The Secret Life of Uri Geller Read online

  ‘We then conduct the experiments designed for him and have him examined by an array of NIH specialists. In this context, while we probably have to keep the regimen as un-threatening and un-painful as possible, it would be great value if we could obtain blood/ metabolic/ other indices both when he is “high” (performing well) and when he is in a normal state. If consistent traces lead to biochemical suggestions, the whole matter of both identification and enhancement in others (drug-wise for example) might be short-circuited. All of us experience in less dramatic ways “on” and “off” states with minor cycles being measured in hours or days and major ones measured sometimes in years. When we are “on” we “click”, feel fit and on top of things and we are perceived by others as being effective, dynamic magnetic etc. It seems reasonable to assume that similar or analogous cycles are operative in the “psi” arena and that (as with us) the underlying causes are physical/chemical as well as environmental/ psychological.’

  Another document sets out some of the reasons the CIA wanted to get its hands directly on the Israeli prodigy. ‘It strikes me that what is of interest to CIA is not whether Geller’s perceptions are sensory or extrasensory but rather whether his capabilities are exploitable by CIA (not necessarily utilizing Geller personally: possibly others could be trained to do what he does),’ it says. ‘And indeed someone who could reproduce blueprints locked in safes without looking at the blueprints, or someone who could distinguish from a distance decoys from real missiles, would be an undoubted asset … SRI’s experiments with Geller to date have dealt exclusively with behavioural tasks and not at all with examination of Geller himself (other than a cursory EEG examination which apparently revealed nothing abnormal) and future activities with him could deal with an examination of his perceptual abilities to learn whether e.g., his vision or hearing extends beyond normal human limits.’

  What we learn from the first of these typewritten documents (CIA-RDP96-00787B000400070025-6 for anyone keen to check it and others on the subject out personally) is nothing short of incredible. The spooks taking Uri Geller seriously in the early 1970s were not just the mavericks portrayed in the entertaining 2009 film starring George Clooney, The Men Who Stare At Goats, which was based very loosely on the events around (but not including) Uri Geller. They were real, memo-writing, career CIA spymasters. And so anxious were they to enlist Uri’s powers that they plotted, if necessary, to pose as members of the US government’s medical bureaucracy and appeal to his better nature, citing ‘the potentialities for its use in the wrong hands and against the interests of humanity as a whole.’ The impression can hardly be avoided that, after his testing at SRI, Geller’s powers were a given; to those in the know, they were not even up for discussion.

  So what was the nature and substance of William Casey’s call that morning in 1981? Well, it was nothing particularly heavy. In fact, it was curiously low key and informal – and brief. We have only Uri’s story to rely on, but, as will emerge in due course, we have numerous accounts from other highly plausible sources – plus documents such as the ones above – to suggest that what Uri has said is most likely true and accurate. (He has also told the same story consistently to the author for the past 20 years. Its implications only became clearer in 2013, when the Oscar-winning BBC TV director Vikram Jayanti made his acclaimed 90-minute documentary The Secret Life of Uri Geller. It majored on detailed new revelations about Uri’s espionage past, unearthed in interviews with witnesses who were only able to come forward with the passing of the years and the release of previously secret documents and programmes.)

  But back to that call. The ringing phone was picked up by Uri’s brother-in-law, Shipi. ‘Hello,’ Casey said. ‘Am I speaking to Mr Uri Geller?’ Casey, with Russians clearly on his mind, made the common mistake of pronouncing the Hebrew name ‘Uri’ as the quite different Russian name, ‘Yuri’. Shipi, in his lugubrious way, asked to whom he was speaking; callers to the Geller property were self-selecting to some extent as the number wasn’t listed. ‘This is William Casey, Director, Central Intelligence Agency, calling from Langley, Virginia.’

