William G. "Bill" Ray - Stargate commander and remote viewer

Type: named-figure source-of-record
Subject: William G. "Bill" Ray, retired U.S. Army major and Department of the Army civilian
Born: approximately September 1941
Credibility: ~45 composite, with documented career and program role ~90, claimed operational remote-viewing performance ~30, claim handling ~60, and UFO or other extraordinary remote-viewing claims ~15
Program identifiers: Fort Meade remote viewer and monitor 101; unit commander from 1985 to June 1987
Documented pseudonym: Liam

Short assessment

William G. "Bill" Ray is a well-documented Army intelligence and counterintelligence officer who served in the Fort Meade remote-viewing unit and commanded it during the transfer from Army INSCOM to the Defense Intelligence Agency. His military career and program role are much better supported than his claims about remote viewing. Ray says a missing internal "Red Book" showed that customers gave half of the unit's 106 cases its highest usefulness rating, but the book is not public and the claim cannot be audited. The later government-sponsored evaluation of the program found that remote viewing produced no actionable intelligence in the cases it reviewed, although that evaluation covered a later period and does not directly test Ray's 106-case claim.

Ray has also described remote-viewing sessions involving a triangular craft, humanoids, an underwater installation, the Ark of the Covenant, and Roswell. He is more careful than many public remote viewers about those experiences: he distinguishes perception from feedback, acknowledges when no confirming information exists, and has explicitly argued that remote viewing cannot prove alien claims. Those limits improve the reliability of his reporting about what he remembers doing, but they do not verify the target content.

Ray is a substantial public candidate for Jacques Vallée's pseudonymous "Gilbert". A September 2026 identity hint contains a possible LIAM reading, and a 1997-1998 remote-viewing discussion archive directly identifies Liam as Bill Ray's pseudonym. The same public thread contains a more direct EDWIN MAY reading, and no public record found places Ray with Vallée in Central America or inside the alleged mountain laboratory.

Career and program role are strongly documented

A 2013 local-news account of Ray's return from Afghanistan reports that he joined the Army in 1959, left active service in 1962, returned in 1970, moved into military police and intelligence, retired from uniformed service in 1990, and continued as a Department of the Army civilian. It also records service in Kuwait, three tours in Iraq, later teaching at the Army intelligence school in Arizona, and an Afghanistan assignment that ended when he was 71. This is independent support for the broad federal-career chronology Ray gives in interviews.

The International Remote Viewing Association's Star Gate guide lists Ray as Fort Meade viewer 101 from January 1984 to June 1987 and commander from 1985 to June 1987. An official Center Lane briefing introduces Ray as the unit's deputy alongside commander Brian Buzby and operations officer Frederick Atwater. The transfer to DIA took effect on 30 January 1986, placing Ray in command during an important institutional transition.

Ray's 2025 Spycraft 101 interview gives a detailed chronology that broadly agrees with those records: Army entry in 1959, active-duty return in 1970, German-language and military-intelligence work, service in Augsburg, arrival at the Fort Meade unit on 3 January 1984, promotion from deputy to commander, and later counterintelligence and civilian assignments. A Remote Viewing Instructional Services biography adds a history degree from the State University of New York, a master's degree in international relations from the University of Southern California, and private remote-viewing instruction. That biography comes from an organization with which Ray taught and is useful for biography, but it is not independent verification of performance claims.

The missing Red Book claim is stable but cannot be audited

In a 2012 interview published in IRVA's Aperture issue 21, Ray said he assembled an internal Red Book containing customer evaluations of 106 operational cases and that 53 received the highest rating, "Of Exceptionally High Value." He repeated the same 106-of-53 account in a 2022 Jimmy Akin interview and again in 2025. The numbers and core claim have remained unusually stable across more than a decade.

The claim still has serious limits. The Red Book has not surfaced in the public Star Gate files, and Ray says he does not know what happened to it. His wording shifts among targets, reports, and cases, which may describe different levels of the same work but prevents precise reconstruction. He also treats cases without customer confirmation as uncorroborated rather than failed, so the claimed 50% is not a conventional success rate. It describes the share of cases allegedly receiving the top customer rating under an internal scale that is not available for review.

The 1995 American Institutes for Research evaluation examined a later operational sample and reached a much less favorable conclusion. It found that reports sometimes contained accurate broad background but that concrete details were often wrong, inconsistent, and dependent on subjective interpretation. The evaluators found no case in which remote viewing guided operations and recommended ending operational use. The report also recorded cases in which viewers or managers changed written reports to fit known target characteristics. This does not directly refute Ray's account because it did not audit his 1980s Red Book cases, but it shows why the missing records matter and does not support his conclusion that the unit was the government's best intelligence-collection platform.

Gulf of San Matias account combines a stable memory with no confirming target record

Ray's most developed UFO-related account concerns a training session that he dates to 7 April 1985. In the 2022 Jimmy Akin interview, he reads notes describing a triangular craft near the Gulf of San Matias in Argentina, humanoid occupants, overwhelming fear, an apparently abandoned minesweeper, and an underwater installation or colony. He says Frederick Atwater selected the target and that the emotional reaction still affects him. His 2025 account preserves the same main sequence.

Ray also states the limits clearly. He does not know where Atwater obtained the target, found no Argentine naval confirmation of an abandoned crewless ship, and cannot verify rumors of an underwater base. A declassified Star Gate document index shows that the unit used the Gulf of San Matias as a training target again in March 1987 for another viewer. That supports the existence of the tasking inside the unit, but it does not establish that the alleged craft, ship event, or underwater installation existed.

