SG1I sian WORKING PAP Approved For Release 2004/03/07 * CIA-RDP96-0O7BEROSAILGISOHAERO SUBJECT: Comments Concerning "GRILL FLAME SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION COMMITTEE REPORT," dated December 1979 1. Ref: FONECON between MM and LIC Watt, 5 Feb 80, SAB. 2, Following comments represent, by the very nature of your request, my personal assessment of the Gale Report. It is my understanding that the tone of Dr Vorona's letter to LTG Tighe will be rather general and that specific points will be consolidated for use if necessary. 3, OVERVIEW: In general, I felt that the report was very shallow in nature and added nothing constructive to what is already known. The committee report, with few exceptions, made vague recommendations and avoided providing concrete constructive means of improving the overall DOD program....... unless doing away with the program can be considered as a constructive suggestion. 4. ANNEX 5: Comments pertaining to INSCOM investigations. What can I say? After all, we provided the committee with most of the data contained in the Annex. I was surprised to see our input in print without any con- structive comments. 5. 1 felt that the biggest shortcoming of the report was the negative (and, often misleading) style that the authors selected to use. The following items are a few of the statements that led me to that conclusion: a. Pl, para 2: Committee members were carefully SCTECNEd see eevees with preconceived notions.....-. Comment: Private conversations with individual committee members give quite the opposite view. While there is nothing wrong with having both sides of an issue represented one should not try and pass off the situation as being something other than it is. b. Pll, para 3c: If useful data should not be attributed to the reality of RV phenomena then I suggest that the committee owes us a possible solution. Luck?? Fraud?? Or whatever. c. Plla, para 3: It appears that the committee (minority) is more concerned about the possible losg of their credibility if they endorse the use of operational activities exploiting RV phenomena rather than whether or not such data might be useful. Granted, extreme caution must be used when attempting to exploit such data but said danger should not preclude us from trying to see if operational uses can be found. Approved For Release: ; CIA-RDP96-00788R002000130025-0
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R002000130025-0 d. P5, para 2: Indequate documentation......This statement is contained in the Executive Summary yet later in the report (p59, para 4d) they state that "data on each session is impeccably maintained." I suggest that the Executive Summary must at least be consistent with the core of the report. The summary is quite general and, at least in this case, the committee specifically states the opposite. e. P37, para 2d: They do everything but call Targ a "cheat." Did they, in fact, question Targ on this handwriting issue? The implication here is too strong to be passed over lightly. f. P38, para 3b(2): Same as item "b." If it works it must be luck or faulty experimental design. Very nice, neat, clever way of side- stepping a very emotional issue. g. P4, para 4c: To me, this paragraph is the key to the whole issue. Everyone appears to agree that "things" have occurred that no one can readily explain. Yet, some of these "things" seem to have provided some useful intelligence data. Therefore, it seems logical that we should continue to pursue this program to insure ourselves (DOD) that there is or is not a useful application that can be made. of the RV phenomena. Whether or not we'll ever be able to put this into a nice neat "scientific" package is quite another thing and really not important to the issue at hand! Let's not limit ourselves because the Gale Committee states that experimental procedures have not yet developed sufficiently to be applicable to studying this phenomena. 6. We have not been provided a copy of the proposed Dr Vorona draft message s0 we are not sure if the above input is what you need. If not please advise and we'll provide more data although at the working meeting held 30-31 Jan I outlined most of our major objections. erences WATT LTc, MI Project Manager Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R002000130025-0