The controversy over Uri Geller peaked on October 18, 1974, when Britain's most prestigious scientific journal, Nature, published a lengthy description of SRI's experiments. Originally five thousand words long, Puthoff's and Targ's paper was one of the most scrutinized pieces of work ever to exit the institute. A special "Blue Ribbon" committee had been named to oversee the work coming out of the psychic laboratories. Though they witnessed some paranormal demonstrations, the committee's chief purpose was to edit the resulting paper - and edit they did.
"It was picked to pieces," recalls one knowledgable participant. Three outside psychologists - David Galin and Robert Ornstein of Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute and the University of california's Charles Tart - were brought in as consulatants in an attempt to dress up the physicists' lack of psychological test protocol. After months of argument and red-penciling, the paper was mailed to Nature.
Three and one half months later, Nature returned the paper, requesting that it be cut, making the surprizing suggestion that the SRI team just report on Uri Geller and nothing else, since he was the contoversial psychic. No way. Puthoff and Targ wanted additional results aired. "The Geller work we feel least likely to publish by itself," Targ admitted, revealing even his shadowy doubts about the young Israeli's loudly trumpeted claims.
Compounding Nature's puzzlement over whether to publish Puthoff and Targ's effort was the arrival of another psi paper, one by Dr. J. Levy, describing his work with "psychic" gerbils. It was about this time that Levy's coworkers at the J.B. Rhine laboratories in North Carolina discovered that he had deliberately falsified those results, putting the Nature editors into even more of a quandary over what to do with the SRI work. In one referee's damning opinion: "I don't think they [Puthoff and Targ] could get the paper published in parapsychological journal." The studies, he judged, were "incomplete" and "unbelievably vague." Why wasn't the die that Geller was to predict shaken by some mechanical randomizer? Why wasn't the die changed? (It was, according to the experimenters, but they did not include such a statement in their paper.) Who did the shaking of the die? Who opened the box? "I wouldn't let a sophomore get away with it," declares this judge, critical of this lack of specifics in the write-up. "It's even ten years behind parapsychology," he moans.
Finally, the editors of Nature decided to publish the paper, prefacing it with a lengthy editorial explanation that, although the referee's had been divided in their opinions, the decision to publish this "high risk" paper was made in order to "stimulate and advance the controversy rather that keep it out of circulation for a further period."
The came Nature's most important caveat; "Publishing in a scientific journal is not a process of receiving a seal of approval from the establishment; rather, it is the serving of notice onthe community that there is something worthy of their attention and scrutiny. And this scrutiny is bound to take the form of the desire amongst some to repeat the experiments with even more caution."
The final paper included results on Uri Geller and one other psychic studied at SRI named Pat Price, plus a description of an electroencephalograph (EEG) experiment that claimed to correlate changes in brain state with the transfer of telepathic information.
Of all the experiments run with Uri Geller, the only ones chosen to be included in SRI's report to Nature were his drawing and dice guessing attempts. Puthoff and Targ described how two unnamed SRI judges, "not otherwise associated with the research" evaluated Geller's sketches by matching them with the thirteen target drawings. Without knowing which Geller sketch was made in response to which target, the judges correctly matched up each of Geller's ten responses with the target he was trying to guess at the time (recall that he passed on three of the targets). The experimenters then concluded that Geller correctly perceived ten of the thirteen targets - which is not quite the case - saying that the odds for such a coincidence are apprximately one in ten trillion. Puthoff and Targ state flatly: "The quality of match between target and response in certain cases, together with the overall probability of matching obtained by the judges, constitutes strong evidence for the existence of a potentially useful information channel" - that is, telepathy or clairvoyance.
The experimenters also included negative findings in their paper. Geller was unable to do better than chance when given targets prepared by a team of highly skeptical SRI psychologists. One hundred target pictures were drawn by an SRI artist, screened for similarity by the experimenters, then sealed by other SRI personnel in double envelopes with black cardboard. There was no way to see through the envelopes, even using the magician's trick of carbon tetrachloride. The targets were randonly divided into groups of twenty. Unlike their own drawing experiments, in which at least one of them knew what the target was, this time neither Puthoff nor Targ was aware what the drawings were for each test. Neither did the fabled psychic know. For three days he tried, passing, passing, passing continuosly. He did turn in "about twelve recognizable drawings that he felt were associated with the entire pool," report Puthoff and Targ. The psychic superman, who had allegedly scored success after success with the Puthoff/Targ drawings, said that he felt confused by such a large pool of targets, suggesting that he received multitudinous "crosstalk" from so many drawings. Privately, Puthoff and Targ draw the highly speculative conclusion that "eliminating a person knowledgable of the target degrades the quality of the information channel." That statement is grossly illogical. The men suggest that the only difference between the two experimental protocols is the lack of target knowledge by at least one experimenter. Not so. Target preperation and security were different as well - and could be the significant change. After all, Geller succeeded only with the drawings, which, in effect, wre "made public" either by being taped to the wall outside his enclosure or to the blackboard in the office where Russ Targ and Jean Mayo remained during the third test - all occasions when the specific targets were known by others.
