1744. ° . ‘He’ thea wer RRFoved. Fan Releas .of people, McAlister said, and put the key in someone’s hand and “bent” it. But presumably, McAlister commented, he had actually bent it while going out the door. Thames ‘Television Producer Terry Dixon told me about filming Geller in New York in December 1973. Dixon said that each member of the crew did a drawing and that the drawings were sealed, first in a white envelope, then a brown one, in San Francisco twa weeks before the crew arrived in New York to talk to Geller. Each crew mem- ber had also signed the envelope. In Geller's flat, Uri was given the dozen sealed envelopes and he handled them one at a time, according to Dixon. At this point both cameraman Mike Fash, and assistant cameraman Peter George, however, noted that Fash’s envelope had fallen on the floor and both said, in- dependently, that Geller would do that drawing. Eventually, Geller said that he needed a long rest, and Dixon suggested they move to one of the Thames hotel rooms. Geller agreed and suggested they take only three envelopes, which he picked (drawings by Fash, George, and Dixon). Geller suggested that they be sealed together, but there was no Sello- tape immediately available, so the en- velopes were passed to one of Geller’s assistants, Melanie Toyofuku, who had them out of sight of the Thames crew for more than 10 minutes, according to Dixon. She had more than enough time to use any of the magician’s tricks to see inside (rubbing alcohol on the envelopes to make them transparent, holding them up to a strong light, open- ing just a corner so that a small light can be put inside, or even opening and resealing the envelopes, among others). At the hotel room, Geller succeeded in drawing a combination of Dixon’s draw- ing (a three-dimensional box) and Fash’s (a dice). ; : ; Tightening the conditions One thing characterises all of these examples: Geller did not do his feat in the simple, immediate way in which it is usually reported. Instead, he succeeded only after unconscious help from a participant or after taking an extra step which could be used by a magician in a similar circumstance. In other words, for whatever reason, Geller worked in such a way as to make the normal explanation seem more likely than the paranormal. Uri's sup- porters, of course, will say that these are all accidents or coincidences, and that he does not use the opportunities they offer for tricks. To test this theory, it is worth looking at what has happened in those cases where the conditions were made tight enough that Geller could not have resorted to such tricks. Perhaps not surprisingly, he does not perform very well. One of Geller’s standard feats is to have an object put into one of ten light aluminium 35mm film cans, Geller then sclectg pj time, and fi PAUL PRE Rabe AitolB each 6 2000/08/10 : CIA:RBRI6-0C object. On the Merv Griffin show on US TV, Geller did the trick successfully, but some people thought they saw Geller ~ jarring the table so that the cans would shake and he could tell which was heaviest. On the Jobnny Carson Tonight show.on 1 August, 1973, therefore, special precautions were taken and Geller was not permitted to get near | enough to the table to jar it or touch the cans. He failed. On the AM New York show, they went a step further and used heavy film cans that could not be jarred. But Geller went further as well. Magician Felix Greenfield reported that one of the staf rang him shortly before the show. was to go on at 7 am to say that when she arrived at 5.50 am Geller was already there, and insisted that he watch while she put the ‘objects in the cans and wrapped tape around them. Green- field told her that Geller would probably remember how the target can be taped and suggested she retape them. She did and Geller failed. The Thames TV crew found that Geller could do the film can trick for them when someone was present who knew which can contained the object, but not otherwise, which suggested to them that Geller looked for their reactions. Bob McAlister of WNEW told of some of the special precautions he took for another Geller event. “Geller said he wanted to try something big like stopping an escalator, and he suggested Bloomingdales [department store]. But our news department suggested Gimbles because they had worked with the public relations department there before. Geller seemed quite upset and disappeared, saying ‘I’ve got to make a "phone call’. When I got to’ Gimbles, I talked to a guard who told me that you can throw a switch on any floor to stop an escala- tor. On my advice they stationed a guard at the switch at each escalator landing. Geller did not stop the escalator.” . Did they see Geller cheat? At least five people claim to have seen Geller actually cheat. This is a difficult area, because if we cannot trust the reports of observers who say Geller does miracles, why should we give any more credence to those who say he cheated? At least some of the examples, however, seem to have supporting evidence. Perhaps the strongest case is that of Thames sound recorder Sandy McCrae, R&6 ioi78 Lot ERNE denied oo New Scientist 17 October 1974 TRO details of the RO0020009000 4" n TY, however, and lend strong support to his comment. Film magazines contain ten minutes of film, but a standard sound tape runs 20. minutes. Thus it is normal practice to leave the sound tape running while the film magazines are reloaded. According ‘to McCrae, while the cameramen were diverted reloading film, Geller attempted to divert everyone else’s attention by referring them back to a fork he had already broken. But McCrae did not turn to the broken fork, and said he actually saw Geller bend—-by hand, not psychic powers—the large spoon. Geller then called attention to the bent spoon and filming immediately resumed. Support for McCrae’s story comes from producer Terry Dixon, who noted that McCrae had been a strong believer in Geller and before this incident was convinced that Geller was genuine. Dixon also noted that Uri and his asso- - ciates were “obsessively” interested in the equipment, particularly how long it took to reload a film magazine. ‘No one ever asked questions like that before.” - Ray Hyman, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, was called in to see Geller at SRI by a government agency to whom Russell Targ and Dr Hal Puthoff had applied for funding. One of Uri’s demonstrations for Hyman at SRI in December 1972 was to have someone else in the room write down a number on the pad and then he, Geller, would guess it. “As he wrote, Uri made a show of covering his eyes with his hands. From my side, I could see his eyes through his hands. Also, I could easily see, from George’s arm motions, that he had written the number 10.” Hyman also told a story, confirmed to me by one of the others present (who requested not to be identified), about a Geller prediction. At 4 pm Geller decided he was “burned out” and decided to go home. About a half hour later he sud- denly reappeared, warning one of those present not to fly back to Washington, DC as planned. He said that during lunch he had had a premonition about a plane crashing. But someone decided _to call a newspaper, and found that there had indeed already been a plane crash in Washington around lunch time, and the report would have been on the news stands and radio during the half hour Uri was away. Finally, three people report that they saw Geller cheat when he performed at the New York offices of Time magazine in March 1973. These are perhaps the weakest cases because Time is strongly _ opposed to Geller. Charles Reynolds, picture editor of Popular Photography, and magician James Randi, both say they saw Geller bend a key in his hand after having attempted to divert every- one’s attention by asking for a beer can opener. And Rita Quinn, a researcher in the picture department who was anxious to believe in Geller, saw him peek between gaps in his fingers during a picture drawing test... When asked on television (Mid-Day Live, 3 May, 1974) about Randi’s state- n_15 Janua ment, Geller replied simply “E am sure 190787 ROOG2 : 006200890024-7
