The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/George Lawrence.md

aliases	category	tags	summary	relations	created	updated
George Lawrence George H. Lawrence Dr. George Lawrence G. H. Lawrence	Intelligence & Government	Person ARPA DARPA ArmyResearchInstitute Psychologist UriGeller SRI NationalResearchCouncil Biofeedback PSI 1970s 1980s	ARPA projects manager who joined Ray Hyman and Robert Van de Castle at SRI's Uri Geller experiments on December 8, 1972, and later monitored the NRC's 1988 performance-techniques study for the Army Research Institute.	type with start role fn employed_by Advanced Research Projects Agency 1972 projects manager; arranged the visit to SRI on December 8, 1972 with consultants Hyman and Van de Castle 1 type with start role fn investigated Stanford Research Institute 1972-12-08 visited the Uri Geller experiments with Ray Hyman and Robert Van de Castle to advise on ARPA funding 1 type with start role fn employed_by U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences 1984 author of Technical Report 658 in 1984; project monitor and liaison to the NRC Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance 4 type with start end role fn participant_in National Research Council Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance 1985 1988 Army Research Institute project monitor 4	2026-05-17	2026-10-05

George H. Lawrence was a psychologist and a projects manager at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense in the early 1970s. He visited the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) on December 8, 1972, with his consultants Ray Hyman and Robert Van de Castle, to see the work of Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ with Uri Geller,¹ and Time of March 12, 1973 reported that neither he nor Hyman was impressed.² According to a CIA note of February 28, 1973, the magazine's science editor named him as the source of a skeptical article, which Lawrence denied.³ By 1984 he was a staff member of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and from 1985 to 1988 he served as its project monitor for the National Research Council committee whose report on techniques for enhancing human performance included a chapter on parapsychology.⁴

The visit of December 8, 1972

Hyman, writing in The Humanist in 1977, described the visit as that of "a visiting team to ascertain if Targ and Puthoff had sufficient evidence and an adequate case to justify the Advanced Research Projects Agency [funding] their research on Uri Geller." He said Geller "sent everyone out of the room except George Lawrence and myself," had Lawrence place his hands on two envelopes containing a drawing by Van de Castle and a magazine picture, and tried to obtain an impression without result; and that after lunch Geller again tried "while all alone with George."¹

Mind-Reach (1977), by Targ and Puthoff, records the same visit as "a privileged, confidential visit requested by George Lawrence, at that time a projects manager for the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)." Lawrence arrived with his two consultants, Hyman and Van de Castle, during Geller's stay; "their stated aim was to determine whether anything in our study would be of interest to ARPA." Targ and Puthoff wrote that they declined to let the visitors watch an experiment in progress, offered instead that they conduct experiments of their own with Geller, and that Van de Castle concluded from one of them that Geller was "an interesting subject for further study" while "Hyman and Lawrence were not impressed." The authors included Lawrence, Hyman, Martin Gardner, James Randi and Joe Hanlon in a chapter called "The Loyal Opposition."⁵⁶

Time of March 12, 1973 reported that "news of the unusual activity at Menlo Park reached the Department of Defense," that Lawrence "was accompanied to SRI by Robert Van de Castle," and that "neither Lawrence nor Hyman was impressed." It described Geller asking Lawrence to write a number between one and ten on a pad while covering his own eyes with his hands, Hyman seeing Geller's open eyes through his fingers, and, later, Geller causing a compass needle to turn about five degrees, Lawrence moving his body and vibrating the floor to deflect the needle more, and Targ insisting on examining "the DOD man" for hidden magnets, "(He did not.)"²

The CIA record, January and February 1973

An Office of Research and Development memorandum of January 24, 1973, ORD-413-73, by an officer whose name is redacted, reports on a film of the Geller experiments shown at SRI on January 23 by Targ and Puthoff. It states that "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 of 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." The writer added that he had observed no unorthodox behavior by Puthoff or Targ at the briefing that "could serve to corroborate ARPA's judgment," and, of the idea of testing Geller on previously unseen blueprints, that "Dr. Lawrence reported that Geller balked at reproducing anything more complex than a simple line drawing."⁷

A note of February 28, 1973, "More Geller Business," records that the science editor of Time, "a Mr. Jareff," had told SRI's public information officer that the issue of Monday, March 5 would carry an article tending to discredit Geller; that "Jareff says that the source of the article was Dr. George Lawrence of ARPA, and apparently the article identifies Lawrence as the source"; and that "Lawrence, on the other hand, denies having talked to TIME" while "Jareff says this is nonsense, Lawrence has talked to TIME lots of times." The note says Lawrence "felt Geller was a charlatan based on the die-calling experiment," his reasoning being that Geller was "influencing the die so that it came up with the face that he wished," and that the writer expected the article, which "does not give any indication of Agency interest," to complicate dealing with Geller and Ingo Swann.³ A CIA memorandum of February 2, 1973 on the paranormal, in its paragraph on the subject it calls "G," an Israeli who had been an army magician, says he "had one bad brush with Mr LAWRENCE of ARPA whom he perceived (perhaps not without reason) as being hostile."⁸