The inclusion of this negative finding represents just the tip of a boiling controversy that jostled the innards of SRI during the Geller experiments, in which physicists Puthoff and Targ found themselves squared off against SRI psychologists. The two experimenters refused to have active participation of psychologists in all but their EEG experiments, for which they received withering criticism. There was a battle of memoranda, with some SRI psychologists angry enough to pen their objections directly to SRI president Charles Anderson. "They [Puthoff and Targ] got him [Anderson] wrapped around their little finger," complained one dissenter. Nevertheless, Puthoff and Targ did include this negative Geller finding, an experiment conceived by the psychologist skeptics at SRI who consider Geller a complete fraud.
But what Gellerites the world over were hotly anticipating was Stanford Research Institute's confirmation of their favorite psychic's mind-wrenching powers of psychokinesis. They found scant satisfaction in the SRI report. After the heralded publicity, worldwide demonstrations, and highly touted experiments, all the SRI team could scrape up to report positively about Uri Geller boiled down to ten drawings out of one hundred thirteen, and a dice experiment. In effect, the SRI experimenters damn the Israeli wizard with faint praise, failing as they do to report on any other of the highly touted metal-bending and psychokinetic "Geller effects." In fact, Puthoff and Targ included an outright disclaimer in their Nature paper: "Although metal-bending by Geller has been observed in our laboratory, we have not been able to combine such observations with adequately controlled experiments to obtain data sufficient to support the paranormal hypothesis."
Puthoff and Targ slough off questions about whether they ever caught Geller cheating. Their public answer is no, they did not. But Russell Targ admitted privately to a goverment scientist that the SRI team did indeed catch Geller in the act during an attempted spoon-bending. According to the scientist, the SRI film of the experiment clearly shows a frustrated Geller, thinking he would not be seen, jamming the spoon handle up a water faucet and bending it by force. "I think he [Uri] can do what we say he did," cautions Targ, leaving unsaid his implied skepticism about Geller's metal-bending an other psychokinetic abilities. That brings the psychic superman back to earth with a clunk.
The SRI experimenters react bitterly against accusations that they are not sufficiently sophisticated to guard against a magicians fraud in their experiments. "These people treat us as though we're very naïve," states an angry Russ Targ. "I got into psychic research because I used to do magic on the stage. I'm very familiar with thumb writers, card tricks, and the whole lore of legerdermain and mental acts." While in college Targ did have his own mentalist act. "There is a whole library of magic books that I've had since I was a child - and my library goes back to 1948 - when I was doing card magic and stage magic. Sowhen people tell me maybe he [Geller] was doing thumb writing or maybe he wrote the thing after he wrote yours is really an insult, really ridiculous..." Targ spent half a year in 1955 with the British parapsychological foundation, "canvassing English psychic to see the extent to which they were on the up and up."
He and Puthoff also reveal a closely guarded secret: "We have magicians introduced into the experiments without Geller knowing it," says Puthoff. "Some of the people we told him were scientists were really magicians. Bart Cox, head of the division that conducted the SRI research, confirms that two unnamed magicians wre brought in to follow Geller's actions - but only for two or three days of experiments. The magicians SRI brought in are also not active in the profession; one of them serves as a consultant to SRI on entirely other matters. How reliable their judgements are remains cloudy. However, Cox says that one of the worlds top professionals, Milbourne Christopher, has been in telephone consultation with SRI. Cox hopes to have him serve as a consultant to the continuing experiments.
"We've had magicians go over thirty thousand feet of movie film, frame by frame, hundreds of hours of videotape, in stop motion, hunting for tricks. The final series of experiments that we've come up with that we consider publishable are those experiments that, to the best of our knowledge and to the best of the knowledge of the magicians we've consulted with, could not have been done by trickery," insistes Puthoff.
Targ discounts another frequent criticism - that he could not see well enough even if he wanted to catch Geller cheating. Without his glasses, the SRI researcher is indeed legally blind. With the aid of thick corrective lenses,, his disability - an inability to resolve images - does allow him to drive (a motorcycle in fact). Fine-print reading is more difficult for him, and he has to hold it a few inches away from his eyes. However, he stiffly defends his abaility to spot any attempted sleights of hand or other chicanery by the psychics he studies, Geller included.
