Taskings & Responses
An Interview with Joe McMoneagle
by Jed Bendix

This interview was originally published in the International Remote Viewing Association's magazine Aperture, and it is reprinted here with permission.
Ed. Note: Jed Bendix is contributing a series of interviews with people who are directly or indirectly involved in remote viewing. This is his third interview in that series.

Joseph (“Joe”) McMoneagle joined the U.S. Army in 1964 as a volunteer and served 20 years in the intelligence community. In 1978, he was accepted into the Army’s top-secret remote-viewing project, then known as GRILL FLAME. Holding the distinction of being the Army’s Remote Viewer 001, McMoneagle served with that project until he retired in 1984. After retirement, he started his own business, Intuitive Intelligence Applications. Shortly thereafter, he entered into a contract with the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory (CSL) at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), where he continued to participate in remote-viewing research and assisted in intelligence-gathering. In 1995, the U.S. Government officially ended the military’s remote-viewing program, which by then had become known as STAR GATE. Since that time, McMoneagle has continued to work as a research associate for the Laboratories for Fundamental Research in Palo Alto, California, traveling the world extensively and appearing on numerous television and radio shows in the U.S., England, and Japan. Many national and international magazines have featured him in articles, including Time, Newsweek, and Reader’s Digest. He has written several books, including Mind Trek (1993), The Ultimate Time Machine (1998), Remote Viewing Secrets: A Handbook (2000), and The Stargate Chronicles (2002). Joe McMoneagle currently lives with his wife, Nancy, in Nellysford, Virginia.

Jed Bendix (JB): Can you tell us a little about your childhood, where your home was, how many siblings you have, and some of the things you did?

Joe McMoneagle (JM): I lived most of my years growing up just off 79th Street and NW 2nd Avenue in Miami, Florida -- an area of projects where Little Haiti and a large black neighborhood come together, adjacent to the largest (back then) high school, called Edison. When the crime became unbearable, we later moved north to an area called Hialeah, until the neighborhood there became unbearable; then we moved further north to the outer edges of the city.

I had four sisters, growing up -- my twin sister, Margaret, and younger sisters, Mary, Beth, and Kathy. My twin sister died from a heart condition at age 50, and my baby sister, Kathy, died from an inoperable brain tumor within a few months of her.

JB: While serving with the U.S. Army in Germany, you suffered a heart attack. During the heart attack, you had a near-death experience (NDE). How did this NDE transform your life?
JM: I did not have a heart attack in Germany; I have no idea where that rumor started. The night of my NDE, I was having dinner in a small town in Austria when I went into convulsions, swallowed my tongue, and ceased breathing. I was delivered clinically dead to the hospital in Passau, Germany. The NDE changed my entire outlook on life; specifically, it washed away my ability to experience fear, especially the fear of dying. This had a major effect on my actions and thoughts, especially within the framework of living within the military.

JB: What caught the Army’s eye about you as a potential remote-viewing candidate?

JM: I have no idea. When I was first interviewed, they presented me with a table filled with books, magazine articles, and newspaper clippings on the paranormal. They asked me if I thought paranormal abilities might be used for targeting the United States or its citizens. I reviewed the materials and concluded that there was a possibility that some of it might be real, and it should be investigated. That resulted in my being sent to Stanford Research Institute to be tested. As a result of that testing, I was recruited into the STAR GATE program as Remote Viewer 001. continued on page 9
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Volume 2, Issue 2, 2010