Often called “Dr. Doom” for his frequent apocalyptic and “end-of-world” predictions on late night radio interview programs, Edward A. Dames was a member of the US military’s “Star Gate” remote viewing program for almost three years, from 31 January 1986 to the end of December, 1989.
During 1984, while a member of another intelligence unit, Capt. Dames was assigned on temporary duty to participate with three members of the Star Gate program in remote viewing training provided by Mr. Ingo Swann (the creator of remote viewing) through the auspices of SRI-International under contract to the US Army. Dames was later brought formally into Star Gate to serve as a monitor and assistant training officer, but eventually became assistant operations officer and then, for a few-month period, training and operations officer for the unit.
Though he got along well with most of his fellow Star Gate members in his years assigned to the remote viewing unit, he did engage in unorthodox and controversial approaches to remote viewing. Among these was directing remote viewers without their knowledge or the awareness of the unit’s commanders at targets involving alleged UFO events and extraterrestrial beings. He was more than once ordered by his superiors to cease such activities but continued surreptitiously nonetheless. Viewers also complained that he would often adopt a “leading” monitoring style when he was supposed to remain neutral.
While still on active duty with the Army in 1989, Ed Dames founded “PsiTech,” a company whose goal was to commercialize the application of remote viewing. After his retirement from the Army in 1992 at the rank of major, he continued PsiTech, eventually adding remote viewing training of civilians as a major part of the company’s business model. One of Dames’s very first clients for training was Dr. Courtney Brown from Emory University, who later went on to remote viewing notoriety himself.
The concurrent rise of the Internet and late-night talk radio fueled Dames’s sudden rise to fame. Soon after the CIA’s revelation in late 1995 that the US government had engaged in psychic spying during the Cold War, he was one of the earliest, and certainly one of the most controversial guests of Coast to Coast AM radio, then hosted by Art Bell. Over the ensuing years and still today, Dames often appeared on Coast to Coast, produced numerous remote viewing products, lost PsiTech to his former girlfriend Joni Dourif in a bitter court case, and became famous for his sensational tales and series of ever more elaborate End-of-the-World predictions, which he continues to the present.