"our position is that a magician can do anything," continues Targ. "A magician is omnipotent if you let him do it [the trick] his way. If you tell me you'd like to see something [magical], I can say, 'well come to dinner tomorrow night and you'll see it.' The chance is very likely that you won't catch me doing whatever it is you want to see. But it's very different from saying, 'I'd like to see something, I'll have it set up in my laboratory, show up tomorrow and do it.' It's a completely different thing." Even Randi, for all his debunkers rhetoric, is forced to admit after lengthy discussion that Geller's drawings could only have been accomplished by collusion - or psychic sensing. In other words, he is forced to rule out what he suspects is Geller's normal mode of viewing hidden drawings - merely stealing a peak.
But did those insulated walls in the drawing experiment room protect against every possibility of getting clandestine clues in to Geller? High-class magic shops do stock a pea-sized radio receiver that can be concealed inside the ear. Of greater interest is the fact that Andrija Puharich holds several patents for a miniature radio receiver implanted in a tooth. One source friendly with the doctor claims that his clever device (granted U.S. patent 2-995-633, issued August 8, 1961) was created specifically for use by the Central Intelligence Agency. The receiver works as follows: radio signals received by a gold filling in the tooth are converted by a tiny rectifier to electrical signals at audio frequencies that are imparted directly to the nerve endings in the live tooth and then to the brain. An amplifier for the signals can be mounted inside a false tooth, as a later Puharich patent describes (U.S. patent 3-156-787), working only when the tounge is pressed against the amplifier terminal. The only way to check Geller for a tooth radio would be to X-ray him completely (a receiver could be surgically implanted anywhere on his body), a security precaution the psychic has steadfastly refused to allow. Could Geller then have had such a receiver, thus enabling him to receive coded clues describing the targets he was to "see" telepathically?
yes, argues Dr. Joseph Hanlon, an editor of the British publication New Scientist. Hanlon quotes an expert in shielded room design, Robert King of Imperial College in LOndon: "Ordinary radio signal are indeed shielded out by the EEG enclosures. But at microwave frequencies around ten billion cycles per second [ten gigaHertz], the signals would easily penetrate the room, travelling along the metal air-conditioning ducts. At higher frequencies, the signals could leak through the miniscule cracks under the steel door, transmitted by a device no bigger than a packet of cigarettes."
Prior to Hanlon's critique, the SRI experimenters told me that they were well aware of the hidden receiver possibility. "We know Andrija is an expert in miniature electronics," acknowledged Targ, well before the issure was raised publicly. That is one reason Geller's mentor deliberately was excluded from SRI during the experiments.
"Puharich has never been at SRI while Geller was here," asserts Puthoff, adding that Uri's girlfriend Hannah also was excluded from the experiment areas. But Shipi Shtrang, Geller's ever-present sidekick, was allowed to remain in the vicinity of the experiments while they were being conducted, even to the point of being locked inside sheilded rooms with Geller during some tests. "Part of our secret design was to see if Geller did better work when Shipi was around," explains Puthoff, oblivious to the irony in his statement. "We wanted to know if Shipi worked as a psychotronic amplifier [for Geller]." A reader of the Nature paper would never know that persons other than Puthoff and Targ were permitted access to the experiment areas. During some of Geller's drawing tests, for example, Shipi remained directly outside the room where Harold Puthoff and Jean Mayo prepared the targets and taped them to the outside wall of Geller's enclosure. "Shipi was just seated at a desk by himself," says Puthoff, admitting that Uri's long-time comrade was not even watched. When Geller was inside the second floor Faraday cage down the hall from the computer-generated drawings, Shipi was inside with him, guarded by Puthoff. Where, then, was Hannah? And why were several "computer personnel" allowed to view the target during these tests?
The SRI experimenters defend themselves against such criticisms by resorting to exagerated literalness and insistence that all the neccessary precautions were taken. "It's like asking if we shut the door," protests Puthoff. Their reticence to reveal the extensive security precautions they claim were taken leaves the SRI team vulnerable to the charge that they naïvely disregarded the possibility of sophisticated hoaxing by Geller. Stung by this accusation, Puthoff and Targ counter that they kept secret their elaborate precautions for fear of antagonizing Geller and the other sensitives with whom they work. Although they have not publicly reported their safeguards, Puthoff claims that, "We started [electronically] debugging the experiment rooms even before Geller showed up. We even took apart the crawl spaces above the experiment rooms before, during and after the experiments. All the phones were checked daily to see if they had been bugged, and we have the best bug detector in the world at SRI." No bug was ever found, he says. Security personnel manned the SRI rooftops during every Geller experiment, continues Puthoff. Their job was to watch for the slightest sign of confederates attempting to get target information in to the psychic. "We don't care if Geller has a mouthfull of receivers and transmitters all over the place," adds Puthoff, stiffly insisting that the experiment team guarded against utilization of such sophisticated deception.
