AUUIOVEU - Through a {°F ¢ Fo: ons ae Lae. , 7: ‘ i ‘ H ' t . i hoo L Figured... it was taken by holding the lenscap just a bit Figure 4 Picture of Seth Joel taken with 50mm lens. away from the camera + Sew, Scienwst ‘V7 October 1974 ON SEN OSTA ETAL SIRI LITO EP HEE TONE OIE ele isnscap darkly °° One of Uri’s more dramatic Feats is to apparently project his image onto a film even though the camera has a lenscap taped on. Such pictures have appeared in several places, including the News of the World (2 December, 1975). Geller also projected his image through the leascap of Yale Joel, the - ex-Life photographer who took our cover picture. But he may have madé a Taistake, and the US magazine Popular Photography (June 1974) was able ‘to suggest a distinctly non-paranormal explanation. ; ' The photo (Figure 1) was taken “through the taped on lenscap” of a Pentax equipped with a 17 mm Takumar extreme wide-angle “SsHeye” lens. The photo was taken in Geller’s New York apartment. Joel admits that Geller had the camera for several minutes while he (Joel) was out of the room, and so Uri might have been able to untape the lenscap. elated ~~ LOT ORE, but... pha is this what Uri intended? But it was the sharp circle with ‘the bumps that lead Joel and Popular Photography to their answer. After some experiments, Yale Joel was able to produce a photo of his son Seth (Figure 2) that laoks remarkably like Geller’s. The sharp circle is the lens cap and the bumps the thumb and finger holding the lenses. Figure 3 shows liow the picture of Seth was tuken ; Hi , although Popular Photography found that one person could do it without help. Geller apparently knows a lot about cameras, but did he outsmart himself -on this one? Popular Pholography suggests that what he expected was Figure 4. This is a picture of Scth taken in precisely the same way, only with a 50-mm lens on the Pentax instead of the fisheye. No sharp circle, no fingers. Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110020-3 Figure 2. Photo of Seth Joel looks remarkably like Uri's, -
, Investigating the Geller phenomenon second-hand is all well and good, but the stroazest come from personal contact with Uri. [ have seen Uri work twice, once as part of a transatlantic telepathy experiment conducted by the Sunday Mirror (10 December, 1973) and the other in the Montcalm Hotel, London — Os June, 1974). In the Mirror test, Geller was in New York, counected to the Mirror office in London by transatlantic telephone. In the Mirror office were Clifford Davis, the Mirror TV editor who arranged the test; Professor Arthur Ellison of City University and chairman of the execu- tive committee of the. Society for Psychical Research; Dr Christopher Evans of the New Scientist panel; Ronnie Becford, Mirror science editor; Patricia OFlanazgan and myself from New Scientist; the Thames TV crew; and about a dozen spectators. Yasha Katz of Geller’s staff, and Sidney ‘Young, from the Mirror, were with Geller in New York. The attempt lasted nearly two hours, and covered a variety of tests. Katz listened on the New York ecd of the telephone and later told New Scientist (during one of his meet- ings to discuss our experiments) that Geller’s biggest success was seeing a photograph of a car. ~ In fact, the event was not so clear” cut. At my request, Patricia O’Flanagan had provided a set of sealed envelopes containing simple photographs which no one but she had seen. When Uri was already on the telephone, she gave me the sealed envelopes and I selected one, which turned out to contain a photo of- Nee car end a policeman. Professor = was ON the Londen end uf Lae ‘phone and concentrated on the photo, attempting to transmit it to Geller. We could all see and hear Ellison and hear Geller. The photo transmission experiment took 335 minutes—the first: half being primarily Jong silences followed by en- impressions necessarily ~ “Transat atlapieprewedt Fr Release 2 ators Atha AB MRLE lo ABD RODAE AAGGROsE “a fat sousaus “can you tell us what the three are, just in case one of, them matches?” Geller declined and more long silences followed. Finally, at 20 minutes Uri said he could not do it. But Ellison said: “Would you like to tell us anything about the patterns you were getting in your mind when we were all concen- trating on the picture?” Geller replied that he had drawn three different sects of things. First, “three people appeared in my mind with something white underneath” Second, “something long’. Ellison im- mediately replied “that sounds likely, it could be described as something long”. Then Geller said it was like an animal —a dog or a horse standing sideways. With no further encouragement at this point, he moved on to the third drawing —which he described as something triangular with a semi. -circle coming out of the left side—‘a mountain, sort of, with something coming out’. Finally, he said he had words in his mind: “pattern, horse, animal, dog, dog, dog”. Although this drew no encouragement from Ellison, he continued to press the dog—asking if there was a photo of a dog. somewhere in the room. There wasn’t. Only the “something long” had drawn a positive response from Ellison. Next Geller said that of the three impressions the “biggest one” was the second—an “object that was wide, long, and bright in colour’. “Very good,” replied Ellison. Geller then went through another series of words—table, flower, telephone—which drew no support from Ellison. Then, 28 minutes into the test, Geller began drawing and Sidney Young came - on the ’phone to dascribe what he was Crawing. le could be “a car ora piz’, Young said, which drew a favourable response from Ellison. Then Young said it looked “like a child's wooden toy— the sort of thing you get from Czecho-. slovakia where it is just a semblance of a car or a pig—not wheels, not legs, sort of rounded”. - ANU Ou it he WoleeL Lodi with, at oi 00: a part that comes down and looks like, say, an elephbant’s foot, then goes along toward the front and becomes a sort of a breast’. Ellison laughed and gave a negative response, Geller then announced that he was finished, and asked Ellison what the photo was. Ellison said it was a police car, and Geller then claimed to have written down the word “car” even tliough he had not mentioned it before with the’: list of words in his mind. Later, he claimed to have written down the word “car” twice. To me, at least, this was hardly a: success. Guided by Ellison, he drew a ..’ shape that could have been an animal, a car, a table, a hill, or almost any- “4; thing. Later in the nearly two-hour. : telephone call, however, Geller made remarks like “I am happy I got the La. drawing”. When I asked him afterwards, Ellison a answered immediately that Geller had,' indeed, gotten the car. He called the test “remarkable” and noted that Geller“: “didn’t say a cup or a tree or a human.,.; being”. Actually, of course, Geller did = mention people and his drawing could have been a cup—it was Young who’: said it might be a pig or a car. Buti. most important, Ellison seers to have ": been totally oblivious to the amount of »- Photo which Uri Geller. attempted to see in the Mirror transatlantic | telepathy test, — 10 December 1973. help he gave Geller during the entire ~ time. He permitted Geller to offer him three basic shapes from which he chose one, then guided Geller to something that was only vaguely right, and finally: accepted Geller’s statement that it was,: indeed, correct. This is a good example of how Geller is able to draw people into heloing him and wanting to helieve has succeeded, cven up to the point of reporting an event that did not happen. Nothing appeared in the Sunday Mirror about the trial, which surprised me as Geller was hot news at the time. Only later did I find that Geller had insisted and Davis accepted that nothing that he courascinenl pprOVveU-For Release 2000O8/OP’ CIA. ‘RDP9b-007B7ROVOFGO PHOOZ0- & the test failed.
