In the 1970s, a handsome ex-Israeli army paratrooper popularized extrasensory perception, or ESP. Uri Geller claimed he could bend spoons with his mind, see inside sealed containers, and even read other people's minds.

It was great television. But off-stage, Geller had also caught the eye of the intelligence community. 

"This is where it got very interesting, because scientists would consider, 'Wait a minute, maybe we can read the minds of other government officials; maybe we can see inside a nuclear facility in Russia,'" said national security reporter Annie Jacobsen.

It sounds incredible, but it's true. Relying on now-declassified documents, Jacobsen has written about the U.S. government's decades-long to attempts to use Uri Geller, and others like him, for psychic espionage.