meee cele nie wn 6k EA 3 ANSE NEN he Me RR lt AR Rm ean SO "NeW, Scientist YApptoved‘For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090 Through a lenscap 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, 1973). Geller also projected bis image through the lenscap of Yale Joel, the ex-Life photographer who took our cover picture. But he may have madé a mistake, 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 “fisheye” 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. 3 x z 3 er & f ¢ a ¥ s Figure 1 Photo Uri took of himself “through taped-on Figure 2 tenscap”’ of Yale Joel's Pentax . but... s ; Peer e ee ates, : : ee: Figure 3 ... it was taken by holding the lenscap just a bit Figure 4 Picture of Seth Joel taken with 50mm lens. away from the camera ; 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 looks remarkably like Geller’s. The sharp circle is the lens cap and the bumps the thumb and finger holding the lenscap. Figure 3% shows how the picture of Seth was taken, 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 Photography suggests that what he expected was Figure 4. This is a picture of Seth taken in precisely the same way, only with a 50-mm lens on the Pentax instead of the fisheye. No sharp circle, no ApprovediikorRelease 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090024-7
eSpace NOAA <, Jala tise eee: i as aacieett 116°. — ” Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96.90 d “I am getting a Transatlantic telepathy Investigating the Geller phenomenon second-hand is all well and good, but the strongest impressions necessarily 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 Miontcalm Hotel, London qo June, 1974). os In the Mirror test, Geller was in New York, connected to the Micror 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 Bedford, Mirror science editor; Patricia O'Flanagan 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 end 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: a police car and a policeman. Professor Ellison was on the London end of the ‘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 ei AP ReNe Ci aERRlease couragement from Ellison. At seven minutes Geller sai ; the time three pictures”. Ellison replied "can you tell us what the three are, just im case one of. thera matches?” Geller declined and more long silences followed. Finally, at 20 minutes Uri said he could not do it. But Elitson 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 sets 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 deserihe what he was drawing. It could be “a car or a pig’, 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 — New Scientist 17 October 1974 87RO9020009 Q024¢7 then Youn g described Geller drawing “a fat sausage with, at the rear, a part that comes . down and looks like, say, an elephant’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 though he had not mentioned it before with the ‘Hist 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- thing. Later in the nearly two-hour telephone call, however, Geller made remarks like “I am happy I got the drawing”. When I asked him afterwards, Ellison 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. But most important, Ellison seems 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 helping him and wanting to believe that he has succeeded, even 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. fF ar ora pig—not wheels, not legs, Only later did I find that Geller had eod/oBsida:.ClA-RDP96-00787Ra082 godsataar that nothing i Ellison responded “very good, we can wo the test failed.
- uN New Scientist 17 October 1974 uri bends my key—and rips his trousers My second chance to watch Uri work was 19 June when editor Dr Bernard Dixon and I met with Uri in the lobby of the Montcalm Hotel, London, for more than an hour. We sat in a secluded corner 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 “mental screen”) each time. Next he suggested he try bending metal. I 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 and elsewhere. Indeed, he talked far more about failures than successes. The effect, of 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 floor ashtray and other metal objects. Even with just the three of us, a high degree of chaos prevailed— at one point I was sent looking for metal and at another looking for a pad. Hotel staff who passed—who by now seemed used to the events—added comments. But still nothing unusual bappened, . Finally Uri suggested we move into the corner and sit down on a sofa behind a low coffee table. Bernard Dixon was sent to fetch Geller’s jacket. Geller sat down first and I walked around the table and was just sitting down; 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 held the key from the point end, enclosing 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 moved his hand down the key to expose the bend. The bend was not . large and he put the key on the coffee table to show the bend—carefully hold- ing it in a V position so that both ends were off the table and the bend touch- ing. He repeated many times that it was still bending and to prove this he put it back down on the table, now in an L position, with an entire flat side touching so that the other end was higher off the table than it bad been than when I first saw it in his hand. I cannot actually say that 1 saw Uri hand wou bow hu wan. naronarmnal maane the first timg. As f a. U a however, TAR PTONEd FOLRelgase 2000/98/10 : CIA-RDROGHOOF ' Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : 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 slightly 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 top 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 place) and then sudderly slid forward. Because the coffee table was too close 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 umsuecess- ful. attempts—as before he always passed, never showing a final drawing despite attempts on his part—he finally” did one drawing. I drew a simple flower (1), Uri made two attempts (2 and 3) which he rejected, and then said that L had drawn a face (4). It-is, as he noted, not too far off because it does have a basic circle with lines coming out from it. The final drawing (5) is 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 lack of success, his own explanation of how he did the drawing,. and some observations by Bernard 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 4 5 Picture drawing test at Montcalm Hotel, London, 19 June 1974. 37ROH02000900 244 ri made two attempts (2 and 3) before settling on a face (4). He explained. 1 (5) that he had drawn the circle and hair and then guessed at tha eves and rest of the face .