Yet, the suspicions remain. For example: a cable conduit, about two to three inches in diameter, carried the intercom and EEG wiring from the room where Geller sat outside the steel wall to the instrumentation in the adjoining room. This hole was sealed with cotton batting and a small cover at its exit, which was near the floor about six feet away from where target pictures were taped, according to Puthoff. SRI psychologist Charles Rebert, who participated in some of the experiments, charges that after one test, - the one in which Geller quickly guessed the bunch of grapes and drew a perfect duplicate - some cotton wadding was found pulled out of Geller's side of the conduit. This would have allowed him the possibility of either hearing any discussion of the target, extending a radio antenna through the conduit, or possibly using some concealed fiber optics to snake through the tube and sneak a direct look at the target.
Understandably, Puthoff reacts angrily to Rebert's accusation. "That's absolute bullshit. We were worried about Uri's haing fiber optics available to see around corners, so we made sure the hole was covered. We spent hours shouthing between ourselves through that hole - you could barely hear a thing - and seeing if someone could stick something through it. We had to assume Geller and his associates came loaded for bear, so we prepared for them."
As with so many elements in this story, the matter rests on whom one believes. Rebert lead the in-house fight against the psychic experimenters and would like to discredit them as much as possible. Puthoff and Targ naturally want their complex experiments shown in the best possible light. The truth of this specific charge about the cable conduit probably never will be resolved, but it illustrates the complexity of making a clearcut judgement about Geller and the experiments at SRI.
Safeguards against possible collusion between one of them and Geller were even instituted, according to the experimenters. Says Puthoff: "I am not in collusion with Geller because I do experiments in which Russell doesn't know the answer and vice versa. He's had a chance to check on me, and I've had a chance to check on him." Puthoff even suggests a level of suspicion that no one else- not even a debunking magician - has imagined. "You know what our real, paranoid, initial opinion was? We were already working with Swann and we thought maybe Geller ... was a clever magician trained specifically to fool psychic researchers and was being sent by somebody to see if they could crack our protocol ... If the name of the game is to discredit this type of research in America, then anything that discredits the work - including a deliberate plant using hidden radios - serves the same goal."
One SRI staffer claims that a classified goverment report warns that the Soviet Union maintains a specific goal of discrediting psychic research because of its potential strategic use. This same staffer, who insists on anonymity, strongly insinuates that the barrage of criticism faced by SRI's experimenters possibly is the result of a conspiracy sired by the Soviet Union. "We even caught other countries' intelligence agents prowling through here," asserts Puthoff.
Unless clearcut evidence can be shown to support such charges, the smokescreen of national security has no reason to be invoked as a means of obscuring critiques of SRI's experiments, a judgement that the recent history of this country should make painfully clear. But, again, the example illustrates the lengths to which the defenders of SRI's work will go to justify the institute's conclusions about psychic phenomena.
Bonar Cox, the division cheif who oversees Puthoff's and Targ's work, scoffs at the conspiracy idea. "I've never heard of such a thing." Patiently hearing out the latest critic's questionings, Cox answers confidently, "I trust in the people [Puthoff and Targ]."
The question of deliberate hoaxing or self deception is a serious one in any scientific research, not just in paranormal investigations. The spurious Piltdown Man in England and the case of the midwife toad are famous examples of serious scientists being duped. A respected cancer researcher at the prestigious Sloan-Kettering Institute recently was revealed to have falsified his experiments by painting mice to make it appear as if his remarkable skin graft procedure were successful.
But the number of instances of hoaxes being perpertrated by psychic research is far more numerous. In 1974, Dr. Jay Levy, the twenty-six-year-old heir apparent to J.B. Rhine's famous Institute for Parapsychology, was discovered to have falsified his experiments. "This whole thing serves as a reminder that you can't always take research findings at face value," commented Dr. Robert Morris, president of the Parapsychology Association. Levy's mentor, Dr. Rhine, sadly added, "The idea of putting faith in the personal honesty of a research worker is old-fashioned."
Who's fooling whom?
