How Uri Geller stunned the CIA with his psychic abilities

Uri Geller, the man famous for bending spoons with his mind, was tested by the CIA to assess his psychic abilities, newly published documents have revealed.

In a series of declassified documents released on Wednesday, the agency stated it brought Geller to the US Stanford Research Institute in August, 1973, to test his “clairvoyant” or “telepathic” abilities.

The experiments were part of the controversial Stargate programme, which was aimed at finding out whether humans could use psychic powers as a weapon, The Daily Mail reported.

The CIA writes in the first experiment that they would randomly select a word from a large college dictionary and select the first word which could be reasonably drawn. The first such word was ‘fuse’ and the object drawn was a firecracker (CIA drawing above). Geller’s almost immediate response was that he saw ‘a cylinder with noise coming out of it.

According to the documents released, Geller was placed in a sealed, monitored room where his abilities were tested.

As part of the experiment, random words were chosen at random from a dictionary, drawn and taped to the wall outside Geller’s room, where he could not see them.

In another experiment, the word selected was ‘bunch’ and the target was a bunch of grapes. Gellery correctly drew a bunch of grapes.

He was then asked to describe what had been sketched via intercom.

In one test, the word fuse was used and a scientist drew a firecracker.

According to the CIA documents: “His almost immediate response was that he saw a ‘cylinder with noise coming out of it’.”

“His drawing to correspond with it was a drum, along with a number of cylindrical-looking objects.”

The second word was “bunch”, for which a bunch of grapes were drawn.

“Geller’s immediate response was that he saw ‘drops of water coming out of the picture’,” the CIA report reads.

“He then talked about ‘purple circles’.”

“Finally, he said that he was quite sure that he had the picture. His drawing was indeed a bunch of grapes.”

“Both the target picture and Geller’s rendition had 24 grapes in the bunch,” the CIA report continued.

Several experiments were run over the course of a week. And throughout this time, the experiments were moved to different rooms, so a ‘long-distance’ telepathy study could be conducted.

In the test, Geller was locked in a room and a drawing of the devil with a trident was placed in an office half a mile away.

Geller drew images including a trident, the Ten Commandments, an apple with a worm in it, and snake.

“The inability on Geller’s part to draw the devil may be culturally induced. Geller did draw the trident from the target picture but he did not draw the man holding it,” the CIA concluded.

The CIA report stated Geller would sometimes only partially draw the correct picture, leading scientists to believe he did not “copy lines from the target picture, but rather he does perform some mental processing on them before drawing them himself”.

He did fail some tests, and the CIA concluded that he was better when there were “no sceptical observers present”, The Telegraph reported.

However, Geller’s handlers concluded: “As a result of Geller’s success in this experimental period, we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner.”

Speaking from his home in Israel, Geller told The Telegraph the revelations represented the “tip of the iceberg” of what he had been asked to do by the CIA, Mossad and other intelligence agencies.

In 2013 Uri Geller lifted the lid on his secret past as a spy, and told how his spoon-bending antics were just a cover.

In a BBC documentary, the TV magician revealed details of his years as an operative for both the CIA and Israel’s Mossad agency during the Cold War.

“I’m mind-blown they’ve released this because there are still remote viewing programmes active, many intelligence agencies use them.”

“I did many things for the CIA. They wanted me to stand outside the Russian Embassy in Mexico, and erase floppy disks being flown out by Russian agents.”

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