. 178 raade an attempt, we had little time Jeft with him and I had to think of and draw objects quickly—thus the simple flower. More important, however, was Bernard's observation that after each drawing, we would carefully hide the drawing, but then Geller would ask us to draw the picture again in our mind. ‘Y found I was making slight head movements, tracing the shape of the drawing. I tried not to, but found it dificult if I was really concentrating hard and tracing the shape as Uri suggested. Watching Joe Hanlon I noted the same effect.” : Looking at my drawing and Geller’s efforts and explanations, it seems that Bernard’s hypothesis holds up well. The head motions for ‘a flower would be a large circle, sevéral 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 a face with hair. And Uri himself noted that he was sure about the circle and 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 o1es. 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 implicitly in. New Scientist 17 October 1974 ' Approved.For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090024-7 demonstration is not an experiment” because “what I do on the stage 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. Jn some cases, normal - explanations would not mean that Geller is cheating. It is possible, at least, for someone to reproduce drawings watching a nodding 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 be seriously considered. : So far, there is only one published result of scientific tests with Geller. 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. ; The Stanford Research Institute investigation 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 successfu Although the authors state that Geller bent many pieces o I~one of telepathy and the other of clairvoyance. f 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-paranormal 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 increasing amounts of commercial con- tract research. The Geller study has been done 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 do return to laser work). Puthoff is 38 years old and joined SRI in 1971. He is the author of a laser textbook, Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics (John Wiley & Sons, 1969), and holds patents for a tunable Raman laser and other optical devices. ; Targ is 40 years old and. joined SRI in 1972 aft where he invented a tunable plasma oscillator. o nbtoiedFarkelease a Targ has been president of the Para- psychology Research Group of Palo Alto, and invented an “ESP Teaching Machine”. In a paper to the IEEE CUnstitute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) International Symposium on reported evidence that via the machine and biofeedback techniques, it “may be possible to teach and enhance ESP phenomena” (Parapsychology Review, July-August 1972, p .9). Together, Targ and Puthoff have in- vestigated several subjects in addition TOeorCAIRDP962007 87 ROGO200090 024 F for the project came ey report that
ARENT ponreremnemcen cairo wacsirnenntememenntasio arnt eA - AIL B 1 MULL. ER AS BER EERE New Scentist APRIAVEMA Or Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090024-7 they bad an $80 000 grant from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Ad- ministration), apparently relating to ‘Targ’s ESP teaching machine. But they | remain chronically short of money. Funding for the Geller work has come primarily from wealthy individuals— particularly from Judith Skutch, a weal- thy Geller supporter in New York, and Dr Edgar Mitchell. Ex-astronaut Mitchell conducted an unauthorised ESP experi- ment in space in February 1971 and two years ago set up his Institute of Noetic Sciences in Palo Alto to encourage psychic research. Geller has been to SRI several times over an 18-month period beginning in November 1972. Mitchell and another Geller supporter, Dr Wilbur Franklin of Kent State University, assisted in the first series of tests. The clairvoyance experiment with a die reported in the SRI paper, published this week in Nature (vol 251, p 602), comes from this set of tests. (Copies of the 15 October issue of Nature are available for 45p from Macmillan Journals, 4 Little Essex Street, London WC2.) The paper The SRI paper reports on three tests with Geller, as well as several tests with other subjects. In the first in August 1973, Uri was asked to reproduce target pictures drawn by experimenters at other locations. “At the beginning of the experiment either Geller or the experimenters entered a shielded room so that from that time forward Geller was at all times visually, acousti- cally, and electrically shielded from personne] and material at the target location. Only following Geller’s isola- ‘tion from the experimenters was 4 target chosen and drawn, a procedure designed to eliminate pre-experiment cueing. Furthermore, to eliminate the possibility of pre-experiment target forcing. Geller was kept ignorant as to the identity of the person selecting the target and as to the method of target selection,” Targ and Puthoff report in the paper. Altogether. 13 trials were conducted (see Table}. For. virtually every trial, the conditions: were changed—often several conditions were changed at the same time—so that it is difficult to correlate his successes and failures with different conditions. In four cases (1-4) the targets were chosen by putting an index card into a dictionary to pick a page, then open- ing it and drawing the first word on the upper left that “could be drawn”. Three targets (8-10) were chosen from_ an already prepared target noch : Three (6-7) were targets “olind to experi- menters and subject, prepared independ- ently by SRI scientists outside the experimental group following Gelier’s isolation’~-Geller declined to attempt any of these three. Finally, three targets (11-15) were chosen by computer laboratory personnel and drawn on a cathode Tav\pprovedt ForR scab is primarily PRE of telepat ‘Relégse | 0 all cases someone knew what the draw- ine was. In three cases, however (5, 12, © Geller picture drawing test at SRI —— Trial Geller Target Target Qutcome location location Picture from dictionary 1 $1 A Firecracker poor 2. si A Grapes . good 3 Si B Devil poor 4 Cc 31 Solar system good Picture prepared by outsider 5 Cc St Rabbit ; pass 6 Si A Tree pass 7 S1 A Envelope pass ; Picture chosen from target pool 8 Si D Camel : good 9 31 A Bridge fair 10 $1 A Seagull good Picture drawn on computer crt "1 $2 E ; Kite good 12 S2 E Church poor 13 S2 . E Arrow through heart fair Vo me Locations: - S1; double walted steel room S2: double walled copper screen Faraday cage A: adjacent room 4-1 m from S1 , B: office 475 m from S11 . C:room just outside 51 D: room 6°75 m from 51 E: computer room 54 m from $2 “Qutcomes: Pass means Geller did not do a drawing. Other evaluations are by the author (JH) based on drawings published with the Nature paper. In general, the drawings seem to be based on a verbal description of the target drawing, rather than either the target word or the target drawing. Good: good pictorial representation of a word or phrase which would describe the entire target picture. Trial 2 is a bunch of 24 grapes (word: grapes) and the Geller drawing precisely fits that description. Trial 4 includes the sun, earth, saturn, two other circles, and the words “solar system”. Geller has drawn, in a totally different arrangement, the sun, saturn, several circles, and what appear to be satellites. Both could be described verbally as “solar system” or “sun and planets”. Trial 8 is a drawing which could be either a horse or a camel and Geller has drawn a horse. Trial 10 has a large flying bird and a small bird on the ground. Geller’s drawing has a large and small bird. The birds do not resemble each other, but both drawings are described well by “large bird with small bird under it”. Trial 11 is a kite, which Geller bas drawn. The two are about as dissimilar as two line drawings of a kite could be. Fair: pictorial representation of some of the words which would describe the target picture. Trial 13, for example, is an arrow through a heart. Geller has drawn an arrow inside a box. Again, the target and Geller’s drawing are dissimilar, despite the fact that they describe the same word “arrow”. Poor: pictorial representation of a few words which might be used to describe the target picture. In trial 1, the dictionary word was firecracker, and the drawing is a simple firecracker with a lit fuse. Geller’s response appears to be to the word “noisemaker’ and includes a drum and words like “noise” and “pow”. Special notes: §—target in shielded room with no one there to view it 6, 7—attempted to make EEG record of Geller, which failed because “he found it difficult to hold adequately still for good EEG records” i1—picture displayed on front of cathode ray tube display screen OGIORTID “CTR REPSRDAR ERMA Ag aa AGdRAat. oir