Plain and simple, Uri Geller is a self-confessed magician. He started out as one. And he remains one today. Whether he is something more than that is a question totally clouded in his beginnings.
Uri's girl friend, Hannah Shtrang, who travelled with him from the very beginning - through Israel, Europe then to America and SRI - later left him for reasons unknown, although some suggest old-fashioned jealousy. In Ha'Olam Hazeh, the weekly Israeli paper, Geller's ex-girl friend tells a far different, perhaps vindictive, account of the evolution of the showman's career, assertions confirmed by others who knew Geller in Israel. Depressed because of his failure to succeed in the military world of his well-known father, Geller - stilll recuperating from his war wounds - encountered the resourceful fourteen-year-old, Shipi Shtrang, and confided to his new friend that he had been fascinated by a book about magic. Quietly, the two of them began practicing some of the tricks described in the book. Geller was then twenty-one.
Uri, Shipi and occasionally Hannah began performing their fledgling magic act at student parties, charging about ten dollars a night. According to Hannah's account, either Shipi or she would act as an accomplice in the audience, flashing covert signs to the onstage Geller. While his reputation grew as an entertaining performer of tricks, Geller, more and more, began to wrap himself inside the mysterious cloak of psychic powers, claiming that all his stunts were accomplished by the paranormal, that he was an authentic psychic superman. But even then there were debunkers.
One afternoon Geller arrived with Hannah at the Mishamar Ha'Emek kibbutz for a performance and overnight stay. The cultural secretary of the kibbutz, skeptical of Geller's well-publicized claims, had prepared a trap. When Geller entered the room where he was to perform that evening, the cultural secretary apologized for the bad lighting, pointed to a broken light bulb above his head, and explained that it had burned out just a half hour prior to Geller's arrival.
Geller turned to Hannah and told her that he had put outthe light with the force of his mind. The budding psychic had blundered.
The secretary told him that the light bulb had broken the day before. There is no record of Geller's reaction to this accusation, which caught him in what has become his standard ploy - to take advantage of every untoward incident, however small, as a sign of his alleged powers.
Even though some who witnessed his early shows in Israel already were tripping him up, Geller decided to break into the big time, so he signed up with impresario Baruch Cotani. One part of the agreement was that Shipi - who had been introduced to Cotani as Geller's kid brother - always be allowed a first- or second-row center seat at all of Geller's performances. Cotani later found out why. He caught Shipi sending signals to his onstage "big brother." The next night Hannah sat alongside Shipi, presumably taking up the signals where he left off. The split with Cotani came when Geller demanded more money, above and beyond their agreed-upon contract, and he signed with a new manager, Mikki Peled.
The publicity Geller was accruing for himself began to draw increasing fire from the skeptics. One was Joseph Allon, director of the goverment computer center and an accomplished amatuer magician. Friends brought news clippings of Geller's achievements to Allon, who provided explanations of how trickery might achieve the same effects. Spurred by these glowing accounts, Allon decided to challenge what he thought was Geller's obvious fakery, thinking it would take only a few days and one or two newspaper explanations to clear the air. It turned out to be a far more difficult job than Allonhad anticipated.
In the summer of 1970, Allon, his wife, and a group of friends went to see Geller's act at the Jerusalem YMCA auditorium. The excited entourage of skeptics made sure to get front row seats. This was the first time Allon actually had seen Geller work. About five minutes before curtain time, Allon pulled out an army post exchange card and sat casually holding it in his hand in plain view. As the lights were dimming, he handed the card to his wife, who placed it in her purse. During Geller's mentalist act, Allon's wife was asked to stand. Then, with his usual theatrics, Geller announced that he "saw" an army PX card in her handbag. At that, Allon jumped to his feet, interupted the performance, and explained how he thought Geller had spotted the card from the auditorium wings before the show. The amatuer magician challenged Geller to a conjuring duel, then and there, declaring that he could do everything that Geller could do - but by magic tricks, the same tricks, he said, that the alleged psychic used. Allon asked to come onstage to prove his accusations. The audience grew hostile, annoyed at having their performance interupted. Geller calmed matters by agreeing to meet with Allon, but after the show. However, when the performance was over, Geller quickly disappeared, leaving Allon to face an angry crowd that demanded he prove his accusations. On the spot, he duplicated some of the routine Geller had just gone through. Instead of winning the crowd to his side, Allon "was shocked" by their reaction.
"'So, you're also psychic'" they shouted. "'You're just claiming you're doing it by tricks to discredit Uri. You are just jealous of him.'" Geller, even in his absence, still had the audience in his pocket, more willing to believe his stage story than Allon's demonstrations. What Allon had seen as merely a one night exposé turned into a lengthy battle of persuasion. The problem, says Allon, was not so much with Geller as with the public's unquenchable need to believe in a psychic superman. The debunker's problems had only begun.
