VISIT OF AMSAA GRILL FLAME PARTICIPANTS TO SRI, 21-22 AUGUST 1979

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Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240011-3
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RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
S
Document Page Count: 
6
Document Creation Date: 
November 4, 2016
Document Release Date: 
June 29, 1998
Sequence Number: 
11
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
September 19, 1979
Content Type: 
MFR
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PDF icon CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240011-3.pdf459.66 KB
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Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240011-3 DRXSY-DS 19 September 1979 SUBJECT: Visit of AMSAA GRILL FLAME Participants to SRI, 21-22 August 1979 (U) 1. (S-NF) The four members of the AMSAA GRILL FLAME Core Group visited SRI on 21-22 August 1979 for discussions with the SRI staff and Hella Hammid. Details of these discussions are presented in the following para- graphs. 2. (S-NF) Hella Hammid has participated in the SRI remote viewing (RV) program for the past 5-6 years. The core group was most anxious to meet and spend some time with Hella as we had heard so much about her and the successful RV work she has done and, most importantly, we have had very little contact with other remote viewers due to the nature of our participation and were looking forward to discussing our ideas and feelings about RV with another viewer. a. (S-NF) Hella briefly discussed the three weeks she spent in Egypt with Steve Schwartz. The RV procedure she used in Egypt was basic- ally coordinate RV in time instead of space; i.e., given that you are at a site, you are provided with a date to view, such as 200 BC. Hella didn't know much more about the results of the Egypt experience than we did as she had not yet gotten any after the fact feedback from Steve Schwartz. b. (S-NF) Hella originally participated in SRI's RV program as a "control subject", basically as a personal favor to Russ Targ, whom she'd known for several years. She approached the area of psychic phenomena with a positive, willing attitude, which has expanded as her involvement has expanded; however, she is in no way an absolute believer. As a matter of fact, out-of-the-body experience (OOBE) scares her. She and Russ went to a two day OOBE experiential seminar led by Robert Monroe as part of the Esalen experience and she said she slept through the whole thing, which is very much out of line with her normal patterns. (Russ was very hesitant to discuss his "success".) Classified by: MSG, HQDA(DAMI-ISH) dtd 7 Jul 78 Review on: 7 Jul 98 Approved For Releas 1221979 0.4 f 2 y A-l DP96-00788R002000240011-3 Approved For Release 2001/04/02 _.[A-RDP96-00788R002000240011-3 DRXSY-DS 19 September 1979 SUBJECT: Visit of AMSAA GRILL FLAME Participants to SRI, 21-22 August 1979 (U) c. (S-NF) Hella's approach to RV is quite interesting. She tries to avoid focusing on the fact that she will be doing an RV session prior to the scheduled meeting time and then uses only about a 5 minute quiet time to relax but still stay alert. Her normal sleeping pattern is to sleep 6 hours at night and take a short afternoon nap; thus, if she has an afternoon session, she will take a short nap prior to the session so as not to fall asleep during the session. Hella views lying down with her eyes closed; however, as each visual impression comes to. her, she opens her eyes and draws that image. After the visual/drawing portion of the session, she lets her other senses come into play and quite often perceives the sounds, smells, temperature conditions, etc. at the target site. This raises an interesting point Hella made about her session preliminaries: she always assumes a body position which is very comfort- able so that body sensations associated with the room, couch, etc. will not intrude or influence her ability to experience physical sensations during the session. She mentioned that she is always very aware of her bodily state and, if she did not feel physically good, she would not expect to have a good session. d. (S-NF) Hella works practically exclusively with Russ Targ as her interviewer. They have been good friends for a long time and she relies heavily upon him to suggest approaches, perspectives and directions for her participation, particularly during sessions. This was interest- ing to note as she often does sessions alone at home when called to do so. Her dependence on Russ' guidance and her implicit trust of his judgment on the way to do things and on the outcome of different approaches and techniques was very apparent, because, when Russ was out of the room, she was hesitant about making her own assessment on how well she did in one sensory mode or another or in what areas she was particularly accurate. It's as if Russ consfiitutes her self-assurance. Hella also indicated that she derived a lot of help and confidence in her RV abilities by talking with Ingo. e. (S-NF) When we discussed our triple sessions (where the 3 viewers participate in sequential sessions on the same target with feedback and discussion among the entire core group delayed until after the third session), Hella became very enthusiastic because it sounded like so much fun to be able to talk things over with other viewers. We indicated that this sort of discussion tended to serve as a sort of feedback of its own, especially when the official feedback packages were rather limited in detail. She thought the "triple" was a marvelous way to handle these conditions and stated she would really like to do that type of sequential session herself. (No real reaction from Russ on this point in regards to doing this at SRI). Approved For Release 2001/04/02 2CIA-RDP9 ?db-A Approved For Release 2001/04/02 CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240011-3 