ne ES ce, Hp i baal ai 480° “tt has been widely reported that Geller has demonstrated the ability to bend metal by paranormal means. Although metal bending by Geller has been observed in our laboratory, we have not been able to combine such observations with adequately controlled experiments to obtain data sufficient to support the paranormal hypo- thesis,” Targ and Puthoff declare in the paper published this week in Nature. . Indeed, the SRI team spent most of its time on metal bending—by far the most spectacular Geller feat— and considerably less time on the per- ception tests finally published. In one test which I saw the video- tape of, Uri was asked to bend a carefully checked metal bar. He was unsuccessful, and asked for something else. The SRI team provided a special checked spoon. Next he asked for more metal round him for inspiration, and that was supplied. Finally he gave up, but the spoon was set up for the next day and all the other metal, including the original bar, just dumped in the corner of the room. The next day, he started on the spoon, and again asked for more metal. The original bar was among t and 13), the picture was not actually being viewed by anyone at the time of the test. In all ten cases where Uri did a drawing, it had some connection to the target and in some cases Uri’s picture was extremely good—for example, when the target drawing was a bunch of 24 grapes, Uri also drew a bunch of 24 grapes. Perhaps the most striking factor which runs through all 10 pictures, however, -is that Uri seems to be drawing neither the target word nor the target drawing. He appears to base his drawing on the words which would be used to describe the target drawing. Clairvoyance The other two tests reported in the SRI paper are of clairvoyance—seeing something in a closed container which “no one can know by normal means. : r succeeded once and failed once. n the second test reported in the BRI paper, also conducted in August the envelopes in other envelopes. Five targets were drawn from the pool each day. Each. day Geller attempted draw- ings of everyday objects, but only rarely came close to the target picture. “The drawings resulting from this experiment i what pictures of everyday objects and other SRI personnel sealed them with black N cardboard in envelopes and then sealed would be expected by condugted "ABR yed 973, an SRI artist drew 100 target " Approved For Release 2000 08/10: CIA-RDP96.0078 | No metal bending the extra collection, and Uri switched quickly back to that. But as only the spoon had been set up and checked, there was no way to see that Uri or someone else had not taken the bar— or any of the other metal—out of the room overnight, bent it, and brought it back in the morning. Later Uri moved on to still other pieces of metal in the pile. Finally he selected a pair of tweezers which no one had paid attention to because of the concentration on the spoon and bar. Finally, he broke the tweezers, but even Targ considered it all so suspicious that it was not included in the paper. The possibility of sleight of hand—in this and all other metal tests with Uri—was too great even for SRI. November or December 1972, Uri succeeded spectacularly well. A % in dice was placed in a steel file card box (3 in x 4 in X 5 in). The box was shaken and put on the table, and Uri drew a picture of the uppermost dice face. Then the box was opened. The experiment was performed 10 times, with Uri being correct eight times and passing twice. Unlike the telepathy test, the conditions were not varied—the dice and the box apparently remained the same. Targ and Puthoff conclude: “A channel exists whereby ‘information about a re- mote location can be obtained by means of an as yet unidentified perceptual modality.” In these experiments, they write, ‘we concentrated on what we con- sidered to be our primary respon- sibility—to resolve under conditions as unambiguous as possible the basic issue of whether a certain class of paranormal perception phenomena exists.” They con- tinue that “at all times we took measures to prevent sensory leakage and to pre- vent deception.” But were Targ and Puthoff vigilant enough, and have they really shown unambiguously that paranormal percep- tion exists? ; Welcome to the circus A dry scientific paper can never capture the feeling of an experiment. In this case, the Targ-Puthoff paper totally fails to communicate the circus New Scientist 17 October 1974 TRQN02Q0N90024 7 accidentally, Geller manipulates the experiments to a degree of chaos where he feels com- fortable and we feel uncomfortable. Then he bends something.” SRI has filmed or videotaped many Geller tests. The tapes show that Gelley constantly bounces up and down, touch- ing everything in sight and running his hands through his hair. In the middle of a test, he frequently jumps up and flits about the room, stopping the test dead. Just as suddenly, he will go back to the _test—or to a different one he abandoned earlier. He frequently asks for objects, - often from outside the test room, to give him moral support: press clippings from past triumphs, pieces of metal, coins, etc. And he will discuss at length what objects to choose and where to put them. He draws technicians and other observers into the experiment by asking them to help him concentrate, or to get other objects, or to pick a number, Geller also tries to convince people that things happened differently than they did. In one tape I watched, he tried to say he had not “passed” when he had, in fact, done so. In another, he said that something was bent when it really wasn’t. Also, Geller constantly needs reinforcement. He frequently stops and says “I can’t do it”, thus put- ting the experimenters in the position of repeatedly telling him that he really can, and thus possibly convincing them- selves in the process. Mitchell commented that “Hal [Put- hoff] and Russ [Targ] were so eager to keep Geller around that they worked themselves into a box by meeting his every whim. If he threatened to walk off they would relent and do what he wanted. Of course, they lost control of the situation and it got worse and worse and worse.” Mitchell—a strong believer in Geller’s abilities who was present for many of the tests—admitted that during the tests they should have demanded ‘that he curb his impulsiveness, that he should not touch equipment, that he keep his hands properly in view of the camera at all times, and that he cut down his chatter when we were trying to work. It becomes distracting and he uses it, not consciously to distract, but to create a climate of too ‘much noise and muss and bustle.” There are also long periods when he does nothing but stand and concentrate. A single test can take several hours of alternating excitement and boredom. The vigilance of the experimenters is sure ‘to flag during that time. ‘Assume he will cheat The experimenters are conscious of the possibility of dishonesty. “I feel confident that Geller will cheat if given a chance,” Targ told me, and he seemed highly sceptical of some of Geiler’s metal bending attempts. But whether their vigilance against cheating was rigorous enough is open to dispute. If Geller is cheating, he is probably using sophisticated magic and psycho- logical trickery. But the SRI team has 3 Rileise SHORT AH: CHAR PSb tet 7 RADU AOON Odea Pai, “aateur on two amateur