Allon persevered, training a friend, Danny Zehavi, to perform the same variety of mystifying tricks that Geller worked onstage. Next, he convinced psychology professor, Sol Kuglemass of Hebrew University to convene a meeting of academicians to witness an Allon/Zehavi unexpurgated version of the Geller routine, complete with all the gestures and psychic spiel. As Zehavi went through the act, Allon stood to on side, explaining in convincing detail how he thought each trick was accomplished. Word of this debunking session spread quickly. A few days afterward, Dan Halperin, of the Israel broadcasting Service [Kol Israel], phoned Allon and asked if he would pit himself against the psychic on a prime-time radio news program. Predictably, Geller was reluctant about doing the show (called "This day"), but finally agreed on the condition that he be in a different studio from Allon. Everything was set. The day of the broadcast, scheduled to air October 4, 1970, at seven P.M., found Halperin and Allon station in the Jerusalem studio, but Geller was nowhere in sight. He did arrive, twenty minutes late, in shorts and an open shirt. The broadcast was as disheveled as Geller himself. He stammered, contradicted himself, and refused to work any of his tricks, a far cry from his later, more self-assured counterattacks against critics. Flustered, Geller declined to guess at what number Halperin was thinking, saying, "I can't, I only have shorts on, I haven't prepared myself...."
"What?" countered Halperin. "You have to prepare your clothes for telepathy?"
Answering Halperin on another question, Geller promised to sue anyone who called him a fraud. Allon promptly did just that, challenging the psychic to sue. Geller backed down, muttering vaguely about first having to seek council. He never did sue. Allon even challenged Geller's widely touted blind-driving skill, offering to give thirty thousand dollars to the "Phantom Fund" ( a goverment fund to raise money for Phantom jet bombers ) if he could not duplicate the stunt. The debunker claims that Geller either lifts a corner of the blidfold over his left eye with a well-concealed finger as he hunches over the steering wheel, or he folds the blindfold a special way, making it easy to peak through a single layer. When Geller performs the trick, he always insists that his passengers concentrate their eyes straight ahead on the oncoming traffic "to help him." He generally tries the trick at night, which provides even more concealment against discovery. Allon duplicated the driving stunt in daylight, convincing some of Geller's staunchest supporters, who were along for the ride. "The only difference," he says, "is that they were more scared when they came with me." Allon used both the finger-lift and the secret fold techniques to fool his riders, just two of several blind-driving techniques that Geller could have used.
Aside from bending spoons and rings by pure physical manipulation, magicians also suspect Geller of using special chemicals to work his wonders. Highly corrosive salts of mercury - violently poisonous if inhailed or swallowed - can be used to prepare items for future breaking. The chemical causes intergranuar corrosion, etching its way through the grain structure of the metal, leaving it spongy and ready for instant breakage. Whether Geller would take the risk of using such a poisonous substance remains an open question. Metallurgists suggest another possible trick procedure using the peculiar metal known as gallium. At ordinary room temperature, it is a solid lump of silvery metal and looks like pure mercury. But raise its temperature slightly with the warmth of a human hand and it melts, making it ideally suited as a solder on a pre-broken spoon joint. Simply polish it up and the spoon looks whole. A few seconds of finger rubbing and the gallium slowly melts, allowing the prepared joint to bend or break apart like taffy.
SRI's Puthoff and Targ received a report from Scandinavia informing them that traces of indium had been found on the severed end of a stainless steel spoon Geller had broken during a performance, further fueling speculation about prepared objects. Indium, like gallium, can be used as a solder, though it has a higher melting point. The doubts have promted SRI to order metallurgical examination on the broken cutlery Geller left there in his wake. Those results have yet to be announced. It would seem foolish for Geller to use such an easily traceable chemical like mecuric chloride, gallium, or indium, in his tricks, unless he felt totally confident that he could susbstitute the "clean" item for the chemically prepared one after doing each and every trick. Some even suggest that Uri uses miniature lasers tucked away in his belt. Nonsense. The laser needed to accomplish a metal-breaking feat would be as big as Geller himself. Physical manipulation out of sight of the audience is a far more likely explanation.
Geller's grandiose claims about aiding Israeli intelligence, including a face-to-face meeting with the then chief of intelligence Ahron Yariv, are also questionable. Yariv flatly denies ever having met with the performer. "I didn't meet him. I didn't consult with him. The whole thing is one big bluff," says the former minister of intelligence. If Geller did help predict the impending Egyptian invasion, it is doubtful that Yariv would confirm it - or even have allowed Geller out of the country. But from the sound of his voice, Yariv's denial rings true.
