Instructor: Rainsong
Date: October 19, 2019 (Saturday)
Seminar: Topic: Remote Perturbation (a brief military history regarding ‘Grill Flame’)– Saturday, 19 October, 2019 at 6:30pm/1830hr New York Time — text format in the PSC #lecture room (Discord) — Instructor: Rainsong — Search LECTURE98
Rainsong: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Rainsong: Welcome to another seminar here at the social club.
Rainsong: As usual, our topic for the evening refers to real-world psionics. So, if somehow you’ve mistaken the place for a gaming room, you have fair warning that things might get a bit weird.
Rainsong: Our topic for the evening is military history.
Rainsong: Specifically the part of American military history regarding remote perturbation in the US Army’s Project Grill Flame
Rainsong: “Remote perturbation” is their fancy way of saying psychokinesis.
Rainsong: You’ve likely heard of Grill Flame as one of the ‘eras’ of the Remote Viewing program. It also investigated other ‘novel’ technologies.
Rainsong: Are there any questions or comments before we dive into the weirdness?
Rainsong: In fact, is anyone interested in tonight’s topic?
Rainsong: (I know Ally’s lurking…)
Wayfarer: Definitely interested to see what we’ve got, yeah.
Turbo: I’m down. Slightly busy but interested
Turbo: (In Houston)
Rainsong: Excellent. Hi, Wayfarer, and hi, Turbo.
ally: Hellooo
Rainsong: I’m going to begin by posting the reference materials I’m working from, in admittedly non-standard format. Should be sufficient for anyone to find and retrieve for themselves, for anyone who wants to
Rainsong: Hi, Ally
Rainsong: Wall of Reference text commencing…
Funding Summary. (Undated, but appears to be notes and records from September of 1978 and 1979).Grill Flame (U) Close Hold / Hand Carry. CIA-RDP96-00788R001100060011-3. CIA Reading Room.
Remote Perturbation Techniques – Project Description and Experimental Protocol (U), Short Title: RPT(U). 1 November 1979. US Army Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama 35809. CIA-RDP96-00788R002000230004-2. CIA Reading Room.
Interim Evaluation, Grill Flame Project, Joint Chiefs of Staff. 11 July 1980. CIA-RDP96-00788R001000340003-2. CIA Reading Room.
Electronic System PerturbationTechniques (U). 30 September 1980. Edwin C May, Beverly S Humphrey, G Scott Hubbard. SRI International, Menlo Park California 94025. Special Access Program for Grill Flame. CIA-RDP96-00788R001300210001-5. CIA Reading Room.
Remote Perturbation Techniques (U) – Managerial Summary. 29 October 1980. CIA-RDP96-00788R002000230005-1. CIA Reading Room.
INSCOM Grill Flame Project Protocol (U). Col Chad B White, ADCSOPS-HUMINT. 1 June 1981. CIA-RDP96-00788R001100200003-6. CIA Reading Room.
Project Gill Flame. Looks like briefing notes. 20 August 1981. CIA-RDP96-00788R001100210002-6. CIA Reading Room.
Grill Flame (U) – Decision Memorandum. 14 January 1982. CIA-RDP96-00788R001100460001-0. CIA Reading Room.
Operations Security of Grill Flame (U). Memo to ADCSOPS-Humint from Robert J Jachim, LTC MI, Grill Flame Project Manager. 19 January 1982. CIA-RDP96-00788R00120060044-6. CIA Reading Room.
Government-Sponsored Research in Psychoenergetics (S). February 1989. CIA-RDP96-00789R002200440001-9. CIA Reading Room.
USAMICOM Program Directive and Protocol on Remote Perturbation Techniques (S). Undated; review date of 28 June 1999. CIA-RDP96-00788R002000230006-0. CIA Reading Room.
www.in2013dollars.com Currency ‘equivalence’ over time, for example, comparing what a budget of $400,000 in 1979 would equate to now www.xe.com Currency conversions
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/home CIA Reading Room. “Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room. Welcome to the Central Intelligence Agency’s Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room. Do UFOs fascinate you? Are you a history buff who wants to learn more about the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam or the A-12 Oxcart? Have stories about spies always fascinated you? You can find information about all of these topics and more in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Electronic Reading Room.”
Wayfarer: (for those of you playing the home game, google will return most of these if you just copy the DocID into Google. That’s the CIA-RDPnumbers thing)
Rainsong: I admit, some of them are just fun reading. For example, in the Operations Security document, the project manager takes a snide swipe at the DIA’s competence.
