The CIA's Analysis of Uri Geller

Uri Geller arrived at the Stanford Research Institute in August 1972. He was brought there by physicists Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff, who were already running CIA-funded research into anomalous human perception. Geller was known as a performer who bent spoons and claimed to read minds. Targ and Puthoff were not interested in the spoons. They were interested in whether his apparent ability to perceive information through unknown means could be tested, controlled, and documented under laboratory conditions.

They ran the experiments for a year. The results were significant enough that Nature, one of the most peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world, agreed to publish them in 1974. The editors noted they could not find a methodological flaw sufficient to reject the paper. The CIA classified its own assessment of the same experiments separately. That assessment was declassified in 2017 and is available on CIA.gov.

The SRI experiments on Geller covered two primary areas. The first was remote viewing — his ability to describe a target location or object he had not been shown and could not perceive through normal sensory means. The second was what the researchers called information transfer, his ability to reproduce drawings sealed in envelopes or stored in separate rooms without any physical access to the originals.

The controls were specific. Geller was isolated in a shielded room during experiments. The targets were selected by personnel who had no contact with him. The researchers evaluating his responses did not know which target had been selected. The protocol was designed to eliminate every conventional explanation for accurate responses before attributing them to anomalous perception.

In the double-blind drawing experiments, Geller was asked to reproduce drawings sealed in envelopes that he never physically handled. In a sequence of thirteen trials, he passed eight, declining to respond rather than guessing when he felt uncertain. Of the eight responses he gave, all eight were rated by independent judges as matching the target drawings. The statistical probability of achieving that result by chance is approximately one in a million.

The paper Targ and Puthoff submitted to Nature described the experimental results and methodology in full. The journal's editors subjected it to extended peer review, specifically looking for methodological flaws that would explain the results through conventional means. The review process took longer than usual. The editors ultimately published the paper with an editorial note acknowledging the controversial nature of the subject matter and stating that the methodology appeared sound despite their reservations about the implications.

The publication in Nature was significant not because it resolved the question of how Geller produced the results but because it established that the question could not be dismissed on methodological grounds. The experiments had been designed by physicists at a credible research institution, reviewed by the editors of the world's most rigorous scientific journal, and found to be methodologically defensible. The results remained unexplained.

The CIA's separate classified assessment of the Geller experiments was declassified in 2017 and released through the agency's FOIA reading room. The assessment confirmed that Geller had demonstrated anomalous perception under controlled conditions at SRI. It described the experimental protocol as sound. It noted that the results were reproducible across multiple sessions and multiple target types.

The CIA assessment concluded that Geller had demonstrated a real perceptual capability that could not be explained by conventional means at the time of the assessment. It noted that the capability, if reliable and trainable, had potential intelligence applications. It recommended continued research. The research that followed was the Stargate Project.

The Geller experiments at SRI were the starting point for what became two decades of classified US government research into anomalous human perception. The CIA and later the Defense Intelligence Agency funded research at SRI and other institutions specifically because the Geller results, and parallel results with other subjects, suggested that something real was being measured even if the mechanism was not understood.

Geller himself has been a controversial figure for decades. His stage performances have been widely criticized as fraudulent. The controlled laboratory conditions of the SRI experiments were specifically designed to eliminate the techniques associated with stage mentalism. The results obtained under those conditions are a separate matter from his public performances. Researchers who dismiss the SRI results by referencing his stage career are conflating two distinct bodies of evidence.

The question the experiments raised, whether human perception can access information through means outside the known sensory system, was not answered by the Geller study. It was established as a question worth taking seriously. Twenty years of classified government research followed from that establishment. That research is documented in the Stargate Project files.

The CIA funded research on a man who claimed to read minds, classified the results, and later declassified an assessment concluding that he had demonstrated a real perceptual capability under controlled laboratory conditions. The results were published in Nature. The CIA assessment confirmed them. The mechanism behind them was not identified then and has not been identified since. The question of what Geller was doing at SRI in 1972 has not been answered by the public record.