COMMENTS CONCERNING 'GRILL FLAME SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION COMMITTEE REPORT'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00788R002000130025-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 2, 1998
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: February 13, 1980
• Content Type: NOTES

WORKI
Approved For Release 2 ?A1~IO3107' CIA-RDP96-00788Rb0391%
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SUBJECT: Comments Concerning "GRILL FLAME SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION
COMMITTEE REPORT," dated December 1979
1. Ref: FONECON between and LTC 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. I 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 screened .........
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. P11, 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.
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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 handl 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
so 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.
1~1 '0~s
MURRAY"B. WATT
LTC, MI
Project Manager
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