(JTA) — Uri Geller, an Israel-born celebrity who claims to have paranormal telepathic powers, convinced CIA researchers in the 1970s that he indeed possessed such abilities.
Famed for his spoon-bending skills, Geller underwent a week of experiments at the Stanford Research Institute in 1973, according to a report Thursday on Sky News based on 800,000 declassified CIA documents put online earlier this week.
The Geller tests form part of the Stargate program, which investigated psychic powers and looked into how any such abilities could be weaponized by the CIA, the British broadcaster reported. Over the course of eight days, Geller was subjected to various experiments conducted by scientists, including image and word tests.
“As a result of Geller’s success in this experimental period, we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal perception ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner,” CIA researchers wrote.
During the experiment a scientist would pick a word at random from the dictionary before drawing a picture of the word and sticking it on the door of the sealed room in which Geller was placed. Geller would then be asked to draw the same image using his paranormal powers to sense the picture created by the examiner.
Successful tests included felt tip pen sketches of the solar system, a bunch of grapes and a swan.
The cache of documents was declassified after a two-year campaign by freedom-of-information activists and a lawsuit against the CIA.
Others released papers include the recipe for invisible ink and information about UFOs.
Canceled in 1998 due to negligible results, the Stargate Project “never provided an adequate basis for actionable intelligence operations.”
While the information was previously available for public viewing, it could only be viewed on one of four computers in a library at the National Archives in Maryland.
The full declassified CREST archive (the CIA Records Search Tool) is now available on the CIA Library website.
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