The Israeli – famed for his apparent ability to bend spoons with his mind – was taken to Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s to have his psychic abilities investigated.

A newly released cache of CIA documents reveals UFO sightings and psychic experiments from the "Stargate programme", which has long been of interest to conspiracy theorists.

The project was the codename for a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA).

It aimed to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena to be used by the military and intelligence services.

The Stargate programme inspired the 2009 film The Men Who Stare At Goats starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.

Some of the files surround the weird investigation and reveal how Geller was probed during a week-long series of tests.