The Secret Life of Uri Geller Page 9

  It may all sound like an indeterminate mixture of a maverick, anonymous CIA field agent’s fantasy mixed with Uri Geller’s famous imaginative capacity, which had been both his making and breaking since he was a child. Yet when, on 20 January 1977, Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as the 39th President of the United States, Uri Geller was right there, at the White House. Rosalynn Carter apparently said, ‘Jimmy, this is Uri Geller, you remember, the young Israeli I told you so much about.’ Uri beamed his psychic message at the president, while shaking his hand, in his nervousness, harder than he had meant to. The president, Uri says, winced slightly and asked, ‘Are you going to solve the energy crisis for us?’ Uri says he cannot remember what he answered to this unexpected question.

  Carter’s openness to the United States investigating the potential uses of psychic research was borne out seven years later, by a report in the New York Times, which claimed that in 1977, that he had ordered a high-level review of psychic research in the USSR, and called Uri Geller in for a half-hour meeting in the White House to discuss what the Americans could do in response. Uri, again, prefers not to confirm the Times report. But it was Carter, who, in what must have been an unguarded moment, became the highest-level personality ever to confirm that the psychic programme had been intensified.

  When a Soviet aircraft wend down in Zaire, Hal Puthoff, one of the lead SRI scientists who had worked with Uri back in 1972, said, ‘We wanted to get it. And, of course, the Russians wanted to get it back. Since it went into the jungle canopy, they couldn’t find it by satellite. So, in fact, Stan Turner, who was Director of CIA, who, of course, knew about our programme, said, “Okay! When in doubt, who are you going to call? Remote viewers. Find this thing for me.”’ Puthoff and Targ activated a psychic called Joseph McMoneagle, who closed his eyes, said, ‘I see a river. I see a village. There are some mountains. The plane crashed just to the left of the river.’ He then marked the crash site on a map. The CIA successfully sent a team to the spot and found the Russian aeroplane before the Soviets could get near it.

  ‘We were told that that would never see the light of day,’ Puthoff says, ‘But as it turns out, after Carter got out of office, he happened to be giving a speech in Georgia and some aggressive student said, “Did anything happen that was really off-the-wall when you were president, or something that would really be interesting?” Carter said “Oh yes, there was a Soviet plane went down in Zaire and they got psychics to find it for us.” So that’s the only reason that ever came out.’

  Meanwhile, Uri and Shipi’s sojourn in Mexico, where they were enjoying the presidential lifestyle, came to an abrupt halt. Uri’s social progress around the capital with Muncy set tongues wagging, not just among the Mexican elite, but as far away as in London’s Fleet Street, where in February 1978, the Daily Express gossip column ran a tiny piece headlined, ‘Bending the rules for Uri’. It suggested that observers in Mexico City were speculating that Uri’s ‘warm friendship’ with the president’s wife was thought to be on the point of precipitating a scandal, and talked of the pair ‘behaving intimately’ at a shared holiday in Cancun.

  Uri swiftly received a call from the president’s son advising him to leave Mexico for good on the next flight – advice that he and Shipi took. They were late for the first flight out of the country, but had an ace up their sleeve. After they’d waved their special, free first-class Aeromexico passes at the official manning the check-in desk, the aircraft, which was about to depart, was held at the gate for them. Being able to board an aircraft that was still on the ground, even if it was on the point of departure, was one of the privileges granted to the lucky few who carried the card.

  Back in New York for a spell in 1977, Uri had his talents called upon by his new friend, Charlie Koczka, for an unofficial law-enforcement mission. From the summer of 1976 onwards, New York had been terrorized by a serial killer who had murdered six victims and wounded seven more with a .44 calibre revolver. Jack the Ripper- style, he would leave letters promising further killings, signing himself in one as ‘The Son of Sam’.

  ‘The authorities were getting nowhere,’ Koczka says, ‘and although this was not a US customs matter, I felt that I should approach Uri and ask if he could, through me, assist the New York City Police Department. I knew this police detective and Uri has the ability he has. So I talked to Uri, and he said in order to help he wanted something that belonged to the killer. He actually said if he could at least be exposed to one of the famous letters written by the criminal, it would help him.

