The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Stanford University.md

aliases	category	start	location	tags	summary	created	updated	relations
Stanford Leland Stanford Junior University Stanford School of Medicine	Private Organization	1885	Stanford, California	Organization Academic University StanfordResearchInstitute RemoteViewing MKULTRA VelaIncident Palantir	California university that founded the Stanford Research Institute in 1946 and separated from it in 1970, whose School of Medicine appears in MKULTRA subprojects and whose physicists figure in SRI psychic research.	2026-10-05	2026-10-05	type with start end role fn founded Stanford Research Institute 1946 1970 wholly owned subsidiary until separation 1 type with role start fn contractor_to Central Intelligence Agency School of Medicine, Neurology Division, MKULTRA Subprojects 2, 71 and 86 1953 11 type with reverse role fn employed_by Arthur Hebard true physicist who designed the quark-detector magnetometer used with Ingo Swann 5 type with reverse role fn employed_by Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky true physicist; member of the 1979 to 1980 Vela panel 15 type with reverse role fn employed_by Lincoln Moses true emeritus professor of statistics; statistical adviser to the 1995 AIR evaluation 14

Stanford University is a private university in Stanford, California. Its name appears in the history of the Stanford Research Institute, which it founded and later separated from; in the work of its physicists on the SRI psychic research and the 1979 VELA Satellite panel; in CIA documents of 1953 to 1960 on its School of Medicine under Project MKUltra; and among the founders and officers of Palantir Technologies.

The Stanford Research Institute, 1946 to 1970

A history of the period in Stanford magazine states that the Stanford Research Institute was formed in 1946 "as a wholly owned subsidiary of the University," conceived as an innovation center for the economic development of the West Coast; that in the mid-1960s it received much of its funding from the Department of Defense; and that its contracts included work on chemical and biological agents with potential military applications. According to critics quoted in the account, $6.2 million of the institute's 1968 support related directly to Southeast Asia and $404,000 to chemical and biological warfare; almost half of its support in 1968 came from the Department of Defense. The account states that by the late 1960s the university's ties to the institute had become "gossamer-thin," consisting of Stanford trustees who also sat on the SRI board and a few faculty with individual ties.¹

In fall 1968 the administration established an SRI Study Committee. A Stanford News Service release of April 4, 1969 recorded that students meeting on April 3 had voted to ask the trustees, meeting on April 8, to end classified research, research in chemical-biological warfare and counterinsurgency, and studies used against the peoples of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Students occupied the Applied Electronics Laboratory from the night of April 8; President Kenneth Pitzer gave written notice that they were violating university policy, and Provost Richard Lyman announced on April 13 that faculty and staff would begin identifying protestors. On May 1, 1969 the university reported that demonstrators had left Encina Hall shortly after 125 police officers arrived.² The students' own literature included a list of "CBW and Counter Insurgency research projects at SRI" and a booklet on the role of Stanford and SRI in chemical-biological and counterinsurgency research; the Palo Alto Times of April 12, 1969 editorialized that Stanford should "cut cord to SRI," and the Stanford Daily of April 19 that it should keep it.³

The Stanford account states that the Board of Trustees met in mid-May 1969 "at which separation of SRI from the University would be decided," and that the day before the meeting students held a carnival in White Plaza at which they practiced breaking windows. The institute became independent in 1970 and was renamed SRI International in 1977.⁴

SRI's psychic research and the Stanford physics laboratory

Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, the physicists who ran the SRI research, worked in Menlo Park, but the experiments with Ingo Swann used equipment on the Stanford campus. The British weekly New Scientist reported on October 17, 1974 that Puthoff took Swann to "the quark detector at Stanford University early in 1973," a "highly sensitive magnetometer which works by looking at the decay of a magnetic field"; that Puthoff and Swann "independently told me roughly similar stories" in which Swann described the interior of the detector and then, without approaching the equipment, increased and decreased the period of the signal; and that Arthur Hebard, who designed the equipment and suggested the visit, "dismisses" the description as "poetic" but "is convinced, however, that Swann did perturb the output without touching the recorder." The writer, a skeptic, added that such perturbations often occur when other users share the helium supply and that Swann had stood close to the chart recorder in a room with several people.⁵