Though Geller publicaly disclaims it, his abilities were studied by a Tel Aviv University psychologist, Dr. Ariel Merari. The psychic was persuaded to submit to investigation after Merari offered to pesuade Joseph Allon and other debunkers to hold their fire until the investigation was completed. Merari also enhanced his offer by promising not to publish the results if they were negative. Thirdly, Israeli intelligence, says Merari, was "interested" in the study, but did not actively participate in the investigation." On those terms, Geller met with the Tel Aviv psychologist and his associates on three different occasions, and he was tested primarily on on number guessing and predicting which side of a rolled die would come up. "We gave him the freedom to do it exactly as he wanted," explains Merari, "except that there was an investigator in the room with him, the sessions were tape-recoreded, and every movement was recorded simultaneously on three video cameras." The results were never published, they were so bad. "Absolutely negative," reports Merari. "He scored, in fact, consistently lower than chance." Geller broke off after the third session, and adamantly refused to cooperate with any further investigations.
A long article in the February 20, 1974 issue of Ha'Olam hazeh confirms much of the speculation about Geller's alleged cheating. Danny Peletz, partner to Geller's former promoter Mikki peled, revealed how Geller dramatically predicted Nasser's death while the psychic was in the midst of a show. Backstage, Geller's promoter and friends heard radio news of the Egyptian leader's detah, according to Peletz, then whispered it to Geller, who was still onstage. Feigning illness, Geller worked up the audience's emotions, then announced his vision of Nasser's death. "we knew it was all tricks," confessed Peletz. "We had the proof of it. We even helped him in it."
Hannah Strang reveals even more: "Uri and Simmy planned all sorts of tricks together, all based on my brother sitting inthe hall and sending prearranged signals to Uri.... When they saw that their audiences were enthusiastic and amazed, they decided to develope their cooperation into a real industry. They went to the promoter Baruch Cotani, did a performance for him, and convinced him, just as they later convinced the whole country, that Uri had superhuman powers." To this day, Shipi sits in the front row at a Geller performance, decked out in his denim and sequined outfit, with a large aliminium camera case by his side and a Nikon in his hands, clicking away.
Uri Geller hmself publicly has confessed to cheating. The admission was made on a televison program broadcast in Israel in the spring of 1974 at which time Geller was being interviewed by Israel television correspondent, Hagai Pinskter. The performer candidly admitted using tricks and lies to fool his audience, saying that his promoters presured him into the deceptions in order to guarantee exciting shows. Geller also claimed that he had given up such sordid conhuring - then proceeded to attempt some metal-bending and watch tricks straight out of his customary routine.
On November 24, 1970, Uri Goldstein, a mechanical engineering student at the University of the Negev, bought a IL7.50 (approximately $2.75) ticket to Uri Geller's nine P.M. performance at the Gilat cinema in Beersheba two days later. Shortly after seeing the show, Goldstein sued Geller and his promoters, Soltan Artistic Representation, for breach of contract.
The defendants, argued Goldstein, promised to perform feats of mental telepathy, parapsychology, hypnotism, and telekinesis. Instead, Geller accomplished all his feats by physical means, "hidden with intent to deceive and did not do a single thing by any 'special powers'."
The Beersheba Magistrates Court head the case in January, 1971. Neither Geller nor promoter Mikki Peled appeared to defend themselves. Instead, Geller sent an unsigned letter to the court dated December 11, 1970. It read:
LETTER OF DEFENCE.
GOLDSTEIN AGAINST GELLER AND SOLTAN
1. When the cart got to the top of the hill, the horse's strength was exhausted. The carter put down his whip and got out of the cart to push. Rabbi Yossel the Tsadik [wise and just man] also got down from the cart to help the carter.
The carter said to him: "Rabbi, there's no need to help me. Go back and get on the cart."
The rabbi answered: "I have to help the horse, because if not, when I come to the high court above, the horse will accuse me that on this and that day, at the top of the hill, when his strength was exhausted from the weight of the burden, Rabbi Yossel did not come to his help."
"You fear the accusation of a beast?" answered the carter. "You, the Tsadik of our generation, you who help widows, orphans, and unfortunates?"
"It is not the accusation of the beast that I fear," answered the Rabbi, "but the idea of standing before the lord of the world of judgement with a horse."