DRXSY-DS 19 September 1979 SUBJECT: Visit of AMSAA GRILL FLAME Participants to SRI, 21-22 August 1979 (U) f. (S-NF) As mentioned previously, Hella draws throughout the session as the visual impressions occur to her. During a later discussion about drawing, she explained that by drawing the imagery immediately after it occurred, she could "let it go" and go forward to perceive other image with a "clear screen"; she did, not want to delay drawing until the end of the session and possibly embroider the basic visual impression by analytic or memory overlay, i.e., noise. This particular insight is very valuable, but has to be considered in light of each viewer's personal preferences. Throughout the course of our discussions, it became fairly obvious that Hella is a compulsive doodler. Whenever Russ was talking, she always had a piece of paper in her lap, constantly doodling. When- ever she returned from a break in the discussions and sat down without any paper, she became visibly restless and uncomfortable within a few minutes. She would then get up and get some paper and start doodling, becoming immediately more relaxed. One additional point she made about her drawing is that she frequently draws things 90? off on the horizontal or vertical plane, g. (S-NF) Hella asked us if we used psi in our daily lives and was very disappointed when we told her we did not. She stated that she always had feelings about people before she began RV; however, she now trusts her feelings to be fairly accurate instead of just coincidental and she has also set up numerous situations with her friends and family to try them out. She also uses these instincts in her photography work and says she can sense when a shot is right. However, her instincts tend to work in situations where she doesn't want them to, like riding in a subway and starting to receive information on the other passengers. (None of us asked the obvious question.) h. (.S-NF) Hella is a very warm, engaging and very alive woman. Our discussions with her were both pleasant and profitable. She also seemed to enjoy them and expressed her enthusiasm about meeting again to continue the exchange. 3. (S-NF) Manny Gale had met with Russ and Hal in the morning of 21 Aug 79. Their discussions centered on the earlier visit of the Army Science Board (ASB) to SRI and Russ and Hal's frustration with the ASB's criticism of their evaluation procedure and statistical analyses, since they had not presented their methodology to the ASB. They requested that Manny set up a meeting between them and Drs. Tang and Snyder to discuss their methodology. Tang and Snyder are the experts on the ASB in this area and Russ and Hal feel that the other board members are unlikely to understand the relevant statistics or be able to agree on any methodology. We understand that this meeting is being set up, but have no idea when. NOT :E1 ; .B . O. F.up I. T_ NA IONALS Approved For Release 2001/04/b`IYAS- nn788R002000240011-3 Approved For Release 2001/0.4/a2-:;CIA=,RDP96-00788R002000240011-3 DRXSY-DS 19 September 1979 SUBJECT: Visit of AMSAA GRILL FLAME Participants to SRI, 21-22 August 1979 4. (S-NF) Russ was still very upset about our Phase I Interim Note, even after a prior phone conversation with the Project Officer. Russ' concern was that we didn't come right out and say RV was absolutely great, etc. and he was worried that people reading the report would become non- supportive of the SRI effort. Afterhaggling over the report for two days, he finally dropped the subject when it was pointed out to him that if we had come out with wide-eyed enthusiasm about RV, based on our statistics, we would be out of business by now. This seemed to have finally penetrated and he hesitantly agreed that the report was written as it should be. At that point, he also admitted that Manny Gale had commented very positively on our report to him and Hal the previous morning. We also reminded Russ about the security limitations of tele- phone conversations with any of us. 5. (S-NF) We very generally discussed Wayne's methodology for the LaBerge task with Russ. He was, at best, unenthusiastic about it and indicated he had not seen Wayne's ASB presentation (a fact which we were fairly sure was not true and later confirmed as not true). Russ discussed Ed May and Beverly Humphrey's work at SRI and also indicated some work along similar lines was being done by Dean Robert John and Brenda Dunne at Princeton. They have extracted 40 factors (essences?) from target material and are apparently analyzing their frequency and determining probability of occurrence (rarity?) Sounds interesting. 6. (S-NF) We discussed the use of the box technique for RV and how to set one up with Russ and Hella (Hella did all of the box RV sessions). Russ indicated that he had no compelling rationale for the 4x4, 16 bin arrangement other than it nicely represents a geographical coordinate grid (and he had planned to later use it for a bookcase and that was the size he needed). Russ had a number of ideas about what sort of objects should be used in the bins based on their experience: a. (S-NF) Objects should not be personally distasteful to the viewer. For instance, Russ had selected a gun as one of the original objects, but never used it after remembering the fact that Hella hates guns and might have reacted very negatively to the experiment if a gun had been included. Hella strongly concurred with this point. b. (S-NF) Objects should be instantly recognizable; i.e., the viewer should be able to identify the object in a split-second glance by more than just its name. As an example, Russ had also thought about using a wrench in one of the bins, but Hella would not have known what it was just by looking at it; only after it-had been identified as a wrench by someone else would she have known what it was. NOT. l'ELE .;ABLZ O i+.Q i . YATIOIYAL i Approved For Release 2001 