A CIA Office of Technical Service chronology records an earlier date for the Agency's first contact: "4/72 ORD/OTS are contacted by Targ and Puthoff of SRI. Demonstrations by Ingo Swann appear to show ESP has useful/practical intel application (Swann apparently caused a magnetometer to fluctuate)."⁶

The CIA's Office of Technical Service chronology, 1972 to 1975

The chronology, prepared for a November 16, 1977 briefing of staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence by David Brandwein, the Office's director, records: in August 1972 an OTS/ORD contract with SRI for a demonstration of using ESP to describe hidden objects, with results "so good" that SRI was asked for a fuller research plan; in October 1972 a contract to explore two subjects whose results were inconsistent; in February 1973 renewed Agency interest; in March 1973 the discovery of "a third 'sensitive' (Pat Price) with apparent ability for 'remote viewing'"; in April 1973 a new contract forwarded from OTS/ORD to the Deputy Director for Operations, William Colby, and referred to the Executive Management Committee "because of its sensitivity"; and in May 1973, "the contract is finally sent to the DCI (Schlesinger) who decides to allow the existing contract to be completed without a follow-on. OTS is told this work is too sensitive and potentially embarrassing. At this time OTS is in the midst of an investigation regarding its role in the Watergate affair." In August 1973 an "informal" SRI experiment with an Office of Scientific Intelligence scientist "uncovers classified information" and, in the chronology's words, convinces "the new DCI (Colby) to renew work on ESP," and a joint OTS/ORD project was funded in February 1974. The chronology later records that the OTS and ORD managements "both decide not to continue the project," and that OTS kept "a very limited interest," with an OTS psychologist told to give the work no more than two percent of his time.⁷

An earlier memorandum of the Office of Research and Development of January 24, 1973 records that on January 23 Targ and Puthoff showed a film of their experiments with Uri Geller, and that "the SRI work with Geller has been supported by Edgar Mitchell's foundation, by something with a name like Mind Science Institute of Los Angeles, and by TSD," the CIA's Technical Services Division.⁸ On February 20, 1976 Brandwein wrote to the Director of Research and Development that he had "directed that OTS support of this effort be terminated" and that "if ORD desires to pick it up, be my guest."⁹

The School of Medicine and MKULTRA

An undated CIA list of institutions notified in connection with MKULTRA subprojects carries the entry "Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305" with Subprojects 70, 71, 86, 85 and 2. Three of those subprojects are documented in released draft memoranda, all concerning the Department of Medicine, Neurology Division, of the School of Medicine.¹⁰

Subproject 2, a draft memorandum of May 1, 1953, was "set up to provide a secure and efficient means to exploit" a practicing psychiatrist and Stanford Medical School faculty member (name redacted) "in regard to the MKULTRA program." The memorandum describes him as an "overall advisor and consultant" in the field who had been of value "in contacting individuals" and "in setting up projects," proposes his services "as a contact and cut-out for projects in the MKULTRA field," and caps the cost at $4,650 for one year.¹¹

Subproject 86, a draft of June 17, 1958, provided funds to the Department of Medicine, Neurology Division, of the Stanford University School of Medicine "to support Phase II of the research program on polygraph equipment and procedures undertaken by TSS/CD for the Office of Security." The first phase had designed a miniature recording unit for the sensing units used by the Office of Security; the third phase "envisions the production" of a unit incorporating "more reliable estimates of the stress reaction in human beings." A clinical professor of medicine (neurology), cleared through Top Secret, was principal investigator. The cost was $43,734.08, and a foundation (name redacted) served "as cutout and cover" under the cover title "Quantitative Evaluation of Physiological Responses in Man."¹²

Subproject 71, continued by a memorandum of June 1960 (draft downgraded in June 1977), enabled the Technical Services Division's Research Branch to continue using the same neurologist at the School of Medicine for "clinical testing and evaluation of selected drugs and preparations in order to select one that will fulfill existing operational requirements in the area of anti-interrogation," for participation in testing drugs "evolving within other projects," for development of "a miniaturized multi-channel recording physiological measurement device," and for review of "overt Chinese and Japanese pharmacological and physiological literature." The annual cost was $9,600.¹³