  ‘So the detective asked if this letter could be made available and the authorities said OK. Uri didn’t want to read the contents. He just wanted to get what I would call vibrations from a personal item belonging to the killer. But while we were at the police station, some lieutenant said, “No! We are not going to let this happen.” which was frustrating. The reason for this was that some other person who was ‘psychic’ had appeared in a photo, which later appeared in an exposé newspaper and the police department said they didn’t want to be openly associated with psychics because they were scared they would get a bad name.

  ‘So although they didn’t know anything about Geller, they turned him down outright. So as plan B, Uri asked if we could go to some of the crime scenes where the killings occurred. We went in my private car to Forest Hills, and then another area on the way to JFK, between Brooklyn and Queens. Uri walked through these parks where the bodies had been found and got what I would say was a reaction, a vibration and he said, “Charlie, do you have a map of New York City?”’

  Koczka had a Mobil gas station map in the car, which he gave to Geller on Thursday, 3 August. ‘Uri called me on the Sunday morning,’ Koczka continues, and said, “I think the person who is responsible for these killings lives not in the five boroughs, but adjoining them in Yonkers.” So I called the detective and told him that for what it’s worth, this is what he has told me.’ On Wednesday, 10 August, David Berkowitz, now serving life for the Son of Sam murders, was arrested outside his apartment on Pine Street in Yonkers, NY.

  Reflecting on the incident decades later, Charlie Koczka, acknowledged that it’s hardly conclusive proof of anything, yet impressive at the same time. ‘In law enforcement,’ he explained, ‘your exposure is mostly to people who basically don’t obey the law. So you have a tendency to be hypercritical, almost cynical, and you fight this because you don’t want to think ill of your fellow man because most people are honest. But law enforcement people just don’t run into them. So when you hear of a psychic or something like that, it’s almost normal not to believe the individual. You know … it’s like … the hand is quicker than the eye. But I can tell you I believe Uri Geller has these powers. I know he doesn’t use them always, because he invited me once to a racetrack and he wouldn’t give me the name of the horse that would win. He has said many times that he believes this is a gift and a gift you can lose if you don’t use it properly, so I have never seen him abuse his power. No! Uri Geller, I believe, is the real McCoy.’

  Espionage-wise, things were to quieten down a little in the following years, but didn’t stop entirely. At one point, Uri was asked by two counter-espionage agents in the FBI to go to a party out on Long Island where some Soviet diplomats were expected to be. His mission in this case was to try to use telepathy to beam the thought of defection into the mind of one of them. He does not know if the mission worked.

  So, when William Casey, newly installed as director of the CIA made his out-of-the-blue call to Uri in Connecticut in 1981, as detailed in Chapter 1, it was the first Geller had heard in many years from the US intelligence community, although he had done work for other Western intelligence services during this period. But Uri’s career has been characterized by constant comebacks, and in 1987, he was in action once more. Indeed, 1987 was the zenith of his years of what might be called political influence. In February of that year, Uri was to be found in Geneva at a reception hosted by the US Mission to the arms negotiations with the Soviets. A for
tnight later, he was briefing a gathering of senior senators and congressmen, along with 40 Capitol staffers, Defense Department and Pentagon aides in a special room in the Capitol Building, which had been sealed to guard against possible Soviet eavesdropping.

  Uri had not been at the Geneva reception as the cabaret (although he did ‘perform’ for the assembled company). He had been invited by Senator Claiborne Pell, then the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in the hope that he could use telepathy to influence the Soviet negotiating team, especially its head, Yuli Vorontsov, into making some serious concessions to the West, preferably, as a first step, reducing Russian missiles in Europe.

  Pell had been introduced to Geller, who now lived in Britain, by Princess Michael of Kent, who is a good friend of Uri’s, as is her husband. So impressed was Pell, that he arranged a three-way meeting in London’s Cavendish Hotel with Geller, himself and Max Kampelman, the chief US negotiator. The day after the reception, according to a full-page report in Newsweek, the Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, made an unexpected new offer – the removal within five years of all medium-range nuclear missiles based in Europe. Geller was quoted as saying he was convinced Vorontsov had called Gorbachev straight after the reception, having received his ESP message.