  ‘Uri,’ called Shipi. ‘It’s the Director of the CIA.’ He spoke in English rather than the Hebrew he would normally use with his brother-in-law. It was probable that Casey could tell that Shipi was smiling as he said this. Team Geller had been around spooks long enough to know that the Director of the CIA wouldn’t normally make his own calls. It had also been at least a couple of years since Uri had been involved in any intelligence work. What could this be about? Uri took the call anyway. ‘Hello, this is Uri Geller,’ he said, his voice disarmingly lighter than Shipi’s, making him sound a little younger. Casey again politely introduced himself, explained that he was new in post and was acquainting himself with a few ongoing matters of interest.

  ‘Sir, I don’t like to sound rude or sceptical,’ Uri said, ‘but could you please tell me some more about what you know about me. I am sure you are who you say you are, but you will excuse me if I say you could be anybody, You will understand that I have to be a little bit careful.’ Casey was remarkably patient for an older man who was used to people jumping at his command, especially since he had been in his elevated new role. But he gave a few details about the programme at SRI almost a decade earlier, naming the key scientists involved, Dr Hal Puthoff, a laser physicist, and Russell Targ, a specialist in plasma physics, as well as several lesser-known researchers. Uri was soon convinced. ‘OK, so how may I help you, Mr Casey?’

  It turned out that the Director was merely curious to do a little ESP test personally. ‘Mr Geller,’ he said. ‘I’m sitting at my desk at CIA. Can you tell me what I’m holding in my hand right now?’ Uri thought about this for a minute or so, as he recalls, although he concedes that it may not have been that long – a minute is a very long silence in a phone call, especially one with a complete stranger who happens to be one of the most important people in the USA. Eventually, he said, ‘I can’t be sure, but my feeling is that it’s a dagger with a white, possibly ivory, handle.’ It was Casey’s turn to be silent now. ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ he finally said, thanked Uri for his time and was not heard from – directly – again.

  * * *

  The reasons for William Casey’s 1981 call to Uri Geller can never be known. He died six years later and so far as we know, never confided in anyone. Maybe it was just a bit of curiosity on his part during an idle moment at work; maybe he did it because he could; maybe simply because he had the power in his new job to call up Uri Geller on a whim. Nonetheless, it seems no small thing for the head of the world’s leading intelligence agency to have taken time out to satisfy such a whim if such it was, right in the middle of an escalating Cold War. One can only speculate beyond the bald facts. There was no obvious, immediate consequence so far as anyone in a position to say so knows.

  The high point of the extraordinary spy story around Uri had, after all been concentrated on that key early 1970s’ period. So let us now spool back to that time, through the eyes of several of the key people involved, especially the ones who first came to light in Vikram Jayanti’s documentary. In later chapters, we will add many layers of detail to the story, and look at the equally fascinating build-up to Uri Geller’s American adventures, as well as the many sequels.

  The most important new voice to emerge publicly – the biggest piece by far in the jigsaw one has to assemble to get a true picture of Uri Geller’s hidden, below-the-line life as a spy – is that of one Kit Green. Green was the CIA contract monitor who oversaw the research into Uri and other psychics who were examined – albeit at arm’s length, via Puthoff and Targ at SRI – in the spy establishment’s quest to explore unorthodox methods of countering the perceived threat of the Soviet Union.

  Chief amongst these methods was ‘remote viewing’ – using psychics with ESP to ‘observe’ Soviet military installations from thousands of kilometres away. It was understood that the Soviets were experimenting with the same potential method of espionage, and indee
d were far more advanced with it. Kit Green, who was a PhD medical scientist in his early 30s at the time, was identified by name only in the Jayanti documentary; his current role and location were not specified. But when approached for this book, Green the spymaster decided to come in still further from the cold.

  Kit Green is truly the man who knows. At the CIA, where he gave the green light to the American psychic ‘remote-viewing’ programme, that started with Uri Geller and became a 20-year research project called ‘Stargate’, this remarkably multi-faceted scientist was the Agency’s Branch Chief for Life Science in the Office of Scientific Intelligence. By the early 1980s, he was the Senior Division Analyst and Deputy Division Director, as well as being Assistant National Intelligence Officer for Science and Technology. After leaving the CIA, he became Chief Technology Officer for General Motors in Detroit – and then qualified as a medical doctor!