. - magicdans, an SRI staff member not connected with the project, and Targ himself, who noted he had “done tricks and been paid for it”. But Targ has very poor eyesight, holding things just a few inches from his eyes to see detail, so it is not clear how much he could catch. Targ is also sometimes sur- prisingly trusting: in one instance during a magnetometer experiment he asked Geller about a black mark on his skin and Geller said it was a scar, Targ accepted without checking although he could not have possibly known if Geller was telling the truth. One outside observer who is highly critical of the controls applied by Targ . and Puthoff comes from a US govern- ment funding agency. Targ and Put- hoff had applied for money and he was sent to SRI to evaluate the work. Thus, one would expect the SRI team to have put on the best possible performance. A reliable source reports that this official is quite interested in Uri on film More than a year ago SRI produced a film of Uri Geller’s first set of tests there (in November and December 1972). Although more like a seminar report than a formal paper, it gives some insight into the SRI researchers. (The film is entitled “Experiments with Uri Geller” and can be rented only by “universities and scientific research organisations” from Mitchell’s Institute of Noetic Alto). The narrator is Bonnar Cox, executive director of the SRI In- - formation Science and Engineering Division. The film shows five tests that the SRI team then considered acceptable (but only one of the five was con- sidered acceptable by the time the paper was submitted to Nature). The first test shown is a telepathy (mind reading) experiment using picture drawing. Fifteen simple drawings were made and sealed in envelopes which were themselves sealed in other envelopes (double sealing). The en- velopes were locked in a safe and drawn out at random for each test. The researcher then would open the envelope outside the experimental room, look at the picture, reseal the envelope and enter the experimental room, While he thought of the picture seemed quite close to the target, put perhaps closer to a verbal descrip- tion of the target than to the target itself. Next, the film shows a clairvoyance test in which Geller selects the one can out of 10 that contains an object. film cans. Using a cardboard o Sciences, 575 Middlefield Road, Palo ° Geller would draw it. Each drawing - - The rayedihoriRelease ox psychic phenomena, is anxious to be- lieve, and should have been sympathetic to SRI. By his own admission, he watched whatever the SRI team chose to show him. But he concluded that the “controls are sloppy and inadequate”. He also remarked that when he sug- gested tighter controls, “Targ said ‘bullshit’ ”. One of the potential difficulties of parapsychological investigation is the sensitivity of the whole phenomenon, and the inability of even “sood” subjects to perform under many seemingly reasonable, controlled conditions. If one accepts the existence of parapsycholo- gical abilities, this js not surprising. One would, presumably, be dealing with a talent ike musical ability, and it would be not unreasonable to find a_ skilled violinist, for example, being adversely influenced by playing before a group . of people he knew to be hostile critics. Also, because we are dealing with “mental energies”, it is not unreason- large enough to hold three rows of four such cans, they are placed with the middle two positions left vacant. In each case, a person referred to as a “randomiser” enters the room, arranges the cans, and leaves before Geller enters. Geller instructs the experimenters to remove empty cans one at a time, In the film, he success- fully finds a can containing room temperature water and one contain- ing a steel ball. In a similar test, a dice is placed in a metal box and shaken. Geller then guesses that the top face is a four, which is correct. There are also two experiments in. psychokinesis (PK). In one, a one gramme weight is placed on an elec- trical balance and covered by an aluminium film can, and then the apparatus covered by a glass cylin- der, A chart is then shown with two peaks, which, according to the film, “sre apparently due to Geller’s efforts. They are single-sided signals, one corresponding to a 1500 mg weight decrease, the other corres- ponding to an 800 mg weight in- crease. .. . We have no ready hypo- thesis on how these signals might have been produced”. Next, Geller is shown actually “influencing” a Bell magnetometer. he apparently causes a full scale deflection of 0:3 gauss. Finally, the film shows two unsatis- factory events. First, Geller is shown deflecting a compass needle. Next, he is seen apparently bending a stainless steel spoon, but this is also 2G0G9RF DS KEA TRE Rae i787 Moving his hands around the probe, - New Scientist Approved,For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090024-7 able to suppose that a confirmed critic could use his psychological powers to block those of the sensitive. Thus, the phenomenon will require somewhat different procedures than other forms of research. Some con- cessions will have to be made to keep the subject happy and comfortable, example. The real question is: Has SRI gone too far in this direction? Screening participants Typical of the difficulties of this sort of research is that all those who aid the investigators are, to some measure at least, pre-selected for their receptive- ness to Geller. “We reached the point that on a particular day, if one of our better, but more sceptical investigators was really in a foul mood about the whole thing, we just banned him from the room. And we could get results then, while when he was there we couldn't,” according to Mitchell. Also shown are two pent rings “measured to require 150 pounds force to bend them” and which “were in Geller’s hand at the time they were bent”. The most striking aspect of the film is that the really dramatic events all happen off camera. The first draw- ing that Geller does on the film is “the most off-target of the drawings he did”, Although the film says that the dice experiment was done success- fully eight times,’ the only test shown in the film is one in which Geller finally “passed”; that is, even though he guessed the number he asked that it not be taken into account because he was not confident. In the test with the one gramme weight, Geller is never actually shown deflecting the scale—all the film shows is Geller working unsuccessfully with the balance, and then a trace of another (apparently unfilmed) successful test. During the spoon bending, there is a break in the film and then the spoon never leaves Geller’s hand until it is shown to be bent—as usual, it appears to have bent during a break in film- ing. If, as the team claims, SRI filmed Geller virtually continuously, why did this film have to contain what seemed the weakest examples of each test? But it may be the bent rings which ‘make the film most suspect. I have already noted the virtu al impossibility of telling just when Geller bends something. Therefore, the dogmatic assertion that “these rings were in Geller’s hand at the time they were bent”, without any film docu- mentation offered, seems more likely to reflect sloppy observation than RGOG200090024 70". 181
mesic. reales AM Gael AD VLA” BOCA ES SPS A BAR AL PRL AE BS, (eS aeRO CY WAPI dw ELCRCRREREA SS eo OR . a * _ explains it by saying that this shows “how important the individual thought process is’. The less charitable might suggest that Geller was unwilling to perform before someone who was more watchful than usual. ; Another example of this sort of choice came up in a discussion of ex- periments with Pat Price, also published in thé SRI paper. In the test, one of the investigators went to a randomly selected place in the Palo Altc area— a motorway toll booth, a drive-in movie, a marina, etc. Thirty minutes after he started, Price would dictate into a tape recorder a description of where he thought the investigator was. Transcripts of the nine descriptions were given to five judges who were asked to correlate them with personal knowledge of the nine locations but with no knowledge of which descriptions Price said were of which trips. There is a wide diversity, with two judges picking 6 and 7 of Price’s descriptions as correct, while two others picked only 3. When asked about the diversity, Targ said that it simply showed that they had to be more careful in picking judges because some judges were not good at doing - correlations! Good observers ? By far the most important component of the validity of the SRI paper is the investigators’ abilities as observers. Two incidents suggest that although Targ and’ Puthof may be competent laser physicists, they are less successful in this radically different area. In particu- lar, their desire to believe may cloud their discrimination. . Perhaps the most telling event is Hal Puthoff taking Ingo Swann—an experi- mental subject not described in the Nature paper—to the quark detector at Stanford University early in 1973. The quark detector is a highly sensitive magnetometer which works by looking at the decay of a magnetic field. This is shown on a chart recorder by a periodic function. Puthoff and Swann independently told me roughly simitar stories: Puthoff took Swann to the quark detector, where Swann described in some detail the inside of the detector, of which he could not possibly have had any knowledge. Then, without going - near any of the equipment, for short - times he both increased and decreased the period of the signal. Dr Arthur Hebard, who designed the equipment, and who suggested that Puthoff bring Swann