Annie Jacobsen, in Phenomena (2017), wrote that the conclusion of Hyman, Lawrence and Van de Castle, reported in Time, was that anyone who believed in Geller's powers was falling for the "ridiculous"; that Lawrence expressed concern that Puthoff and Targ's "own experimental bias in favor of successful outcomes is undermining their objectivity in properly controlled experimental procedures," and that they were guilty of the three charges Gardner had made against J. B. Rhine: loose laboratory controls, skewing of data, and the premise that the attitude of the scientists could influence the subject; and that Lawrence told the Time editor Leon Jaroff that Geller was a "charlatan" and urged an exposé, which she described as an unauthorized contact with a reporter in violation of his security clearance and the subject of a CIA investigation, although Lawrence denied having spoken to Time and Jaroff insisted that he had.⁹

Time returned to the visit in its cover story of March 4, 1974, "Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier," which said that "assigned by the Department of Defense to report on the wondrous happenings at S.R.I., Hyman, accompanied by George Lawrence, DoD projects manager for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, caught Geller in some outright deceptions."¹⁰

Later accounts

A staff study prepared for the Army's Center Lane program in 1983 includes an article by Dr. Roger A. Beaumont, "On the Strategic Potential of ESP," which says that "in 1972, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency sent a team to evaluate Stanford Research Institute's claimed results with spoon-bender Geller. The team was headed by Dr. George Lawrence, a psychologist who is open-minded on the subject of parapsychology," and that "the team's report was totally negative."¹¹ A Defense Intelligence College thesis of 1992 by Captain Michael Zarbo, citing Ronald McRae's Mind Wars (1984), states that "DARPA's director, Dr. George Lawrence, was ordered by his superiors to find something to satisfy Congressional demands to match purported Soviet efforts in the field."¹¹

The Army Research Institute

A technical report of 1984, Biofeedback and Performance: An Update (Technical Report 658), by G. H. Lawrence was issued by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences in Alexandria, Virginia; he had earlier written a review of biofeedback and performance with L. C. Johnson in Biofeedback: Theory and Research (Academic Press, 1977). The NRC report Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques (1988) cites both, and its preface states that "definition and guidance for the committee's task came primarily from Edgar M. Johnson, director of the Army Research Institute," and that "administrative and technical liaison was ably provided by project monitor George Lawrence, who worked closely with the committee in its various activities."⁴

A memorandum of January 31, 1995, ORD-0143-95, from the CIA's Director of Research and Development to the Associate Deputy Director for Military Affairs, asking for liaison with the Army Research Institute in the review of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Star Gate program, states: "The original requester of the 1985 ARI study was Edgar M. Johnson, Technical Director of ARI. George Lawrence served as the ARI liaison to the NRC Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance. We would like to contact these two individuals directly."¹² Edwin May's commentary of 1996 on the American Institutes for Research review traced the sequence from the 1972 visit, in which Hyman and Lawrence were refused access to an experiment in progress, through Lawrence's commissioning of the NRC study in 1985, to the AIR evaluation.¹³

Footnotes

---

1. Hyman, Ray. "Psychics and Scientists: 'Mind-Reach' and Remote Viewing." The Humanist, May/June 1977, pp. 16-20 and following (visit of December 8, 1972), CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080037-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

2. "The Magician and the Think Tank," Time, March 12, 1973, as held in CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100023-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

3. Note for the record, "More Geller Business," February 28, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070022-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

4. Druckman, Daniel, and John A. Swets, eds. Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988, preface and references (Lawrence, G. H., Biofeedback and Performance: An Update, Technical Report 658, U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Alexandria, Virginia, 1984; Lawrence and Johnson, 1977), read in ERIC document ED296127, archive.org, and in the CIA Reading Room copy CIA-RDP96-00791R000200320001-1. ↩︎

5. Targ, Russell, and Harold Puthoff. Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, chapter on the critics and the account of the ARPA visit, read in the archive.org full-text copy of the 2005 reprint, https://archive.org/details/mind-reach-scientists-look-at-psychic-abilities-2005-russell-targ-harold-e.-puth ↩︎

6. Hyman, "Psychics and Scientists," The Humanist, May/June 1977, describing Targ and Puthoff's chapter "The Loyal Opposition" as naming Randi, Gardner, Joe Hanlon, George Lawrence and Hyman. CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080037-4. ↩︎

7. Memorandum for C/IP&A/ORD, "Briefing by Stanford Research Institute," ORD-413-73, January 24, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070029-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

8. Memorandum for the record, "Paranormal Phenomena: Further Developments / Reflections / Suggestions," February 2, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070025-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

9. Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎

10. "Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier," Time, cover story, March 4, 1974, as held in CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

11. Beaumont, Roger A. "On the Strategic Potential of ESP," in the 1983 Center Lane staff study, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700360003-3. Zarbo, Michael E. Remote Viewing: Parapsychological Potential for Intelligence Collection?, master's thesis, Defense Intelligence College, November 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R002600250001-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

12. Memorandum, Director of Research and Development to the Associate Deputy Director for Military Affairs, "Request for Military Liaison Support," ORD-0143-95, January 31, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100140001-2 and CIA-RDP96-00791R000100140004-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

13. May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 60, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3-23. ↩︎