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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Uri Geller.md

@@ -38,8 +38,13 @@ In the winter of 1975, Geller was tested by a group of nuclear physicists and en
 
 On January 23, 1973, Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff showed a CIA audience a film of their experiments with "Uri Geller, an Israeli magician with claimed capabilities in ESP." The Office of Research and Development's memorandum of the next day recorded that "the SRI work with Geller has been supported by Edgar Mitchell's foundation, by something with a name like Mind Science Institute of Los Angeles, and by TSD," the [[Technical Services Division]]. The film showed Geller reproducing sealed drawings, calling dice, finding metal or water in one of twelve containers, "and bending spoons by touching them with apparently much less force than would be required normally." The writer added: "On the basis of meetings I have attended at ARPA, whose Drs. Austin Kibler and George Lawrence have been to SRI to observe Geller, Puthoff and Targ in action, there is serious doubt that Geller's accomplishment transcends the range of activities a skillful magician can perform and much concern that Puthoff's and Targ's own experimental bias in favor of successful outcomes is undermining their objectivity in designing properly controlled experimental procedures. Geller's connections with Dr. A. Puharich, with whom many unsavory reports have been linked, also is disturbing." He recommended asking TSD about "their plans for future research at SRI, both with Geller and with other subjects such as Ingo Swann," and noted that one manager in the science and technology directorate had said he was "humbled" by the film. A further file, "Experiments - Uri Geller at SRI, August 4-11, 1973," is in the same collection.[^3]
 
+### August 1973
+
+Targ's log of the sessions of August 4 to 11, 1973, in an "electrically shielded room" once used for EEG research, records that on August 5 for the target word "fuse" (a firecracker) Geller "saw 'a cylinder with noise coming out of it'" and drew a drum; for "bunch" (grapes) he drew grapes, and "both the target picture and Geller's rendition had 24 grapes in the bunch"; that evening he could not draw a devil with a trident, producing "Moses' Tablets" and an apple with a snake, Targ noting "the inability on Geller's part to draw the devil may be culturally induced." On August 6, with a target drawn "by a scientist of whom Geller is not fond," he "got no clear impression and passed," but named the artist. On August 7, with EEG electrodes, he passed twice; on August 8 he passed on a camel and the Golden Gate Bridge and drew a flying gull correctly. "Good results were obtained on the four days when there was no openly skeptical observer (except the experimenters whom Geller has learned to accept)." On August 9, 150 feet from a kite drawn on a computer terminal, "his first drawing was a good representation of the actual target picture"; on August 10 he passed on a church stored in computer memory and drew "an arrow inside a suitcase" for an arrow through a heart, Targ allowing either "clairvoyant perception of information stored in the computer, or telepathy since there were several people in the computer room who knew the nature of the target." Of two long-distance trials with East Coast scientists, Targ called the first "suggestive of communication but not conclusive" and left the second unjudged. "In our detailed examination of the shielded room and the protocol used in these experiments no sensory leakage has been found."[^4]
+
 ### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997.
 [^2]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
 [^3]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Research and Development, memorandum ORD-413-73, "Briefing by Stanford Research Institute," January 24, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070029-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. "Experiments - Uri Geller at SRI, August 4-11, 1973," CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110003-2, not read.
+[^4]: Targ, Russell. "Experiments: Uri Geller at SRI, August 4-11, 1973," memorandum of August 13, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110003-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.