In this paper, a closed-loop subspace identification approach through an orthogonal projection and subsequent singular value decomposition is proposed. As a by-product of this development, it explains why some existing subspace methods may deliver a bias in the presence of the feedback control and suggests a remedy to eliminate the bias. Furthermore, as the proposed method is a projection based method, it can simultaneously provide extended observability matrix, lower triangular block-Toeplitz matrix, and Kalman filtered state sequences. Therefore, using this method, the system state space matrices can be recovered either from the extended observability matrix/the block-Toeplitz matrix or from the Kalman filter state sequences. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.