CIA Data Dumpster Diving Project Stargate Uri Geller

Recently, the CIA got ahead of schedule and completed an initial upload of over 13 million documents spread over 800,000 files. Among those files is Project Stargate, a series of studies surrounding psychic phenomena conducted by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and later transferred to the CIA.

Of the many people who participated in Stargate, Uri Geller is arguably the most famous. Known as the “Israeli Wonder,” Uri Geller is a self-proclaimed psychic capable of utilizing mental energy alone to move or distort objects. He is most famous for bending metal objects including keys and spoons but is allegedly able to perform forms of telepathy and telekinesis. His participation in Stargate serves to underline the government’s interest in the phenomenon and the gravity with which they approached such studies in the past.

Background

Given the decades long career of Geller that stretches to the present day (He predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidency back in Sept 2016), a true background of this man would be (is) a feature length biography. Instead, this background is intended to provide enough context to those who aren’t familiar with Geller so that we can understand why the DIA/CIA was so interested in testing him.

According to an ARTICLE on Daily Mail by Johnathan Margolis covering the serialization of Uri Geller’s Biography, a three year old Uri had his psychic powers activated after an encounter with an Unidentified Flying Object in Israel. It was after this experience that Uri Geller claims he began to experience strange occurrences, like spoons bending and watches behaving oddly, among other things.

He would perform these feats of mental “magic” from then on, sometimes with great apparent success and other times without. While there is controversy surrounding the truth of his purported “psychic” abilities, there can be no doubt that during the summer of 1973, for eight days, Geller participated in a series of experiments in support of Project Star Gate. It would later be revealed that he was also hosted at a number of other agencies, including NASA.

Against the backdrop of the Cold War agencies were interested in anything that might provide leverage or advantage for the US, especially since it was well known that the USSR was robustly investigating such phenomena themselves. There was great excitement in the possibilities that this field of research could unlock for the country to achieve understanding and mastery first. As Parapsychology was a valid field of research in those days, file NSA-RDP96X00790R000100030042-9 offers a perspective from some of the scientific community of the day:

The document continues on to theorize how, with proper training, the weaponization of such abilities could be achieved. Based on the uploaded documents, it is evident that various communities had a deep-seated interest in exploring this field in depth.

John Fuller on “The Geller Effect”

In a paper concerning “The Geller Effect,” writer John G. Fuller acquired research studies from participating universities and institutions involved with the Geller experiments. This now widely available document is important in that it references not only the experiments and findings of these events, but the opinions of the professionals who conducted the tests.

This sounds pretty sensational, granted. But more sensational still were the conclusions drawn as a result. J.G. Taylor, a professor of mathematics at King’s College felt that the Geller effect was not only real but that it “presents a crucial challenge to modern science and could even destroy the latter…”. Doctors Bohm and Hasted of Birkbeck College took it further, saying:

Interesting to note, this document has a hand written footnote that suggests looking at the “Iceland Papers” to examine Dr. Hasted’s continued observations of Geller under more carefully controlled experiments.

Fuller goes on to recall the invitation Geller received by Reader’s Digest to come into the New York office and show his ability to the staff. According to Fuller, Geller not only bent a key held by one of the staff members, but he also bent several other keys simultaneously without ever touching them, including the key of one of the skeptical editors.

Experiments at SRI (Stanford Research Institute)

Uri Geller was brought to SRI under Project Stargate in an attempt to verify or disprove his psychic abilities. Over the course of eight days the researchers conducted experimental drawing tests where Geller was isolated from the person drawing the target picture in a shielded room or by distance. Their method involved randomly selecting words from the dictionary that could reasonably be drawn. The scientists went to great lengths to ensure that the conditions were secure by putting Geller in an electronically sealed room and only interacting with him when they were ready for him to perform.

Criticism

There are no shortage of believers and critics when it comes to Uri Geller. His most famous and outspoken public rival, James Randi even wrote a book titled “The Magic of Uri Geller,” where he attempts to discredit the experiments conducted at SRI as flawed and their success as a result of Geller’s trickery. File CIA-RDP96-00787R000500240021-0 contains a response paper written by Hal Puthoff, refuting each point made by Randi.

As in every controversy, it is difficult to ascertain who may be right or wrong. In presenting the above image I am not trying to sway opinion either way but only to provide counterpoint to the allegations leveled by Randi’s book.

Conclusion

Uri Geller has been in the public arena for decades predicting future events, bending spoons and reading minds. While it is not clear whether or not he is in fact a true psychic, it is exceedingly clear that government agencies were at the very least curious about his supposed abilities.

In a recent ARTICLE since the upload occurred, Uri revealed that his involvement went beyond the drawing experiments at SRI and included testing at the Naval Surface Warfare Centre, a nuclear laboratory and at NASA’s Goodard Space Laboratory. Of course in the same article he suggests that he was then used by the Americans “to successfully use his telepathic skills to force the Russians to sign the nuclear arms reduction treaty.” In addition, he even claims he flooded then President Jimmy Carter’s mind with telepathic energy, persuading the commander-in-chief to put millions more into psychic research.

My digital dumpster diving has recovered document after document showing belief in these phenomena on the part of government agencies. Perhaps their interest existed only in a utilitarian fashion, or perhaps they were simply that interested in the subject because their Cold War rivals were also exhibiting interest in Psychoenergetics.

For me, the most important point here is that, for a time, the superpowers of the world were intensely interested in consciousness and Parapsychology. That so many documents thus far have shown positive results for the existence of this phenomena only bothers me because as a society we seem to have since turned our backs on this field. My humble opinion is that this research was abandoned (publicly) because they learned that it would be impossible or impractical to weaponize while justifying the costs associated with the programs.

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