  Photograph taken secretly of Uri’s meeting in London with Ambassador Max Kampelman, who led arms talks with the Soviet Union.

  Even with the Newsweek article to back it up, it sounded like the kind of story that would fall apart under serious investigation. Indeed, they got a few things wrong, according to Uri. He says the key meeting with Kampelman took place not at the hotel, but at an office in London, and that Kampelman requested – as Pell had done previously – that Uri beam thoughts about signing the treaty into Vorontsov’s mind. Uri says he was so convinced that people would disbelieve this whole story that he stationed a photographer across the road from the office to snap him arriving and shaking hands with Kampelman as he left.

  To check out this story further, before Pell died in 2009, the author visited the retired six-term senator at his simple, elegant home, overlooking the ocean in Newport, Rhode Island. In the room was a black-and-white picture of Pell with his friend, JFK, another with Lyndon B. Johnson, and another with the Queen. In a corner was a chair from the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969. On the coffee table was a letter from Bill Clinton, wishing his senior Democrat colleague well, and adding Hillary’s best wishes, too, to Nuala, Pell’s wife. Had JFK ever been in this house? ‘Oh, no … I mean not often. He might stop his boat out there and drop by, but not formally. No! Only at our home in Washington.’ So was this Uri Geller story really true?

  ‘Well, yes, actually,’ the senator replied. ‘I was interested in parapsychology, telepathy and life after death. I had no ability or experience in this area, but I believed in it, and I would love to have had the experience. So I thought it would be fun for Uri to bring his dog and pony show to some of the American and Russian delegates at a cocktail party. I was interested in seeing what impression Uri might be able to make on the Russians, and I think they were mystified. I’ll never forget the Russian ambassador, Vorontsov, later the Russian ambassador to Washington. Uri bent his spoon. Then he put the spoon into the ambassador’s hand, and it continued to move. Everybody saw that. It was a key moment for me.’ Whether Uri really influenced Vorontsov, Pell reasonably says he can’t know, and that it would be highly unlikely for Vorontsov to know, either.

  Uri was in his element. ‘Al Gore was there next to me, Anthony Lake the National Security Advisor, who later became the director of UNICEF was there. The Russians didn’t know who I was. I did a little chitchat, and then I got very close to Yuli Vorontsov. I actually stood behind him, and I did exactly what Senator Claiborne Pell and Max Kampelman asked me to do, to bombard him with the idea of signing the treaty. All I did is I looked at the back of his head and I constantly repeated in my mind, “Sign! Sign! Sign! Sign!” And they signed. Of course, I can’t take full credit that I did it. I don’t know why. But it worked.’

  Nuala Pell also recalled Vorontsov refusing to give Uri his watch. ‘What I remember was Uri putting the grass seeds in the palm of his hand and they grew. He did it in front of us all. We just couldn’t believe it. Everybody was floored. I truly believe in Uri, and I think everyone did. The Russians just looked stunned. They didn’t know whether to believe or not to believe. I know Claiborne’s colleagues in the Senate who were on that trip never got over that. They couldn’t believe that Claiborne got him there, and then he performed, and they were so impressed. It was the talk of the summit for some time. But Claiborne was very determined; he believed in Uri and was determined that other people should have the chance to see him too.’

  Left to right: Head of the US Foreign Relations Committee Senator Claiborne Pell, First Deputy Foreign Minister of the former Soviet Union Yuli M. Vorontsov, Ambassador Max Kampelman and Uri at the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty, Geneva.

  ‘I’d seen that kind of thing before,’ the senator explained, ‘and thought it might be a conjuror’s trick. I talked with that guy Randi once, and he said it was a trick, and he could do it too. [Randi was the Canadian magician who spent much of his career trying to debunk Geller.] There’s a great depth of feeling there against Uri, you know. It’s almost vicious. But Uri was far more impressive as a person. I think Uri is a very likeable, decent sort. I never felt he was at all dubious. I respect him. I think he has good ideas, and is genuine. I also remember how unless he was in full vigour, he couldn’t make things happen, which I found most interesting.’ Senator Pell remained friendly with Uri into very old age, and visited him in England. Uri remembers that he declined to accept a watch he wanted to give the senator on the grounds that the gift would fall foul of US corruption rules.

