Russell Targ - Uri Geller, Ted Owens, and SRI's Covert Research

Russell Targ - Uri Geller, Ted Owens, and SRI's Covert Research

Well, Hal Puthoff and I initiated a program at Stanford Research Institute to investigate psychic abilities, and that program started in 1972. So from 72 until 1995, there was an ongoing research effort at SRI to investigate and apply a human capability, which we call remote viewing, that allows a person to describe and experience what's happening at a distant location. Ted Owens had heard about our activity. We've been a recipient of a lot of press, principally because of our working with Uri Geller in 1973, and then we had some publicity when we published a scientific paper in 1974. In Nature magazine, concerning remote viewing and Uri Geller's apparent psychokinetic activity. Geller did not actually do anything at SRI, but there was a lot of newspaper publicity about Uri Geller and our psychic activities.

Ted Owens was sending us telegrams during this period, 74-75, wanting to work with us because of his great psychokinetic ability; in fact, he called himself the PK man. We were just recovering from a lot of unwanted publicity concerning Uri Geller, and we were happy to work quietly with U. S. Army intelligence officers. Pat Price, who's a retired police commissioner, and Ingo Swann, who are all relatively low-key, under-our-control psychics, not looking for publicity. None of them were. Neither Swann nor Pat Price nor the Army people were looking for publicity, whereas Ted Owens seemed to be extremely interested in publicity. He felt that he was even more psychokinetic a person than Uri Geller. In his communications with us, he made a lot of very extreme, what seemed to us as flamboyant claims.

And independent of whether or not he could move mountains, bring down airplanes, cause disasters, we didn't want to work with him because we were not working particularly in psychokinetic research, PK research. Human perceptual capabilities, and head-ons looked to us like trouble in the publicity realm, and we promised not to embarrass SRI. We didn't keep that promise because of all the tremendous notoriety generated by Uri Geller, but we now had a secret program with the CIA, and we were trying to be well-behaved scientists not to antagonize our host, which is SRI. Not wanting to be known as the ESP capital of the West. So we turned down Ted Owens, although he continued to send us telegrams, which was his favorite way of communicating with us. Finally, in the fall, I believe, of 1976, actually January 30th, of '76?

Yeah, is when he sent you the prediction that he was going to end the drought. Well, I don't think it was a drought. It was the middle of winter. He was going to send us. No, actually there was, Russell. All right. I have all that documented. It was the middle of winter, but California was going through a drought at the time. I see. I didn't recall. I'm just going from my memory of this thing, which is now 30 years ago. What I do recall is that he specifically said that he would send us some very unusual freak weather, and he was capable of doing that. And it was almost like a threat as much as a demonstration of his psychic prowess.

He said, 'I will send you freak weather.' You'll get a feeling, or like you'll get a taste of what I'm capable of. And that was on a Friday, I believe. And the next day, in sunny Palo Alto, northern California, we had a snowstorm. And the paper the following day did indeed say, 'Unusual freak storm hits Palo Alto,' because in the 40 years when I've lived here, I've now lived in Palo Alto 40 years. The only snow we had in 40 years was on the day that Ted Owens said he was going to send us a freak storm. And actually, I have the headline. It says, 'Rare Snowfall Ends Drought.' I see. Very interesting. For the Palo Alto Times, I think it's called. Yes. So the following Monday, Hal Puthoff called him up.

said, 'That was our cinema wire, perhaps I think we called him and he sends us wires, yeah what I believe.' And Hal said to him, 'Well, that was a remarkable prediction exactly as you said; we were hit with his most unusual weather.' And he said, 'What do you mean, prediction? I didn't predict that storm. I caused that storm.' And it was around that time that I believe we handed him off to you. Within a couple of weeks of that, you seemed very grateful for me to take all of the files. Yeah, he was too exuberant for us. We had this low-key secret program that we were doing with the CIA and Air Force intelligence, and we just got rid of Uri Geller, and we didn't want to start out with another madman from the East who felt that he could create thunderstorms and bring down flying saucers.

crash airplanes and so forth. So we were very grateful to you to rescue us from this loose cannon who wanted to come and work with us. And did you continue to receive any further communications from him after that? Not that I recall. I see. So he, I guess he came to understand that I had sort of taken over the files. That's right. He was all yours. Yeah. Did you ever meet him personally, Russell? I never met him. Okay, well, that's the story. Well, I have to say, we had probably a half a year correspondence with him. He was calling Hal Puthoff, so I didn't talk to him. I just was peripheral to these communications. I saw the wires he would send us. And I was the one who received the Palo Alto Times.

So I brought this in and said, look at that, just as he said. And as I recall, you and Hal also managed to communicate this experience to Jim Bolan at Psychic Magazine, who ran a little story about it. Possibly, I don't recall that. I know Jim Bolan, but I didn't remember. They ran it as a news brief. And the reason that I ended up meeting Ted Owens was because people in London in the summer of 76 were experiencing another drought. And they read about him ending the California drought and invited him to try and work on the drought in London and invited him to present at a conference there of the Parascience Foundation. In 1976, we were busy writing up our paper, first big paper to be published.

In the proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. So this is where we were trying to maximally establish our scientific credentials in the scientific community. So Ted Owens was not on our agenda. And that was a landmark paper. Yes, I think it was. Okay, well, I got what I really wanted from you about Ted Owens. Good. I'm sorry that I don't have more to say. What occurred with us. Okay. The only other thing I would like to get, if possible, from you, and I bet I can find them on my own, actually, is any photos that you might have of yourself at that time. So if I run this as a documentary, I can put some photos of you with your voice. There's a photo of Hal Puthoff and me on the back cover of MindReach. I know about that one. So that's the only one that I know of. Okay. I probably have some others in my own files, so I'll dig some out. Fine. Happy to help you. I'm very sorry to hear about your friend. Thanks, Russell. Bye-bye.