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I reminded him that I had been promised copies of the tapes and films we had been shown so that the CSICOP could view them. He promised me that I would be given them, and Vallejo and I departed for Grenoble, where we were to meet Girard in person.

Shortly before I went to the Pechiney lab in Voreppe, near Grenoble, I received a phone call from Crussard, who astonished me by announcing that he had remeasured the films and tapes and had reversed his earlier decision. Now, no trickery was visible to him, nor to his assistant, who agreed with these new findings. Further, said Crussard, the entire encounter had been a test of me, and I had failed to pass. He said it had been staged to catch me, and that I had been found out. I told him I did not believe this, but he assured me that it was of little importance, since the experiments we had seen in the films and tapes were "not really scientific tests anyway" and that I would surely see the proof when I saw Girard that evening. But those films and tapes had been represented to us in Paris as scientific documents, not mere amusements, and Crussard had insisted that we were seeing proof of the claims he made for Girard. Vallejo and I decided to wait until that evening, however, rather than argue with Crussard over the phone. A "live" demonstration was, after all, much to be preferred.

In the company of Dr. David Davies and Dr. Christopher Evans, a CSICOP member, who had come from England to observe these tests, I viewed several more tapes and much data concerning Girard. None of us gave much credence to the extensive instrumentation that had been applied by the Pechiney scientists to Girard, since evidence concerning surveillance and security precautions was not given, nor were such procedures evident in the data at hand. We sat down to design the protocol for that evening's tests.

The rules were simple. All test bars—supplied by Pechiney in the sizes usually used in the many previous tests of Girard—were to be marked with broad colored stripes running from one end to the other, so that any rotation would be obvious. All bars were coded and sealed up so that Girard would have no chance to handle them and would not know which ones would be used. We drew up standards for testing the bars in advance for straightness. We would insist that all tests be done before a video camera, with the carefully delineated test area included at all times within the camera view, the bar offered "on camera," and all handling done in full view of the camera.

These simple rules were agreed to in advance by Girard and the two Pechiney scientists, Bouvaist and Dubost. They admitted that it was the first time they had followed such rules, though we were not told why this was so. Such precautions seemed to us to be minimal; we even wished to apply more stringent procedures if and when Girard passed these tests. After all, this was a man funded by huge amounts of money to prove a fantastic claim. Prodigious investments of personnel had been made as well, though under the French system, in which all workers tend to agree with the boss, I did not expect to find any difference of opinion expressed by lesser luminaries than Crussard. I was quite correct in this assumption. Not one of the dozens of personnel we met expressed any disagreement with his determination to prove paranormality in Girard, and he issued firm instructions to them that were followed slavishly.

One edict from on high was that Vallejo must not be present at the tests. The suspicion was that he might act as my confederate, Crussard apparently having lost track of who was being tested. Since Mr. Vallejo has seen dozens of spoon-benders of all sorts, he was not very interested anyway and gladly substituted a tour of Grenoble for a boring lab session of watching silly people try to do silly things. Along with my other colleagues, I was committed to watching the dreadful drama and determined to see it through.

We three had no idea of the softening-up process that was about