there, somewhat differ story. He dismisses the description of the inside of the detector by saying that Swann was ‘talking in such poetic terms that he could have been describing anything’. The description was “doubletaik” and the sort of thing any poetic layman would use to describe any piece of scientific equipment. On the perturbation of the detector output, Hebard made two interesting comments. .First, just that sort of per: turbation ¢ At using their equipment. Second, the tells a’ ease 2 —Who share the helium supply are also - _ _ Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090024 perturbation could have been made simply by fiddling with the dials on the recorder. Hebard is convinced, how- ever, that Swann did perturb the output without toucbing the recorder. But as often happens, his version of the story tells more than he realises. He said - that there were several people in the room and that they stood talking for about 40 minutes. Swann, he said, stood close to the chart recorder looking at jt intently for 20 minutes before any- thing happened. Hebard is sure that Swann did not touch the recorder, but in a crowded room with people talking, who can concentrate on any single object for 20 minutes and be sure it is not touched? Hebard also added a point that neither Swann nor Puthoff men- tioned—they came back the next day with fewer people around and Swann failed to have any effect. One also has the comment of Ray Hyman—the Oregon University psy- chology : professor, magician, and con- firmed sceptic about psychic phenomena. Hyman observed a day of SRI tests on - Geller in November 1972 and concluded that “they don’t know how to observe. Yarg and Puthoff recounted incidents we just saw in completely the reverse order, making them miracles”. Finally, there are two problems that apply to all scientists, Targ and Puthoff included, First, future funding clearly depends on success—there’ is no money available to prove that subjects of their choice have no psychic ability. Second, the mystique of the hard-headed scientist ‘objectively searching for truth bears little relationship to reality; in the real world of science most people are trying to prove the truth of a hypothesis to which they are already committed. Thus it is hardly surprising to find that Targ and Puthoff are strongly committed to Geller and seem genuinely to believe in his abilities (although Targ seems more cautious about Geller’s metal bending). Targ has worked in the parapsychology area on and off for 15 years. Puthoff has gone through encounter groups and other West Coast fads, and is now a Scientologist (as is Ingo Swann). In an area where observation is difficult anyway, have the SRI investigators taken enough precautions to ensure that their natural desire to see Geller succeed does not cause them to unconsciously make errors or misinterpret the data to Geller’s benefit? Omitting a success One test with Geller that is omitted from the paper throws some interesting light both on Geller and the researchers. Whereas the 13 drawings in the tele- pathy test are described as the “entire set of consecutive experiments”, this is not the case with the clairvoyance test which Geller failed—his attempt to draw the contents of sealed envelopes. The targets were drawn by an SRI artist at the request of a third SRI researcher who worked with Targ and Puthoff for a short time in August 1975. QO BIOSTD CIAO RETO TERNS Ose 4, test to see inside any of the envelopes. Fairies GOA aae SEA SE | CRB cre ne RIN: Rone 2a nes ams eer ee eS New Scientist 17 October 1974 This is, in itself, mnteresting as he was apparently able to see inside the box containing the die. . But the paper does not report a curious incident which occurred at the end of the third day of the test. After the formal test had been abandoned, it was decided to loosen the precautions and try again with six drawings. This time the drawings were left lying about the room so that it was possible to remove a drawing from the nile without anyone noticing, and Geller was per- mitted to leave the room, which he did three times. This time, Geller had no trouble with the clairvoyance test, and succeeded in drawing one of the pic- tures. Commented the third researcher: “Pm convinced he cheated.” If he could do this test under loose conditions but not under tight conditions, is this not worth a mention in the paper? Looking in Uri’s mouth The final question that must be answered is how the SRI paper stacks up against Occam’s Razor--is there a plausible normal method by which Geller could have done his two success- ful tests at SRI? Plausibility is hard to define ip this situation, but it nrust take into account anything that can be done with the assistance of Dr Andrija Puharich. , As the box on the next page shows, Puharich is a medical electronics expert who developed a radio receiver which can be hidden in a tooth. It must there- fore be considered plausible that Uri has a miniature radio receiver concealed on his person. Even if it is not hidden in his teeth, it could easily be hidden an his hair or in a wristwatch which he presses against his chin to hear. The possibilities are limitless, especially if Uri is not carefully searched. Because Uri constantly runs his hands. through his hair and across his face, no one would notice him listening to his Dick Tracy wrist radio—nor, because of the direct nerve stimulation, would anyone else hear it. There are two small pieces of evidence that give some credence to this sugges- tion. The most obvious is that all of Uri’s drawings are representations of words which would describe the target drawing, and thus are consistent with radio communication. The second occurred in January when Puharich was telling me that in any test Uri should be “properly examined” for hidden devices. But then he suddenly added: “But I know Uri will not submit to excessive examination like total body X-radiation”. In other words, Uri will not permit the only test for a Puharich implanted radio receiver. To some measure, SRI has protected against radio transmission by working with shielded rooms for the picture drawing tests. But have they succeeded; or is it possible to penetrate the room to a radio? To answer this question, I consulted Robert King, a senior lecturer at don. King wrote all three shielded rooms in the College's Electrical Engin-
LL LL amen vey ER ES: ST ea ecring Department. King was dogmatic: “{ could get information into any shielded room.” The reason, he ex- plained. is that shielded rooms are simply not designed to protect against secretive attempts to get information through. The SRI paper gives only vague information on the room in which’ most -.'° Approved For Release 2000/08 New Scientist 17 October 1974 of the tests were done (S1 in the Table, p 179)—it says only that it is ‘a double- walled steel room, locked by means of an inner and outer door”. The second room (S2 in the Table, p 179) is a“double-walled, copper-screen Faraday cage” which “pro- vides 120 dB attenuation for plane wave radio frequency radiation over a range of 15 Kliz to 1 GHz. For magnetic aE Sea Sob. = AROS EEE RAE ARR D ine 2 EES ARMORY Diet SHS ESS i 0: CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090024-7 183 ficlds the attenuation is 68 dB at 15 KHz and decreases to 3 dB at 60 Hz.” King said that this is typical of screen- ing for shielded rooms, and provides the key to getting data inside in this case. Attenuation drops off very rapidly at the very small wavelengths about 1 GHz, he said, so that microwaves of 10 GHz or more provide a good possibility. Hearing with a tooth The dream of spy writers, a radio . , receiver that can be concealed in a tooth. actually exists and was in- vented by Andrija Henry Puharich ——the man who found Geller in Israel and brought him to the US. Puharich is a wealthy SGyear-old MD who holds 56 patents, primarily in medical electronics. Since 1960 his inventions have related primarily to hearing aids for people with nerve deafness. But Puharich’s hearing aid is a unique device which stimulates cer- tain facial nerves just as thé organ. of Corti stimulates auditory merves, and the person can actually hear normally without using his or her ears at all. The facial hearing system will work with nerves on the face and neck, on the tongue, and in the sinuses, Pubarich claims. But for cosmetic reasons, the nerves in a living tooth are best. , “The invention comprises an elerment applied to a viable tooth, for receiving electromagnetic signals - at radio frequency, and a transducer element coupled with a receiving element and with live nerve endings ‘ef the tooth for converting the electromagnetic signals to electric signals at audio frequency, and im- parting the electrical signals to the nerve endings of the tooth for trans- mission to the brain,” according to baa Patent 2995653 issued 8 August, 961. God fring Figure 1 Puharich tooth radio receiver. Sicna!s are received by the gold filling, converted to electric signals in the audio frequency range by the rectifier crystal, enc imparted d:rect'y to the nerve Normally, the user. would carry a small transmitter in his pocket which would pick up sounds and transmit them to the tooth. But Puharich and co-inventor Joseph Lawrence noted in US Patent 3267931, issued 25 August, 1966, that the device “may, of course, be adapted for longer range transmission of radio frequency signals”. ; Although the device will receive radio signals directly, it works best with an amplifier. In the initial patent, this amplifier is relatively large, concealed in two false teeth next to the viable one with the implant (Figure 2). But by 1964, Figure 2 Signals can be transmitted from a radio to a ceceiver/amplifier hidden in two false teeth, and then passed on to an adjoining viable tooth as in Figure 1. Drawing from US Patent 2995 663 Puharich had modified the amplifier circuitry (US Patent 3156 787) to be mounted on the one tooth. The drawing (Figure 3) “is greatly exaggerated in size to facilitate’ description. ... The entire assembly . . advantageously is of wafer-thin construction, so as to be unobtrusively concealed with the cap. . It is contemplated that the various com- ponents of the system of the inven- tion may be further reduced, to micro-miniature proportions, through the use of so-called ‘thin film’ circuit fabrication techniques”. The amplification in ihe 1964 and 1966 patents is provided by a feed- back losp within fhe mouth, using either two different teeth (Figure 4 from the 1966 patent) or the tongue pressed against an exposed terminal Figure 3 By 1964, Puharich had improved the amplifier so that it could be mounted on the back of the tooth. In this drawing, the amplifier “is greatly . exaggerated in size to facilitate description” and would, in fact, be hidden under the tooth cap. The amplifier has a terminal on the left which must be touched with the tongue to complete the circuit. Drawing - fram US Patent 3 156 787 has the interesting side effect that | amplification only works when the tongue is pressed against the tooth, and thus the wearer can listen selec- tively and be undisturbed by radio signals at other times. In another version of the device, described in the 1966 patent. an electrode “about the size of a penny which is covered on its operative surface with a thin film of Mylar” could be pressed against the skin in “one of several identifiable areas of the head and neck” to stimulate facial nerves and produce the same ‘effect of hearing. The electrode is connected to a receiver similar to the one mounted in the tooth. The feedback circuit is completed by a connection to any point on the bods. For example, a quite small device held in the hand could be pressed against the face. Figure 4 An alternative amplifier encnemhpr hed FUPREIGaSe 2000/08 HigkiChA Ee act tt ot oT ROOODDUDSCORAT °" i { feedback coupling 3 1 me “i lee iy es
Uri Geller has worked with one group of scientists in Britain. On 21 and 22 June, 1974, he did a set of tests in the office of Professor John Hasted at Birkbeck College, London University. Also present were Professor David Bohm, Dr Ted Bastin (a friend of Andrija Puharich and a strong Geller supporter, who first introduced Uri to New Scientist in 1972), Brendon O’Regan (another Geller - proponent who wrote the first New Scientist report on Geller at SRI), theoretical physicist Dr Jack ‘Sarfatt, authors Arthur Koestler and Arthur C. Clarke, and several other people. In an unpublished paper, Hasted reports that Geller bent four keys and a 1 cm molybdenum disc 0-32 mm thick, affected a Geiger counter, and deflected a compass needle while at the same time producing a pulse on a magnetometer. Hasted concludes. that “these observations are consistent with the hypothesis that Mr Geller could by concentration produce occasional and rather un- predictable pulses of electromotive force”. As usual, they are also consistent with non-paranormal explanations. Indeed, the whole set of tests seems no . better controlled than the typical Geller show. In a telephone interview last month, Bohm told me that “unfortunately there were a lot of people in the room”, and that “as far as the key bending is concerned, we had much better conditions in his hotel room [in February 1974] where it was much quieter”. “J can’t assure that there were no tricks, and no one there could,” Bohm added. “Geller works in a very high state of excitement which communicates to the experi- menters, and that makes it hard to keep your mind on what is happening.” . According to the Hasted paper, Geller bent four brass Yale keys through angles of between 10° and 40°. “In Geller performs at Birkbeck all cases the bending took a time of the order of minutes | to complete,” Hasted noted. With that much time, any good magician could have bent the keys no matter how Closely the observers thought they were watching—with the chaos that must have reigned in the office, it should have been trivially easy. The bent disc was one of ten metal objects. “Mr Geller was not asked specifically to bend this specimen rather than others on the table”. As I noted in the box on page’ 180, SRI observed a similar event and even videotaped it, yet they rejected it because of the possibility of sleight- of-hand. ; The Geiger counter was connected to an amplifier and a chart recorder, and “during a total period of about 10 minutes eight pulses of duration of the order of a second were recorded. . . . However, the loudspeaker clicking, which was recorded on magnetic tape, did not always accelerate during the chart recorded pulses, nor did a second Geiger counter record click consistently”. To me, this is more consistent with Uri or one of his supporters bumping the chart recorder or fiddling with a knob on the amplifier than with any paranormal event. As for deflecting the compass needle, the best comment is that made in the SRI film of Geller: “we found later that these types of [compass needle] deflections could be produced by a small piece of metal, so smail in fact- that they could not be detected by a magnetometer”. Bohm stresses that to perform, Uri must be in the right state of mind. “My attitude is that whatever he requires, we must accept.” For example, “considering the sort of person Geller is, you couldn’t search him—it would put him off”. Bohm also noted that Geller “tends to get discouraged - by complicated set-ups. We had some set-ups that would have given stronger proof, but he was never in the right state of mind”. Microwaves have one important prop- erty: they are reflected by metal. Thus, microwaves are often used with wave- guides—long metal boxes which will carry the microwaves virtually without Joss around tortuous routes. The air. conditioning system probably used in SRI buildings would make an especially good waveguide—a transmitter placed anywhere in the air conditioning would transmit to all linked offices. Naturally, air conditioning ducts entering a shielded room have special baffles to screen out radio waves—but these are highly in- effective in the microwave range. On the other hand, microwave transmitting equipment can be miniaturised and draw very lttle power. A microwave transmitter for this sort of purpose aced be no bigger than a cigarette pack. And _even though Puharich in his patents talks about his tooth receiver working in the MHz range, it should work just as well in the GHz range. In the configura- tion where the tongue is part of the amplifier, Geller would even be able to turn it on and off at will, and thus not be affected by possible continuing trans- missions. ; How would such a radio be used? Perhaps the simplest way would be to use it to bug the room in which the target pictygo and Puthoff were so anxious to please Uri that they would not have quibbled with a request from Uri to describe the ved ForReledse picture out loud after they drew it— after all, as they say in their paper, the shielded room provided “acoustic isola- tion”. Another choice would involve Shipi Strang, Uri’s . inseparable companion. According to Puharich in his book Uri, Geller first met Shipi in 1967 when Uri was serving as a counsellor at a summer constant companions. It was Shipi who first convinced Uri to perform, according to Puharich. And