2. Enclosed is a check for IL7.50 to cover the complaint of the plaintiff.
(unsigned)
Uri Geller
The judge upheld Goldstein's complaint, fining Geller and Soltan the price of the ticket plus IL20 (approximately $7.60) court costs.
Uri Geller, son of Hoova, conjurer extraordinary, object of dedicated scientific scrutiny and vitriolic debate, was found resonsible for calculated deception by his own unwillingness to oppose the charge. He carries that judgement with him to this day.
At Stanford Research Institute, Uri Geller never submitted to a physical search or X-ray - because he never was required to. Did he walk in to those laboratories armed with a tooth radio, paper-thin magnet, concealed fiber optics, radio controlled dice, and other weapons of technolgical magic? Or did long-time confederates merely slip a fast hand-signal or swift kick to lend advantage to his considerable skills as a master of psychological manipulation and deft sleight-of-hand? The SRI scientists claim that they were fully aware of Geller's history in magic and that they took extensive precautions to guard against his conjuring in their labs. Two years after the experiments, Harold Puthoff reveals that Geller confessed that he sometimes cheated onstage: "He told us about the licence-tag routine, a great trick that he'd been persuaded to do by his manager." (This trick involves guessing the licence numbers of cars belonging to members of his audience, information that was passed to Geller by confederates spying on persons parking their cars prior to a performance.)
Puthoff and Targ's absolute assuarance of rigid security during their Geller experiments is reminiscent of a famous Victorian detective story entitled Cell 13. The inimitable Professor Van Dusen wagers with his friends that he can escape from a maximum security cell on death row. The prison officials scoff at such a preposterous notion and gladly accept the Professor's challenge. By communicating with a confederate through a hidden rat tunnel, Van Dusen does escape. The stunned prison officials had been blinded by a certitude in their own infalibility. Admittedly, fiction is not fact, and a French prison is not the sheilded room at Stanford Research Instsitute.
Yet I caught Uri Geller cheating during my personal audience with him - and it was not just on a licence plate trick. James Randi says that he caught Geller cheating during a performance at the offices of Time. Yael Joel maintains that he proved Geller's cheating on a "psychic" photograph. A goverment scientist reports that Puthoff and Targ caught the showman cheating in their laboratory. Uri's former girl friend exposed him for cheating. The magician himself admitted on television and to his SRI experimenters that he cheated.
Where, then, does the cheating stop? Or does it? And why the continuing controversy? Because of a few apparent successes in sensing drawings and dice under conditions that the SRI team claims were controlled. It is entirely possible that Uri Geller does have some modicum of talent for telepathic or clairvoyant reception of information. That, in fact, is all the SRI paper claims. Regretably, even the evidence to support that limited conclusion is open to vigorous doubt, to which Harold Puthoff counters: "With regard to our work with Geller, there is one major difference between us and our critics and detractors - we were actually there." Remember, too, evidence that a psychic demonstration can be faked by a magician does not mean that it was.
I, personally, am not convinced of SRI's evidence for Uri Geller's abilities. There are simply too many questions left hanging. Standard scientific procedure in such unresolved controversies simply is to repeat the experiments, preferably by some other reputable group, to see if the results can be replicated. But in the case of Uri Geller, why bother? The fact that he is a magician, that he admits to cheating, taints any and all serious work with him. There always would be the lingering question: Does he or doesn't he?
In the end, each person should weigh the conflicting arguments for himself. One who has is California physicist, Jack Sarfatti, who participated in Geller's demonstrations carried out at the University of London's Birkbeck College. At that time, Sarfatti publicly endorsed the magician's paranormal talents. After spending additional hours with Geller and learning a little magic, Sarfatti recanted. He now believes that every stunt the Israeli does is nothing but conjuring, and he condems Geller for duping gullible scientists. "Uri is a peasant," says the physicist bitterly. "He has no sense of ethics, no sense of truth or falsity."
During an airport interview early in his show business career, Uri Geller let slip this revealing aspect of his character: "I don't care what they say about me so long as they spell my name right."
My wifeand I once spent an evening at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, where an old man placed a tiny pile of ashes on her fist. He passed his hand over hers and the ashes were gone. "Open your hand," he commanded. Astonished, my wife found the ashes inside her fist. We applauded, then moved on, seeking other diverting illusions. We knew the old man was a magician. But what if he had asserted that he was not? Had the air been filled with incence instead of cigarette smoke, and chants instead of ragtime, and had the man been named Sai Baba ... or Uri Geller ... what then?
Another saying from the Sufis may help reconcile the Babel of ambiguities obscuring the reality of Uri Geller: "Conterfeiters exist because there is such a thing as real gold."
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