  Today, aged 73, Dr Christopher C. Green, to give him his full name, is a Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Psychiatry at Detroit Medical Center and Assistant Dean at Wayne State School of Medicine, the largest medical school in the USA. In 2011, he addressed the Royal Society in London, the world’s oldest scientific fellowship, at a conference on ‘Applications of Neuroscience for Policy and Threat Assessment,’ with particular reference to the enhancement, manipulation or degradation of human performance. His actual address was entitled, Neuroscience Applications for Militaries, Intelligence and Law Enforcement. It argued that medical scientists must remain aware that, with the explosion of discoveries in the area of neurosciences, will come individuals, political entities and countries, all seeking to exploit those findings for their own, nefarious purposes.

  Curiously, perhaps, since Kit Green began to figure more and more in Uri’s strange double life in the USA in the 1970s, both before and after Uri came to learn that Green was a CIA official, Green was never known to Geller by his real name. Until recently, to Uri, he was ‘Rick’, his CIA contact. And to this day, the two have never met.

  This, then, is how Kit Green remembers first hearing of Uri in 1972.

  ‘One afternoon, I got a telephone call at my desk, in the headquarters building. And the phone call initially was on what we called “the red line”, a classified line. It was an intelligence agency of a very powerful ally of the United States of America, and they were troubled because a member of their military, an enlisted man, was doing things for them that they couldn’t understand that appeared to have an electromagnetic aspect. He was capable of altering highly sophisticated electronics, which included imaging electronics, at will. And they didn’t know how he was doing it. The question was simply, “Can you help us?” My response initially was, “Of course, I’ll be glad to try.” I was very interested as an electrophysiologist and neurophysiologist, not as a physician initially. And that was what I was initially asked about. The word “psychic” didn’t appear for a long time with Geller.’

  It was some months before Uri, for he it was who was the subject of the phone call, finally made it into Puthoff and Targ’s safe hands at SRI, the CIA having seen to it that what was being done did not look overtly as if it was in any way a CIA project. But when the tests on Geller were underway, Green’s phone was soon ringing again. ‘Within a very short period of time, a week or ten days, I had a call at headquarters. It was the chief scientist at the Stanford Research Institute and he was talking about other aspects of Uri Geller’s capabilities. I of course said, “Well, what other kinds of things are you talking about?” And without much of a pause the scientist said, “Well, he says he can see things at a distance.” And I said, “No, he can’t.” And they said, “Yes, he can – and he’s right here.” So I said, “Hi, Uri. Well what can you see?”

  Hal Puthoff explains today that Uri was kept in the dark about who was on the phone, because the pretence had to be maintained that the Virginia-based CIA was not involved in any way with the laboratory testing in distant California. As we saw in the CIA document above, the Agency was nervous not only about the news leaking prematurely that they were working, albeit through a third party, with psychics, but that Uri would be upset if he thought he was working for the CIA. They were not to know that working in espionage had been his dream since he was a boy, and that he would have seen coming to America to work for the CIA after his connections with Mossad back home (of which more later) was akin to being promoted to a big league from a lower division. So Uri was simply told on the call with Green that he was ‘a scientific colleague on the East Coast’ who was curious about his remote-viewing capability.

  Physicist Hal Puthoff, one of the first scientists to test Geller at Stanford Research Institute, California.

  ‘So,’ continues Dr Green, ‘I turned and picked up a book, a collection of medical illustrations of the nervous system, and I opened it up to a page and I just stared at it. And Uri said, “Oh, I’m seeing something kind of strange.” Uri, Puthoff recalls, scribbled something and crumpled it up, did the same again, and finally said, “Well, I don’t know what to think. It looks like I have made a drawing of a pan of scrambled eggs. Yet I have the word ‘architecture’ coming in strong.”’

