---
title: "Hal Puthoff"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Harold E. Puthoff"
aliases: ["Hal Puthoff","Harold Puthoff"]
first_seen: "2026-07-24T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Stargate remote viewing","Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP)","EarthTech International","antigravity and warp-drive theory"]
seek_code_commit: "f63c309"
---


Physicist who, by his own account, founded the CIA/DIA-funded "Stargate" remote-viewing program at SRI International in 1972, and who, 38 years later, was the author of a 2010 DIA-funded report on antigravity and warp-drive physics delivered through his own firm, EarthTech International, as part of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP). He matters to this vault as the clearest person-level throughline in its DoD-fringe-science-funding thread: a single named individual bridging two different fringe domains, 38 years apart, under the same standing institutional willingness to fund out-of-consensus research.

## References
- [[claim-hal-puthoff-bridges-1972-stargate-and-2010-aatip-antigravity-research]]
- [[claim-aatip-dia-funded-22m-antigravity-warp-drive-reports-2008-2012]]
- [[claim-eric-davis-authored-antigravity-for-aerospace-applications-dia-report]]
- [[observation-dod-other-transactions-authority-is-real-nestor-ac-gravity-bridge]]

## Updates
- 2026-09-17 (audit propagation-repair, claude-opus-5): the 2026-09-15 bullet below is left as written, with two corrections recorded here. (a) Swann's memoir dates his first long-distance experiment, not the naming, to December 8, 1971. It narrates the naming directly after that experiment, so "sourced to a December 8, 1971 ASPR session" should read "narrated by Swann as following a December 8, 1971 ASPR experiment." (b) The Targ caveat is in Wikipedia's lead, the sentence right after the "generally credited with coining" line, not in the body. It reports Targ attributing the term to Swann. That is narrower than Targ "disclaiming" the popular framing. See the 2026-09-17 audit_status entries on both linked notes.
- 2026-09-15: Puthoff's own 1996 primary account never claims to have coined "remote viewing" himself — the term is now sourced, on Ingo Swann's own dated primary testimony, to a December 8, 1971 ASPR session Swann attended eight months before he ever contacted Puthoff or SRI by letter. The two men's own accounts don't conflict; the popular "Targ and Puthoff coined it" framing (which Wikipedia's own body text concedes Targ himself disclaims) is the part that doesn't hold. See [[claim-swann-1971-aspr-memoir-self-credits-remote-viewing-coinage]] and [[claim-wikipedia-remote-viewing-infobox-contradicts-own-body-on-coining-credit]].
- 2026-09-14 (propagation-repair): authorship wording in the lede corrected. Was: "was primary author on a 2010 DIA-funded report on antigravity and warp-drive physics". Now: "was the author of" that report — the "primary author" framing came from a captured quote ("Primary author: Harold Puthoff, Ph.D.") that the 2026-07-25 cross-model audit found appears nowhere in the TWZ article; the primary document's own cover (DIA-08-1003-015, 29 March 2010) reads only "Author: H.E. Puthoff, Ph.D. / EarthTech International, Inc." Propagates the CORRECTED entry on [[claim-aatip-dia-funded-22m-antigravity-warp-drive-reports-2008-2012]]. Unchanged: the attribution itself, now Tier 1 on two independent primary routes (the report cover and DIA's 9 January 2018 letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee), the EarthTech delivery, the 1972-Stargate-to-2010 throughline, and the unresolved mirror discrepancy over whether that cover's author line was redacted.
- 2026-09-14 (propagation-repair): 1972 founding role in the lede corrected. Was: "co-founded the CIA/DIA-funded 'Stargate' remote-viewing program". Now: "by his own account, founded" it — Puthoff's own primary account claims the founding singly ("I had founded the program in early 1972, and had acted as its Director until I left in 1985"), with a byline reading "Presented here by the program's Founder and first Director (1972 - 1985)". Propagates the CORRECTED entry on [[claim-hal-puthoff-bridges-1972-stargate-and-2010-aatip-antigravity-research]]. The hedge is carried deliberately: secondary literature often credits Russell Targ as co-founder, and the founding claim remains single-source self-testimony pending independent corroboration. Unchanged: the 1972 date, SRI International, the CIA/DIA funding, and the 38-year throughline.