Ark, Roswell, and exotic-target accounts include explicit uncertainty

Ray says an unknown training target led him to perceive a roughly nine-foot winged being and conduct a conversation before he learned that the target was the Ark of the Covenant. He says there was no feedback capable of establishing whether the perceived place or being was real. He describes a later private Roswell project as suggestive of an event and cover-up, but calls it inconclusive because he already held beliefs about Roswell and acted as the monitor rather than a blinded viewer.

His broader methodological warning is consistent across the 1997-1998 Liam posts and the 2022 interviews. Ray says a viewer may reproduce personal beliefs, cultural material, or the tasker's expectations when a target has no checkable feedback. He uses Santa Claus and Bigfoot as examples and argues that remote viewing cannot be used to prove remote viewing or alien claims. This is a meaningful difference from figures who present an unverifiable session as direct confirmation of its target.

His main claims are internally consistent

Ray's career chronology, unit dates, Red Book numbers, Gulf of San Matias sequence, and warnings about feedback remain substantially consistent across the 2012, 2022, and 2025 accounts reviewed here. The most important wording change is his tendency to describe the Red Book's units as targets, reports, or cases. His 2025 claim that he now teaches only friends without payment describes current activity; it does not erase earlier private and Remote Viewing Instructional Services teaching documented in his biography.

The core distinction also remains stable: Ray reports extraordinary perceptions as experiences he had, while repeatedly separating them from facts established by target feedback. That does not validate the perceptions, but it reduces the narrative hardening seen when a tentative or unconfirmed account becomes a flat claim over time.

Liam keeps Ray in the Gilbert candidate set

Australian researcher Rhys Dalton-Morgan said in September 2026 that he knew Gilbert's identity and had cryptically answered it in his post. The follow-up phrase "lab in a mountain" has the initials LIAM. Remote Viewing Dialogues makes that reading specific: its contributor list says "Bill Ray (Liam)," explains that some contributors used pseudonyms because they were still under military or intelligence contracts, and identifies Liam as the former Fort Meade commander.

The original post's "engaged with an" can be split as ED-WI-N, followed immediately by "may," producing EDWIN MAY more directly. Edwin May also fits Vallée's old-friend, official-access, and technical-research clues better than Ray. Because Dalton-Morgan did not confirm either extraction, the Liam reading remains relevant without making Ray the leading candidate.

Ray fits several other clues. He was a discreet operational viewer with official access, was repeatedly described inside the remote-viewing community as highly capable, remained alive and active when Gilbert contacted Vallée in 2021, and has publicly described perceived communication with nonhuman-looking figures. His Liam pseudonym provides a candidate-specific fit rather than only a broad career resemblance.

Major gaps remain. No public record found during this workup establishes that Ray and Vallée were old friends, crossed paths in Central America, traveled together, or had any role in a laboratory built inside a mountain. Ray's public entity accounts occurred during remote-viewing sessions, not a documented physical visit. No promised publication matching Vallée's description has been identified. The evidence keeps Ray among the main identity hypotheses without identifying him.

Incentives and public posture

Ray has participated in conferences, podcasts, and remote-viewing instruction, and the RVIS biography says he taught privately and assisted its courses when official duties allowed. No large Ray-branded commercial operation or continuing media business was found. In 2025 he said he limited current teaching to friends and did not charge them. His institutional identity and community standing still give him reasons to defend the program's value, even without a large direct financial incentive.

Credibility assessment

What raises Ray's credibility

His Army, intelligence, Fort Meade, and command roles are supported by independent reporting, program rosters, and declassified records.
His main autobiographical and program claims remain stable across interviews separated by more than a decade.
He regularly identifies secondhand stories, lack of feedback, possible tasker influence, and his own prior beliefs.
He explicitly rejects using remote viewing as proof of aliens or of remote viewing itself.

What lowers Ray's credibility

The Red Book needed to audit his strongest performance claim is missing, and the available later program evaluation found no actionable operational value.
His UFO, underwater-base, Ark, and entity material comes from subjective remote-viewing sessions without independent target confirmation.
Some biographical and program claims come from Ray or friendly remote-viewing organizations rather than independent records.
His statement that the unit was the government's best intelligence platform goes beyond the public evidence and depends on his interpretation of an unavailable internal rating system.

Net assessment

Ray rates ~45 overall. His documented career and program role rate ~90. His claimed operational remote-viewing performance rates ~30 because the central record is unavailable and the later official evaluation was unfavorable. His claim handling rates ~60 because he preserves important distinctions between experience, hearsay, feedback, and belief. His UFO and other extraordinary remote-viewing claims rate ~15 because the tasking is partly documented but the perceived targets are not independently established.

Position relative to other UAP figures

Ray rates above Lyn Buchanan overall because his public claim register is narrower, his major accounts have remained stable, and he repeatedly states what his sessions cannot prove. He rates near Gary O. Langford as a historical program witness, but below figures whose claimed anomalous performance has a larger public experimental record. His extraordinary claims carry much less weight than his career testimony.

Role-category placement

Ray belongs among documented military and intelligence participants whose access is real but whose anomalous-performance and nonhuman-intelligence claims remain weakly supported.

Followup items

Ask Dalton-Morgan whether LIAM refers specifically to Bill Ray and what evidence supports the claimed identification.
Ask Ray or Vallée whether Ray is the person called Gilbert and whether they met or traveled in Central America.
Search Vallée's unpublished correspondence and conference records for Ray, Liam, William Ray, joint travel, and laboratory references.
Locate the unit's Red Book or customer-evaluation sheets and determine whether 106 refers to targets, cases, or individual reports.
Identify Atwater's source for the 1985 Gulf of San Matias target and search Argentine naval records for the alleged ship event.
Seek primary education and service records for details currently supported only by Ray and RVIS biographies.