How Uri Geller Convinced the CIA of His Psychic Powers — in 1973
(JTA) — Uri Geller, an Israel-born celebrity who claims to have paranormal telepathic powers, convinced CIA researchers in the 1970s that he indeed possessed such abilities.
Famed for his spoon-bending skills, Geller underwent a week of experiments at the Stanford Research Institute in 1973, according to a report Thursday on Sky News based on 800,000 declassified CIA documents put online earlier this week.
The Geller tests form part of the Stargate program, which investigated psychic powers and looked into how any such abilities could be weaponized by the CIA.
“As a result of Geller’s success in this experimental period, we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal perception ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner,” CIA researchers wrote.
During the experiment a scientist would pick a word at random from the dictionary before drawing a picture of the word and sticking it on the door of the sealed room in which Geller was placed. Geller would then be asked to draw the same image using his paranormal powers to sense the picture created by the examiner. Others released papers include the recipe for invisible ink and information about UFOs.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO