being held hostage. What was about to happen was that the Israelis went on to mount a daring rescue mission by commandos who flew in on four Hercules aircraft. Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan, was commander of the elite Israeli army unit on the operation, and was the only Israeli killed on it.
‘Uri called me all excited later on,’ said Byrd, ‘and asked if I’d heard what happened. The successful Israeli rescue raid on Entebbe had taken place, and he was sure the co-ordinates he had been given connected with it in some way.
‘Uri kept saying, “The radar in Entebbe, there must have been radars there. Can you find out if there were radars at these points?”’ I said I’d try. I had contacts with people at the CIA. I called them and asked them could they find out if there were radars at these latitudes and longitudes, as they were roughly on the way from Israel to Uganda, and if they could find out if the radar was really knocked out or not. They called me back and said they didn’t have any information about that. They said the raid as far as we know was conducted underneath the radars anyway and we have no indication that there were radars at those points and whether they were working. But Uri had called me beforehand to tell me about this, and then the raid happened, so I thought that was pretty good.’
Byrd was not suggesting that this conclusively proved that Uri’s psychic ability had knocked out all radar on the 3,520 kilometres between Israel to Uganda, and Geller is – eloquently, perhaps – silent on the matter. But Byrd argued that it did suggest at least that a Mossad agent was in contact with him – and believed he could mind-hack electronics.
A balanced reading of the Entebbe raid and Geller’s part in it is that he was almost certainly drafted in as a slightly peripheral – but easily activated – backup to simply evading the radar stations en route, or avoiding them by some other more conventional method. The most threatening of these radar stations were in Egypt and in Eritrea, where a state-of-the-art Soviet installation was in operation. Andrija Puharich said Uri was asked to block 11 radar stations in total. ‘I can only describe his role as being a shield for Israel like the shield of David in the Bible,’ the physicist said. ‘Whenever there was a problem, he was consulted and would give his ideas and opinion. He would see things that might happen, could possibly happen and so on.’
The mad Idi Amin, Uganda’s despotic ruler, admittedly not the most reliable source, did tell reporters that the Israelis had ‘jammed our radar’, and there was another curious hint about possibly unconventional methods being used on the mission, this one from an Israeli officer briefing the press in Jerusalem after the raiders returned safely from Entebbe.
‘The main problem was to get to the terrorists with the biggest surprise possible,’ the officer told the world’s media. ‘We used several tricks to do that, and once it worked, all the rest was quite simple.’ Uri for his part does not discuss the raid, but has said, ‘Use your imagination. Wouldn’t I have been asked to do things of this nature? Of course I would.’ (Interestingly, Israelis, even those who accept Geller’s abilities are real, usually use the word ‘tricks’ to refer to them. The officer’s press statement could perhaps be seen as a coded tease in this light.)
An unnamed expert on the Entebbe raid told The Independent newspaper in 2013 that the Mossad, with British help, had gained details of the specifications of the radar system at Entebbe and therefore knew the precise approach direction that would be blind to Ugandan radar. He hinted interestingly, however, that a Mossad disinformation tactic might have been to let it be thought Uri Geller had been somehow involved in blocking the radar to deflect any suggestion of the British involvement.
Byrd also told the author of another instance of
‘Uri called me all excited later on,’ said Byrd, ‘and asked if I’d heard what happened. The successful Israeli rescue raid on Entebbe had taken place, and he was sure the co-ordinates he had been given connected with it in some way.
‘Uri kept saying, “The radar in Entebbe, there must have been radars there. Can you find out if there were radars at these points?”’ I said I’d try. I had contacts with people at the CIA. I called them and asked them could they find out if there were radars at these latitudes and longitudes, as they were roughly on the way from Israel to Uganda, and if they could find out if the radar was really knocked out or not. They called me back and said they didn’t have any information about that. They said the raid as far as we know was conducted underneath the radars anyway and we have no indication that there were radars at those points and whether they were working. But Uri had called me beforehand to tell me about this, and then the raid happened, so I thought that was pretty good.’
Byrd was not suggesting that this conclusively proved that Uri’s psychic ability had knocked out all radar on the 3,520 kilometres between Israel to Uganda, and Geller is – eloquently, perhaps – silent on the matter. But Byrd argued that it did suggest at least that a Mossad agent was in contact with him – and believed he could mind-hack electronics.
A balanced reading of the Entebbe raid and Geller’s part in it is that he was almost certainly drafted in as a slightly peripheral – but easily activated – backup to simply evading the radar stations en route, or avoiding them by some other more conventional method. The most threatening of these radar stations were in Egypt and in Eritrea, where a state-of-the-art Soviet installation was in operation. Andrija Puharich said Uri was asked to block 11 radar stations in total. ‘I can only describe his role as being a shield for Israel like the shield of David in the Bible,’ the physicist said. ‘Whenever there was a problem, he was consulted and would give his ideas and opinion. He would see things that might happen, could possibly happen and so on.’
The mad Idi Amin, Uganda’s despotic ruler, admittedly not the most reliable source, did tell reporters that the Israelis had ‘jammed our radar’, and there was another curious hint about possibly unconventional methods being used on the mission, this one from an Israeli officer briefing the press in Jerusalem after the raiders returned safely from Entebbe.
‘The main problem was to get to the terrorists with the biggest surprise possible,’ the officer told the world’s media. ‘We used several tricks to do that, and once it worked, all the rest was quite simple.’ Uri for his part does not discuss the raid, but has said, ‘Use your imagination. Wouldn’t I have been asked to do things of this nature? Of course I would.’ (Interestingly, Israelis, even those who accept Geller’s abilities are real, usually use the word ‘tricks’ to refer to them. The officer’s press statement could perhaps be seen as a coded tease in this light.)
An unnamed expert on the Entebbe raid told The Independent newspaper in 2013 that the Mossad, with British help, had gained details of the specifications of the radar system at Entebbe and therefore knew the precise approach direction that would be blind to Ugandan radar. He hinted interestingly, however, that a Mossad disinformation tactic might have been to let it be thought Uri Geller had been somehow involved in blocking the radar to deflect any suggestion of the British involvement.
Byrd also told the author of another instance of
Similar Books