Shipi went with Uri to the US. Although Targ and Puthoff do not mention it at all in their paper, Shipi was constantly under foot during the tests—at least sometimes accompany- ing the experimenters during actual experiments. Shipi could easily have signalled Uri in code with a transmitter -hidden in his pocket, for example. The SRI paper also notes that “ the picture was drawn and brought near the shielded room” which suggests that Shipi might have had other chances to see it as well. In the chaos of the computer room for tests 11 to 13, Shipi would hardly have been noticed while the picture was being _decided on and drawn. The SRI data shows some support for this sort of hypothesis—when the drawings were under the control of an outsider who would be less likely to accede to Geller’s requests and the presence of Shipi, Uri failed (Trials 5, 6, and 7). Even if this particular technique will not work, Puharich could surely find a simple way. Four other possibilities came to mind’‘in discussions with King: 1) Higher frequency microwaves would pass through the cracks between the steel plates and around thé door. 2PO0/O8/ FOS CHER AP IG POTB7 REGAONORDO SET wont provide x with both Shipi and Shipi’s sister Hannah, and Uri and Shipi soon became particularly good waveguide. With a transmitter anywhere in the room
sew Scienti& 17 October 1974 proved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDR96-00787RN00200090084-0 aia call in directly outside the shielded room, signals would penetrate in this way. 2) To get electricity into a shielded room (for lights) without any radio tran- sients, the normal procedure is to’ put a steel plate (usually the room wail) between two sides of a transformer. The 60 Hz magnetic field penetrates, whereas radio fields would not (this is supported by the fact that the copper screened room shows only a 3 dB loss to mag- netic fields at 60 Hz). Therefore, King suggests low frequency magnetic induc- tion transmission of data. Frequencies of 5-10 Hz should pass through double steel plates without unacceptable losses. The transmitter coil could be concealed in a briefcase left sitting next to the wall of the shielded room. Geller would have a coil of wire (for an aerial) under his belt or even hidden behind his teeth, and would stand close to the inner wall. During a 30 minutes test, large zmounts of information could be trans- mitted by simple code. 3) If SRI has not properly shielded the mains current supply to the room, it would be possible to send radio signals along the maius (just this system is used for internal radio systems in universities, Hospitals, and the like). This could be done with a transmitter smaller than a cigarette pack plugged into any outlet in the building. Geller ‘ would simply touch an electric wire inside the cage and his body would act as an aerial for the tooth radio. 4) There. is an intercom connecting the inside of the cage with the outside. This could be like a telephone and have a filter to cut out everything above 3 KUz. But if it does not, it too could be used to carry radio signals into the room with the transmitter simply clipped onto the communications wire. The preceding discussion applies only to the extremely difficult problem of the shielded room. The other successful test —guessing the die—can be much more easily solved by radio. Mr Hubert Caddy of the International Magic Studio, London, tells me that for several years it has been possible to buy a dice for about £30 which radios which face is up! It would not have been too difficult for Uri to have given SRI a normal die that looked like the radio die, let them mark the normal die as they wanted, and then simply mark the radio die in the same way and switch. Naturally, this all depends on the cooperation of Puharich in perpetrating fraud. Why would he do so? In his book Uni, Pubarich reports that extra-terres- trial powers called Hoova speak to him through a voice called Spectra, and have done so for longer than he has known Uri. Uri’s power, be says, comes from Hoova. To have any hope of having this report accepted, Puharich needs Uri’s success. If Uri came to Puharich and said “Andrija, I have known you for a year now and never once have I cheated you. Now they are asking me to do things I may not always be able to do, but if I fail no one will believe in Hoova. You are a great inventor—give me something, t while.” In Approved: tondekease 2000 ( often hearing the voice of Spectra, and ® happen—that Uri will i ri’s request came via Spectra, Puharich would be sure to obey. Thus, Puharich need not be a party to a wide- spread and continuing fraud to have helped Uri in this way. ~ . I have no proof that Uri did do his drawings in this way. But it fits the data at least as well as the Targ-Puthoff paranormal explanation. By Occam’s Razor it is only necessary to show that plausible normal explanations have not been excluded. To be sure, by what might be considered a reverse Occam’s Razor, it must also be shown that the route to the normal explanation is not more complex than simply accepting the paranormal. But Puharich takes the plausible virtually into the realm of science fiction. Conclusion The ultimate test of any scientific’ research, including the SRI work with Uri, is the ability of other scientists to independently reproduce the results. As Uri himself said on a Thames TV docu- mentary on 15 January: “When IT am doing enough experiments with scien- ~ tists, the disbelief will drop off.” But there is a real danger this will not consider the publication of the SRI paper to be all the scientific validation he needs. Uri has backed out on a written commitment to work with the New Scientist. He backed out on a verbal commitment to work with the Maimonides Medical Centre Division of Parapsychology and Paraphysics in Brooklyn, New York. (The Maimonides team is highly sympa- told me that Geller 185 magician James Randi to help set the experimental conditions.) And Mitchell “broke several engagements” at SRI and that he did not seem to want to do any more there even though “we've got funding for it if he will work under conditions accep- table to us.” Uri, it seems, will work only with scientists such as those at Birkbeck ‘who seem loth to set any conditions at all. Thus, it appears that the paper pub- lished this week may be the closest to hard scientific evidence we will get, and it must be unusually closely scrutinised. It seems clear that no matter how good they are as laser physicists, Russell Targ and Dr Hal Puthoff are no match for Uri Geller. There is too much evidence that they missed out cn impor- tant points. And their experiments fail the Occam’s Razor test—they did not exclude non-paranormal forms of infor- mation transfer that, based on Puharich’s background, must be considered highly possible. I do not question the integrity of the SRI researchers, But science is filled with examples of scientists—often in large numbers—seeing waat they want to see rather than what is there. Canals on Mars, polywater, and the supposed double mass peak of the A, particle are just three examples. Several magicians have told me that scientists are good audiences because they are so easily fooled. My investigations of the Geller phenomenon support this. The SRI paper simply does not stand up against the mass of circumstantial evidence that Uri Geller is simply a good magician.
Approved For Release2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787RQ00200090024-7 SG1A PARTICIPANTS Trp Bastin, Cambridge Language Researc! Cambridge, England C. T. K. Curt, Madras Christian College Madras, India O. Costa DE BEAUREGARD, Institut Henri P Paris, France AL NFERENCE GeraLp T'etnzerc, Columbia University New York, U.S.A. V. A, Firsorr, Royal Astronomical Society London, England Switzerland _1974 Haroip Puruorr, Stanford Research Instite Menlo Park, California, U.S.A. Ur tmur Scumwr, The Institute for _Parapsychology - Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A, Russr.y Tare, Stanford Research Institute Menlo Park, California, U:5.A. Evan Harris WALKER, Ballistic Research Laboratories Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, J. H. M. Wuireman, University of Cape Te Cape Town, South Africa [YSICS LOGY OBSERVERS Artiur Koster, London, England Emo Servapio, Rome, Italy Curarirs Panati, New York, U.S.A. PARAPSYCHOLOGY FOUNDATION, ING. Ereen Coty—President ALLAN Ancorr—Chairman Domestic and International Programs PARAPSYCHOLOGY FOUNDATION, INC. Rorerr R. Cory—Administrative Secretary 29 West 57th Street, New York, N. Y. 10019 — #8 - Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090024-7