  It was Pell who also arranged the meeting at the Capitol, for which the official agenda, for the benefit of any Soviet spies or their American contacts, was to talk about the plight of Soviet Jews. The meeting was held in the Capitol’s only SCIF – a Superior Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility – up in the rotunda of the building. Pell’s senior aide, Scott Jones, a decorated Navy pilot, had arranged the bug-proof setting at Pell’s suggestion. Colonel John Alexander, who had been invited by the Commanding General of Intelligence in the Security Command, was sitting in the front row listening and watching.

  ‘He [Geller] talked about the stuff the Soviets were doing psychically,’ Alexander recalls, ‘but everyone wanted him to bend something. There wasn’t a spoon around, so someone went outside and found one in the guard’s coffee cup. I was watching very closely. I had been trained by magicians by now, and I had watched Randi do it frame by frame and I could catch him at it. Uri took the spoon, stroked it lightly, and the thing bent up quite noticeably. He put it down on the top of this chair and he continued talking, and I watched this spoon continue to bend until it fell off the chair. There was never a time when Uri could have applied force. And even if the touch were strong, it would have bent down not bent upwards.’ Although Pell says he did not think the meeting was a huge success, at least one important politician there did. Dante Fascell, Member of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, rushed directly to the library to read up on Geller. Col Alexander managed successfully to leave the Capitol with the bent spoon in his pocket. He still has it.

  ‘I saw Uri do that several more times after that,’ John Alexander added. I introduced him to Steven Seagal, and we did it there in Seagal’s house, the inner sanctum of his bedroom, with all these old ancient Tibetan tapestries on the wall. [Seagal is the macho actor who has been described by the Dalai Lama as ‘a sacred vessel’.] I don’t think Steven has any doubt. His belief system is that these things can happen, although it goes without saying that this is not totally unique to Uri Geller.’

  So, under Jimmy Carter, and with perhaps a record number of influential government figures receptive to the paranormal in no small
part thanks to Uri’s pervasive influence, serious discussion of unorthodox science had its heyday.

  Uri amazes Senator Claiborne Pell (right).

  The Maine-based paranormalist researcher and document-ferret Gary S. Bekkum, through his organization STARstream Research, has brought to light numerous now-declassified US government documents referring to PK and reflecting a continuing feeling among a variety of exotically named official bodies that enemy psychokinetic action could be a very real threat. One US Army Missile Command report unearthed by Bekkum opens with these words: ‘The term “remote perturbation” (RP) is used herein to signify an intellectual-mental process by which a person perturbs remote sensitive apparatus or equipment. RP does not involve any electronic sensing devices at, or focused on, the RP agent.’

  The Missile Command programme, Bekkum discovered, was, quoting SRI again, ‘to determine the degree to which selected personnel are able to interact with and influence, by mental means only, sensitive electronic equipment and to ascertain how this phenomena might be exploited for Army-designed applications … In Phase I, a computer-based binary random number generator (RNG) was constructed … in Phase II, subjects were selected and trials begun [to determine if individuals could affect the random sequence produced using their minds alone]. When all were completed, the SRI investigators concluded that there was an anomalous, unexplained effect on the electronic system which could not be accounted for by engineering considerations only.’

  Bekkum writes: ‘After reviewing the SRI-produced data, the report concluded, “… when considered in the framework of the existing database, it is difficult to disregard claims for the existence of remote perturbation.” As for the threat implied by the initially positive results, the report recommended, “If the random-event generators appear to be vulnerable to remote perturbation, an effort should be made to determine if sensitive equipment such as internal guidance systems can be affected. There is also interest in the use of some RP [remote-perturbation] sensitive device placed in covert secure areas to serve as an intrusion alarm against these areas being compromised by enemy remote viewers.” Other files describe a “remote-perturbation switch” and “remote-perturbation techniques.”’