Update
'Remote viewing led to Saddam's capture'
ISRAEL. It was a clairvoyant using remote viewing techniques who was responsible for leading US commandos to Saddam Hussein's hiding place in Iraq three years ago.
That's the claim made by famous spoon-bender Uri Geller in an interview with a Reuters news agency correspondent in Herzliya, Israel, the day after Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity.
"You remember when they found Saddam Hussein in Iraq? A soldier walked over to a rock, lifted it and then found a trap-door and found him in there," Geller recalled.
"Well, I know that that soldier walked over to that rock because he got information from a 'remote viewer' from the United States."
Geller, who claims he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, said his information came from a high-level source involved in American paranormal programmes.
At the time of his capture, US commanders said a source close to Hussein had given him up under interrogation. A US military spokesman in Iraq had no immediate comment on Geller's claim.
A Brazilian psychic had previously claimed the $25 million bounty offered for Saddam's capture, saying he had described the hiding place in letters to the US government. Uri Geller is currently in Israel in connection with a reality TV show.
ParanormalReview.com's editor, Roy Stemman, recently suggested that Geller himself may have been the unidentified remote viewer who was brought in by the Israeli Army to help locate two kidnapped soldiers.
Since research into remote viewing - the ability to use the mind to "see" events that are happening far away - has been financed by the US military in the past, it is likely that there is a grain of truth in Geller's claim. Indeed, it would be surprising if the US wasn't experimenting with remote viewing techniques back in 2003, alongside conventional investigation methods, in their hunt for SaddamHussein.
In fact, a remote viewing experiment conducted by US parapsychologist Stephan A. Schwartz , an internationally acknowledged expert on the subject, illustrates how accurate the technique can be, particular if the results are a consensus view taken from numerous "viewers".
The experiment, conducted on 3 November 2003, suggested that Saddam Hussein would be found crouching in a subterranean room or cave, beneath an ordinary-looking house on the outskirts of a small village near Tikrit, that is reached by a tunnel. And the former leader, they said, would look like a homeless person, with a ratty salt-and-pepper beard. He would have a gun and some money but would not put up any resistance.
All of these statements, subsequently, were scored as hits. And the drawings showed striking similarities with the diagrams and related evidence presented by the US military when they announced Saddam's capture (see Schwartz's comparison below).
Four days after the experiment, the Pentagon announced that a special "covert commando force to hunt Saddam Hussein" had been formed. He was captured more than five weeks later, on 16 December.
The ARE's magazine Venture Inward (March/April 2004) carried a news story about the seminar in which Stephan Schwartz emphasised it was just an experiment, adding:
"We had no access to military forces and, without that, there is no way to operationalise such information. People often target that remote viewing is just a piece of a complex puzzle, not some magic bullet that alone solves the problem.
"However, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that, had we been able to get it to someone in the command structure who was prepared to act on it, this data might have been quite useful."
Did Uri Geller hear about this experiment and misinterpret it? Or does he have information that suggests someone did have access to the command struct and it did act on it? Though Geller provides no evidence, the Stephan A. Schwartz experiment ddemonstrates that such a possibility is feasible.
Perhaps, one day, the Freedom of Information Act will reveal the full story.
'Remote viewing led to Saddam's capture'
ISRAEL. It was a clairvoyant using remote viewing techniques who was responsible for leading US commandos to Saddam Hussein's hiding place in Iraq three years ago.
That's the claim made by famous spoon-bender Uri Geller in an interview with a Reuters news agency correspondent in Herzliya, Israel, the day after Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity.
"You remember when they found Saddam Hussein in Iraq? A soldier walked over to a rock, lifted it and then found a trap-door and found him in there," Geller recalled.
"Well, I know that that soldier walked over to that rock because he got information from a 'remote viewer' from the United States."
Geller, who claims he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, said his information came from a high-level source involved in American paranormal programmes.
At the time of his capture, US commanders said a source close to Hussein had given him up under interrogation. A US military spokesman in Iraq had no immediate comment on Geller's claim.
A Brazilian psychic had previously claimed the $25 million bounty offered for Saddam's capture, saying he had described the hiding place in letters to the US government. Uri Geller is currently in Israel in connection with a reality TV show.
ParanormalReview.com's editor, Roy Stemman, recently suggested that Geller himself may have been the unidentified remote viewer who was brought in by the Israeli Army to help locate two kidnapped soldiers.
Since research into remote viewing - the ability to use the mind to "see" events that are happening far away - has been financed by the US military in the past, it is likely that there is a grain of truth in Geller's claim. Indeed, it would be surprising if the US wasn't experimenting with remote viewing techniques back in 2003, alongside conventional investigation methods, in their hunt for SaddamHussein.
In fact, a remote viewing experiment conducted by US parapsychologist Stephan A. Schwartz , an internationally acknowledged expert on the subject, illustrates how accurate the technique can be, particular if the results are a consensus view taken from numerous "viewers".
The experiment, conducted on 3 November 2003, suggested that Saddam Hussein would be found crouching in a subterranean room or cave, beneath an ordinary-looking house on the outskirts of a small village near Tikrit, that is reached by a tunnel. And the former leader, they said, would look like a homeless person, with a ratty salt-and-pepper beard. He would have a gun and some money but would not put up any resistance.
All of these statements, subsequently, were scored as hits. And the drawings showed striking similarities with the diagrams and related evidence presented by the US military when they announced Saddam's capture (see Schwartz's comparison below).
Four days after the experiment, the Pentagon announced that a special "covert commando force to hunt Saddam Hussein" had been formed. He was captured more than five weeks later, on 16 December.
The ARE's magazine Venture Inward (March/April 2004) carried a news story about the seminar in which Stephan Schwartz emphasised it was just an experiment, adding:
"We had no access to military forces and, without that, there is no way to operationalise such information. People often target that remote viewing is just a piece of a complex puzzle, not some magic bullet that alone solves the problem.
"However, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that, had we been able to get it to someone in the command structure who was prepared to act on it, this data might have been quite useful."
Did Uri Geller hear about this experiment and misinterpret it? Or does he have information that suggests someone did have access to the command struct and it did act on it? Though Geller provides no evidence, the Stephan A. Schwartz experiment ddemonstrates that such a possibility is feasible.
Perhaps, one day, the Freedom of Information Act will reveal the full story.