uri bends my key—and rips his trousers | wee M v second chance to watch Uri work 4 wes 29 June when editor Dr Bernard Dixon and I met with Uri in the lobby of the lobby and chatted for a long time. Then Uri offered to try some of his skills for us. He-tried to reproduce pictures which Dixon and I drew but eventually - . “passed” (he said he saw nothing clear on his “rental screen”) each time. Next he suczested he try bending metal. IJ gave Uri my housekey, which he worked with unsuccessfully. Dixon commented afterwards that he was struck by the extent to which Geller stressed his failures—constantly saying he did not think he could do it and telling us stories about his failures on TV ard elsewhere. Indeed, he talked far more about failures than successes. The efiect. ef course, is to make everyone around Geller exceedingly anxious that he should. succeed. ; Geller suggested we move to the next room—an empty dining room with a few soft chairs near the door. He con- tinued to attempt to bend my key. Noting that it was often easier to bend an object when it was near other metal, he rubbed the key against an upended metal fioor ashtray and other metal ebjects. Even with just the three of us, a high degree of chaos prevailed— at one point I was sent looking for metal end at another looking for a pad. Hotel staf who passed—who by now seemed used to the events—added comments. But still nothing unusual happened, “ Finally Uri suggested we move into the corner and sit down on a sofa behind a low ccffee table. Bernard Dixon was sent to feich Geller’s jacket. Geller sat down first and I walked eround the table and was just sitting cown; Bernard was walking across with Geller's jacket. Thus neither of us was watching Geller closely. Suddenly Geller lurched forward, spreading his legs so rapidly that he split his trousers. His hands were down in front of him. After joking about the ripped trousers, he keld the key from the point end, erclosing most of it in his hand, and continued his efforts to make it bend. Geller’s hand was slightly arched, how- ever, and I could see clearly that the key was already slightly bent. Suddenly he said it was bending, and slowly raoved his hand down the key to expose the bend. The bend was not . large and he put the key on the coffee teble to show the bend—carefully hold- ing it in a V position so that both ends were of the teble end the bend touch- ins, Bla penentad Gy debe £22 TOPCB Id any cimes wat it was sul beue: ng and to prove this be pot it back down on the table, now in an L po osition, with an-entire flat side tcuching so that the other end was hisher ‘off the table than it bed been the frst lime. As fear as I could ee however, the key was no more ben than when ' Ap pprov ved:ForRelease 2000 8/07 : CIA-R ; T cannot act that I saw Uri bend my key by nonparanormal means. Moatcalm Hotel, London, for. -~ - more than an hour. : We sat in a secluded corner of the But I can offer an explanation that I find more plausible than previously un- identified mental forces. First, it should be noted that keys are surprisingly easy to bend, particularly for a person like Geller with strong hands. Few of us ever try it, however, and we assume it is difficult. But anyone, including me, can bend’ a key on the edge of a-chair. Sitting in a chair with your legs slightiy spread, reach down to the bottom of the chair seat and you will fecl part of the chair frame. Holding the head of the key in both hands, put the point on the tep of the frame and press down. You will be surprised how easily the key bends. With practice, you can do this with a quick, casual movement in which you pull the’ chair forward. towards a table, To me, the most plausible hypothesis is that knowing neither Bernard nor I were concentrating at that moment, Uri put the key on the-metal rail at the front of the sofa (his hands were in the right plece) and then sudderly slid forward. Because the coffee table was too clase to the sofa, he had to spread his legs quickly, splitting his trousers. Faces and flowers After the key bend, Uri again tried telepathy. After a couple of unsuccess- ful attempts—as before he atways © passed, never showing a final drawing. despite attempts on his part—he finally’ did one drawing. I drew a simple fiower:.. (1), Uri made two attempts (2 and 3)... which he rejected, and then said that -~ I had drawn a. face (4). It-is, as hes noted, not too far off because it does. have a basic circle with lines coming: ’-. out from it. The final drawing (5) is2). his explanation—that he drew a circle © with bumps and then guessed at the: eyes and then the rest of the face. -! Uri’s relative Jack of success, his own >: explanation of how he did the drawing,’ .>: and some observations by Bernerd . Dixon allowed us to piece together: afterwards a non-paranormal hypothesis © for this effort as well. First, it should. be noted that in the early attempts -. which Uri passed, we had time to think © and were drawing relatively unusual. figures such as a complex fork and an ~ integral sign. But by the time Geller - ; | Picture drawing test at Montcalm Hotel, London, 19 June 41974, HBeWUREMROVOTOUAATUIE Bi esrcn i (5) Pag he had drawn the circle and hair and then quessed at the cyes end rest of the face
