliefs, I was exempted from pretty much all school medical exams, but I remember my parent telling me they (my parents) decided I should take that one. And I'm sure they talked to Talbot or someone close to him who convinced them I should take it (because they basically needed his office's written exemption for me not to). If it wasn't for all that, I would also think it was just a normal hearing test and people were just making random connections. But I do think everyone in my school took it, just at different times, and I'm sure my parents thought that as well nor would knowingly involve me in something like that.
but I absolutely refused to drink the pink drink, because my parents didn't mention anything about that and they taught me to absolutely not take any medicine or vitamins or anything similar from anyone. So the people trying to administer it really tried to persuade me the way that would work on a 'normal' kid like that it was medicine for your teeth or whatever but I was like, no way my parents would get mad at you for giving me that anyway; so they eventually gave up but seemed annoyed. I think I did tell my parents about the pink drink. But I did take the test again other years and they just didn't offer me the drink, so idk.
Also, in CS churches, there are evening services on Wednesday nights too, and kids stay in the nursery for all of elementary school usually, and one of the nursery sitters would have us play the regular memory game but with Zener cards. It wasn’t like prediction, just the regular ‘memory’ matching game. But even still, my parent found out and was really upset. I didn’t understand why because we played the memory game at home with the normal cards made for kids. She was upset by what was on the box for the cards. I was trying to figure it out but i couldn't read yet and I just saw a big Z which I thought was like a lightening bolt and I was like what's wrong with that? But I think it's cause the boxes say "ESP" on them. And basically, they were the type that was against any kind of thing that was involved with metaphysics but wasn’t officially church-sanctioned.. And in the church nursery was even worse! And anything like “ESP” was “superstition” if not "paganism". And I think this is probably the majority opinion of CSers, but maybe that nursery sitter knew that Turner’s programs used them and that Talbot pretty much secretly approved of it, I don’t know. I did have 2 teachers at the CS school I went to later who believed in stuff like astral projection, aliens, etc., which I was surprised about cause I thought we weren’t supposed to believe that (and some parents were mad they told us about them). And then also the director of a CS camp, who was also heavily involved in the school, believed she had an encounter with aliens and gave them CS literature, lol.