Statisticians, physicists and the Vela panel

The American Institutes for Research report of September 29, 1995 for the CIA, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications," states that "Dr. Lincoln Moses, an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, provided statistical advice" to a panel that included the two outside reviewers Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman.¹⁴

In its 2016 posting on the Vela Incident, the National Security Archive wrote that Richard Garwin had proposed Richard Muller, Panofsky, Alvarez and Burton Richter of Stanford as "skeptical critical experts," that the White House panel chaired by Jack P. Ruina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology included Garwin, Muller, Luis Alvarez and Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky of Stanford, and that Panofsky later called the panel's finding that the signal was "probably not from a nuclear event" a "scotch verdict," that is, that a nuclear event was not proven.¹⁵

Palantir and its founders

The 2020 registration statement of Palantir Technologies lists its chairman since 2003, Peter Thiel, as holding a B.A. in philosophy and a J.D. from Stanford; its chief executive Alex Karp as holding a J.D. from Stanford; its co-founder Stephen Cohen a B.S. in computer science from Stanford; and its director Alexander Moore a B.A. in economics from Stanford.¹⁶

Footnotes

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1. Lyman, Richard W. "At the Hands of the Radicals," Stanford magazine, January/February 2009 (excerpt from Lyman, Stanford in Turmoil). https://stanfordmag.org/contents/at-the-hands-of-the-radicals ↩︎

2. April Third Movement, Historical Archive, 1968-1969, "Press Releases from Stanford University News Service," releases of April 4, April 10, April 13 and May 1, 1969. https://a3mreunion.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_stanford_releases/68-69_stanford_releases.html ↩︎

3. April Third Movement, Historical Archive, 1968-1969, "SRI" page, listing documents of October 1968 to April 1969. https://a3mreunion.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_sri/68-69_sri.html ↩︎

4. "At the Hands of the Radicals" (see note 1); Stanford magazine timeline, "World Events," https://stanfordmag.org/contents/a-mad-mad-mad-world . The timeline dates the trustees' vote May 13 and a demonstration at SRI three days later. ↩︎

5. "Uri Geller and Science," New Scientist, October 17, 1974, vol. 64, no. 919, copy in CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110020-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000700110020-3 ↩︎

6. CIA Office of Technical Service, "OTS Involvement in ESP Research," chronology attached to OTS/BAB Memo #287-77, November 17, 1977, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP79-00999A000400050014-1. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00999a000400050014-1 ↩︎

7. Same document as note 6, chronology entries for 8/72 through 1975. ↩︎

8. CIA Office of Research and Development, ORD-413-73, "Briefing by Stanford Research Institute," January 24, 1973, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070029-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000400070029-2 ↩︎

9. Brandwein, David S., Director, Office of Technical Service, memorandum for the Director of Research and Development, "Stanford Research Institute Parapsychology Research," February 20, 1976, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00787R000200020001-9. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000200020001-9 ↩︎

10. Central Intelligence Agency, "MKULTRA Institution Notifications," list of institutions and subproject numbers, CIA Reading Room document 00020476 (also posted at https://archive.org/details/brief-summaries-of-cia-mkultra-subprojects), page listing "Stanford University School of Medicine." ↩︎

11. CIA, draft memorandum for the record, "Project MKULTRA, Subproject 2," May 1, 1953, CIA Reading Room document 00319488. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00319488 ↩︎

12. CIA, draft memorandum for the record, "MKULTRA Subproject 86," June 17, 1958, CIA Reading Room document 00319543. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00319543 ↩︎

13. CIA, memorandum for the record, "Continuation of MKULTRA, Subproject 71," draft downgraded June 1977, project year commencing June 1, 1960, CIA Reading Room document 00319534. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00319534 ↩︎

14. Mumford, Michael D., Andrew M. Rose and David A. Goslin, An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995, executive summary and review procedure, CIA Reading Room document CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180006-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00791r000200180006-4 ↩︎

15. Richelson, Jeffrey, ed., "The Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash in September 1979 Raised Questions about Nuclear Test," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, December 8, 2016, text and note 17. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test ↩︎

16. Palantir Technologies Inc., Form S-1 registration statement, September 2020, "Management," executive officers and directors. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm ↩︎