The Secret Life of Uri Geller (13 page)

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.”’

Another report, this one dated 1980 and found by Bekkum in CIA files is called
Remote-Perturbation Techniques: Managerial Study
and discusses the PK mind-over-matter problem in greater detail. It opens: ‘In view of the obvious military value of being able to disturb sensitive enemy equipment, it is to the advantage of the Army to assess the validity of RP [remote perturbation, or psychokinesis] claims.’

It later reveals, ‘Two separate but technically identical RP experiments on random-number generators were undertaken at SRI International and at the US Army Missile Command (MICOM). The director of this program is under the oversight of a committee of three senior scientist-managers at MICOM.’ This trial, the report says, cost $400,000.

Yet another review, written in 1989 by a redacted official of the Defense Intelligence Agency, classified SECRET and entitled
Government-sponsored Research in Psychoenergetics
, explains why American intelligence officials tasked their scientists on the problem of psychokinesis.

Happy – and productive – days for paranormal researchers, then, but not everyone in US government circles was content with such things being funded by tax dollars. Colonel John Alexander had become aware of theological objections, too, from those with various religious perspectives.

‘These people believed the events were real,’ he says. ‘However, they were, “The work of the Devil.” Therefore, the military had no business participating in psychic research. This position was made crystal clear to me at a briefing I conducted in the fall of 1987. I was addressing a science panel headed by Walt LeBerg, a former Department of Defense Director for Research and Development. At the conclusion of my presentation on certain anomalous phenomenology, LeBerg exploded. He literally screamed at me, “You’re not supposed to know that. That’s what you learn when you die!” I made a quiet, but snide, remark indicating I’d made a mistake and thought this was a science panel. As quickly as possible, I picked up my briefing slides and got the hell out of there.’