raaae and draw objects quickly—thus the simple flower. - ae bose More important, however, was Bernurd’s observation that after each drawing, we would carefully hide the crawing, but then Geller would ask us to draw the picttire again in our mind, “I found I was making movenients, tracing the shape of the drawing. I tried not to, but found it dificult if 1 was really concentrating hard and tracing the shape as Uri suggested. Watching Joe Hanlon ft noted the same cfiect.” Looking at my drawing and Geller’s eJorts and explanations, it scems that Bernard's hypothesis holds up well. The head motions for a flower would be a large circle, several short back and forth motions (petals) and one long curving up and down motion (the stem). This is precisely what Uri drew in his first two attempts (2 and 3) exhibiting the fact that it is difficult to tell from head motions precisely where on the circle the other lines should go. Dropping the long up and down motion, and putting the short motions all on the top, seems to suggest ' Sad a Ty on Stay ae Verein Did SRI “validate” Uri Geller? After months of experiments, in a paper this week in Nature SRI reports the - only two sets of tests it considers successful—one of telepathy and the other of clairvoyance. : _ Although the authors state that Geller bent many pieces of metal, he never did so under experimental. conditions. The paper fails to show that many of the same difficulties of Geller’s public performances occurred in the lab, too. Nor does the paper note that by using an ingenious device invented by his mentor Dr Andrija Puharich, Geller could have done both successful tests by non-naranormal means The investigators Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, California, is the site of the only attempt at controlled scientific tests of Uri Geller. SRI was originally estab- lished by Stanford University to do military research. After student protests in the 1960s, it was nominally split off from the university. Since then, military funding has decreased and SRI has done iacreasing amounts of commercial con- tract research. The Geller study has been dene by Dr Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. Both are laser physicists with a continuing interest in psychic phenomena who joined SRI primarily to do psychic re- search (although when funding is short they co return to laser work). Puthoff is 33 vears old and joined SRT in 1971. Ta is the author of a dasec tontoaok, Fundaineatals of Quantum Electronics (John Wiley & Sons, 1969), and holds patents for a tunable Raman laser and ether optical devices. Targ is 40 years old and joined SRI in 15972 after ten years at Sylvania, where he worked on pas lusers aud slight head |. "rose 2 8 point UE RElbas QODDIAINT.SIANOeSE:ud7= ARcINO et fadeDe..c= bumps and guessed at the face. Be- - cause ‘of the haste with which I drew the picture, he could be sure that it was one of the common ones, : Not an experiment My investigation of Geller has been surprising to me in two important ways: first, that every Geller event that I could investigate in detail had a normal ex- ’ planation that was more probable than the paranormal one; and second, the really strong desire of people to suspend disbelief and accept Geller. On the latter point, I must admit that I, too, was strongly taken with Geller, and that I ‘could not help liking him and being _ swept up by his enthusiasm—despite the fact that I was looking for tricks. Many people believe Geller—often based on a very few demonstrations of his powers, swept on by their own desire to believe and by the force of Geller’s personality. Indeed, some supposedly objective scientists now talk of the “Geller effect” as a fact. But as Uri himself told me, “a stage 4 et Pa OD sm com my Te oy a hay oben aren) \esearcy | institu Yarg has been president of the Para psychology Research Group of Palo Alto, and -invented an “ESP Teaching Machine’. In a paper to the IEEE (institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) International Symposium on foformation Theory in January 1972, lie implicitly in. New Scientist 17 October 1974. experiment”, is under: my conditions’. Only controlled scientific tests will tell whether Geller actually, has paranormal powers. But we can use our experience with” Geller the performer to help develop and evaluate tests with Geller the ex perimental subject. And if there is any. lesson to be learned, it is that Occam’s: Razor must be our guide—we must reject all normal explanations before we: consider the paranormal ones. In some cases, norma) explanations would not mean that Geller is cheating. = It'is possible, at least, for someone to:. reproduce drawings watching a noddiag aa head without realising quite how it is happening. But we must also accept the ~ fact—made all the more difficult by Geller’s likeability—that a normal ex-”. planation for key bending must imply. fraud. And on the evidence of Uri's = - performances, this possibility must bee seriously constdered. oe So far, there is only one published result of scientific tests with GeNer. In’ the next section, I have tried to look . at these experiments in the light of what I have found out about “Geller: as a performer. a ™@ wie sinves’ iC) ation Ace git, eat ate AL sales backed st apelin and biofecdback techniques, it * nay be possible to teach and enhence ESP phenomena” (Parapsychology Review, July-August 1972, p 9). : Together, Targ and Putheff? have ine - vestigated several subjects in addition to Geller, Initial funding for tne project invented a tyr aver F OF Release 2000/0B/0F “CIALRDP 9610078 FROVOTOOTOOZOUBY report that