  What astonished Green – to the extent that he went on to get authorization for the $20m programme that would become ‘Stargate’ – was that the illustration on the page he had ‘shown’ Uri was a cross-section of the human brain. ‘But what caught my attention was that I had written across the top of his drawing the words “architecture of a viral infection”. I had been looking at the biological warfare effect on the nervous system of a threat virus.

  ‘They then did tremendous analysis to see if there was any chance that there were any cues over the telephone lines and so on,’ Puthoff says today. ‘But that was a genuine result. There are others like that that we did that we’ve never published. But it certainly convinced us that he has ability.’

  Fascinated by the impromptu experiment in the office, Kit Green, the archetype of the sceptical scientist (sceptical in the sense of inquiring, not merely dogmatic) resolved to redo it – unannounced and from home – at the weekend. Certain things were still troubling him about the approach from SRI. Unlikely as it was, perhaps he had been fooled; the folks at SRI had, after all initiated the test by calling him. What if it had been the other way round?

  ‘So I did an experiment in which I established myself and some documentary materials, including some numbers written on paper by a colleague and sealed in an envelope and then in another,’ Dr Green relates. ‘And I arranged to do this experiment in my home as an unclassified project with no forewarning to him. Although it was the weekend, the team at SRI happened to be there when I called, and I asked if Uri could describe the unspecified item. I had put the double envelope up on a music stand in my den.

  ‘Two things occurred along with him reading the numbers correctly, as I established when I broke the seals and opened the envelopes. While he was “viewing” them, I moved the documents from one position to another inside the envelopes; I went over and lifted the outer envelope while I was on the phone and turned it through 180 degrees because it was upside down. And he became very upset while I was doing it. Actually, he started to scream and asked, “What happened? What did you just do? I’m getting nauseous, I want to vomit.” When I explained, he said, “Please don’t do that again because I was reading when you rotated it.” But then after that he said something else had happened and wanted to know if I was all right.

  ‘I said, “Slow down. I’m sitting upstairs in my den at my home, in northern Virginia, it’s a beautiful day, my family’s downstairs, what are you talking about? He said, “OK, Rick. For reasons I can’t explain, something happens and I get suffused with an incredible amount of information, which in some cases is very disturbing, and I just now received a strange picture and event. I had a picture of glass shards fracturing and going through a body and pain as it went through, and in the background I saw a square-headed dog that was completely white with blood coming down from the do
g’s neck onto the floor, which was a sea of green. I didn’t know what that meant and I was worried because it was while we were having our conversation.”

  ‘About an hour later, we finished and I went downstairs into our family room, which we’d moved all the furniture out of a few hours before to have a new green carpet laid down. And my family had put in the room on the new carpet a tall pole lamp with a huge glass shade and it had shattered all over the carpet. I found the family and asked what happened.

  ‘They said that about an hour ago, Charles, our snow-white English bulldog – with a square head – had run into the room, got tangled in the cable and pulled the lamp over. And my mother the week before had macraméd a huge, wide, bright-red collar to go around the bulldog’s neck. And it had been the collar that twisted round the cable. Now when I’ve reported this in the past,’ says Dr Green, ‘people have said, “So what. It’s an anecdote”. And I say, “Sure it’s an anecdote, an uncontrolled experiment, but it happened to me.” And it was too far away in the house for me to have heard the crash.’

  Did such incidents not severely challenge the rationality of a young scientist, already in a plum position in the CIA and clearly destined to go places? ‘I did find it disturbing intellectually because there was no way I could explain it from a materialistic perspective,’ Green says. ‘What we now know, many years later, is that there is a theoretical framework, which is quantum entanglement, which is the way in which brains communicate internally and externally. So at the time, I found it scientifically intriguing, but not a counterintelligence issue, because I know darned well I was not being spied on in my home, or that they were looking into my home with cameras or something. Because they didn’t know I was going to be having this conversation until a minute or two before when I picked up the phone and called.’