8R002000240011-3 (U) Approved For Release 2001/(, 4L92 : CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240011-3 Ilk DRXSY-DS 19 September 1979 SUBJECT: Visit of AMSAA GRILL FLAME Participants to SRI, 21-22 August 1979 (U) c. (S-NF) Objects should be easily distinguishable from each other in terms of shape, texture, etc. This is an amazingly difficult re- quirement to fulfill, even though it sounds relatively easy to do. For example, SRI had a compass and a pair of eye glasses in their object array. They sound very different, but a description of round, glass, smooth is common to both objects. Based on their experience, Russ and Hella thought it would be very difficult to do a box RV series containing geometrical shapes only. Along these same lines, Russ indicated that similar shapes should not be used in adjacent bins. After having selected what they believed to be 16 very distinct objects, Russ said they went crazy when they put them out on a table together and started seeing all of the similarities, such as the compass and eyeglasses. Trying to arrange the objects in the box to maintain as much distinctness as possible took a long time. Russ also suggested toy stores and hardware stores as being good sources of objects, again remembering the idio- syncrasies of the viewer(s). 7. (S-NF) We discussed the APG target pool of twenty sites with the location of the reactor as the objective. Russ and Hella thought this would be a good experiment. Their only real concern was about the precision of the coordinates provided to them; any coordinate errors could be very detrimental to the entire experiment. They also thought that other methods besides coordinates might prove interesting, such as grid search, map dousing and pendulum techniques. Their suggestions along these lines were quite surprising, since they had not seemed that open to innovative location techniques prior to this. It's possible that their association with Steve Schwartz has broadened their perspec- tives. 8. (S-NF) We discussed the idea of more work to look for tunnels. Russ expressed his frustrations with their past work in this area and his distaste for taking it on again. When they had done their previous work, they found tunnels which were known and the reaction was "so what?". They got virtually no feedback on the new tunnel locations they provided; no one was interested in following up the new data. Therefore, SRI believes that the considerable amount of time and effort they put into the tunnel work was a total waste. Russ mentioned that the Marines had doused for VC tunnels and caches with some success and had done some experiments at Quantico which were also successful. A write up of this and other interesting dousing work is found in a new book, The Divining Hand by Christopher Bird. Russ is adamant about not doing any further tunnel work unless a response and follow-up is assured. NOT, Fu;LZAS. L:w T.O 07=1d-:T NNA T.I O1`dAL Approved For Release 2001/040Q . ALA=RDP96-00788R002000240011-3 Approved For Release 2OO11041Q. gL4-RDP96-OO788ROO2OOO24OO11-3 DRXSY-DS 19 September 1979 SUBJECT: Visit of AMSAA GRILL FLAME Participants to SRI, 21-22 August 1979 (.U) 9. (S-NF) We discussed our null target sessions with Russ, Hal and Hella. They were frankly appalled at the idea of doing such a thing. They considered it a form of outright trickery against the viewer which. could be very detrimental to the process and, most significantly, could tend to destroy the trust between the viewer and experimenters as well as do a number to the viewer, since in effect he has been asked to view something and yet denied that something to view at the same time. Hella was particularly negative about the idea of such a thing occurring and indicated she would not participate in a series of sessions even having been told a null target was a possibility. 10. (S-NF) Russ and Ed May were very interested in our use of video taping and thought it was a good idea. They might even try it themselves. 11. (S-NF) We discussed in general terms, due to the lack of time, the new evaluation procedure put together by Wayne's group with Ed and Beverly. They were very interested in our approach and Ed expressed his desire to stop at AMSAA and discuss it further when he is out this way in October. 12. (S-NF) We briefly discussed the training program for the INSCOM viewers. Other than stating that things were going well, Russ did not relay any details. Rather, he was totally exercised about the evalua- tion of six beacon sessions done by one of the INSCOM viewers. Using Ed May's concept evaluation procedure, Beverly correctly matched four out of the six and switched the remaining two. Russ was beside himself as he could not understand how she could have possibly missed the last two. The two targets in question were a large stone building with columns (we don't know the identity of the building) and a cemetery. Russ indicated that during the session on the building, the viewer made a drawing that looked exactly like the building. When we were finally shown the original drawing, it turned out that the drawing of the build- ing was one of seven or eight small drawings on a page and there were other pages of similar amounts of drawing, Not having seen the transcript or concept evaluation list, it's hard to make a real judgment, but it seemed reasonable to us that Beverly might not have put the same emphasis on the one small drawing as did Russ and, as we pointed out, the drawing could also represent a mausoleum at a cemetery. Russ was not at all receptive to our comments. In later discussions with Ed and Beverly on the topic, they indicated that Russ had really come down hard on them for not correctly matching the last two, but that they stood firm by their results. DISTRIBUTION: John Kramar ApproQe F W e 1@9 2001/ AMSAA GRILL FLAME CORE GROUP LI,A BI . + .... ' I N rTAT.L0NALS NOT 0788ROO2000240011-3