Stargate Project

The Stargate Project (スターゲート計画) was a real-life project carried out during the Cold War by the United States government to investigate psychic phenomena and their potential military applications.

In the Toaru universe, the project was headed, unofficially, by George Kingdom, and was similarly aimed at producing Espers for military use.

Background
During the Cold War, the United States of America and the Soviet Union both invested large amounts of money into developing Espers for military purposes, with the Stargate Project being the American effort.

However the people involved in the project apparently had little idea of what they were doing, repeating large-scale experiments over and over again, not knowing if the readings and results qualified as success or failure. In the end, the funding was wasted and the project ended in failure.

Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume SS2
The project leader, George Kingdom, obtaining a list compiled by the CIA of all the Gemstones in the world, set about executing a plan to seize them and research their powers via over fifty independent institutions in order to succeed where the Stargate Project failed. However this plan was thwarted due to Kumokawa Seria mobilizing the Sisters to destroy the research institutions and rescue the Gemstones, and he was subsequently assassinated by Kinuhata Saiai.