Rainsong: Inter-agency and inter-branch rivalry – friendly and otherwise – is in evidence
Rainsong: On the other hand, reading briefing notes and interim reports for the fun of it is probably the province of dyed-in-the-wool nerds, so some of the people reading the class logs might find this a bit dry
Rainsong: You three have all heard of Grill Flame, but for sake of completeness, it’s a military project from the previous century. It was customary to give developmental and operational projects random names that wouldn’t give too much away about the nature of the objective, methods, and status.
Rainsong: According to the helpful August 1981 document, Grill Flame was to be a three-year joint project between the DIA and the Army to investigate the use of paranormal phenomena such as clairvoyance and psychokinesis for military use, and to take a look at foreign efforts with a view to countermeasures.
Rainsong: This was primarily with Missile Command, specifically.
Rainsong: It’s not surprising that Missile Command would be interested in PK. We already knew the Air Force was interested and for similar reasons.
Rainsong: Even just being able to push a moving object off its trajectory by a few degrees would be a matter of significant interest for people in charge of missiles, for example
Rainsong: In the approval and consent forms, they are very clear about only involving personnel who were enthusiastic about the activity and who had fully informed consent after hearing a thorough explanation in front of a witness not connected to the program.
Rainsong: This also makes sense.
Rainsong: All this was happening in the end of the 1970s and early 1980s… the public backlash from the revelations about MKULTRA were pretty firmly in mind
Rainsong: Questions or commentary so far?
Rainsong: In terms of timing, the actual project was to get underway in 1981.
Rainsong: I’ll take the lake of typing as a ‘no’
Wayfarer: No questions or commentary here, at least not until later!
Rainsong: The investigations into remote perturbation started with the predictable random number generators.
Rainsong: There were fifteen participants to start with.
Rainsong: And, in good experimental form, they recorded what happened to the random number generation when nobody was in the room.
Rainsong: They also used two different kinds of ‘random’ number generation. One real, based on radiological decay, and one pseudo-random, from a computer procedure, similar to a dicebot.
Rainsong: This was to determine whether there was any difference between the two, in addition to attempting to rule out mechanical and electrical irregularities.
Rainsong: The feedback was in the form of visual and audio things, much like what is at the retro-micro-pk project and had been on the IONS site. This was felt to be more likely be successful than just trying to ‘think’ more 0s or more 1s.
Rainsong: Each participant was to do 100 trials per run, and asked to bias the machine to either 1s or 0s by mental processes of their choosing.
Rainsong: The actual experiments were held in two places: Missile Command and SRI. They figured having two places conducting the same experiments would make a stronger experiment.
Rainsong: The preliminary results of this proof-of-principle exercise were sufficiently favorable to warrant further research:
Rainsong: In the Managerial report, the SRI results were significant, with 87 of the 700 trials reaching a P-value of .021. Two of the seven runs were at P< .05
Rainsong: The Missile Command results were not yet complete at the time the report was submitted.
Rainsong: (Those kinds of RNG games can be fun. Would there be any value in having our own?)
Rainsong: The review of government-sponsored psychoenergetic research (February 1989) claims that the research started in 1972, overlooking the Marines’ use of dowsing in the late 60s, and such.
Rainsong: The $11 million noted as being spent on the research between 1972 and 1989 would be equivalent to $22,777,008.06 in today’s American dollars, or $29,899,239.84 in real money 😉
Kate Embers: (late entry, sorry for that) So they basically tried to affect a random number generator?
Kate Embers: (hello btw)
Rainsong: As their proof-of-principle work, yes. To determine whether 1) the effects reported are real, and 2) if they can be produced voluntarily
Rainsong: (Hi, Kate… late night for you)
Kate Embers: I’ve tried to predict them last year as a small project, but didn’t get to a good conclusion.
Rainsong: Have you tried influencing them, rather than predicting?
Kate Embers: Not yet but the coding part would be very easy
Rainsong: Incidentally, some of the follow-up experimentation was to attempt to figure out whether prediction was involved
Kate Embers: python3 code import random amount = 100 min = 0 max = 10 for i in range(amount): print(random.randint(min, max))
Kate Embers: (very simplistic could make it a lot better but that’ll do for now)
Rainsong: Nothing wrong with simplistic. Also good to compare it to more complex programs, as there is evidence that the more complex a system is, the easier it is to fluff with it
Kate Embers: though random probably uses a Mersienne Twister which is about almost 20 years ahead of 1981.
Kate Embers: well it looks easy the implementation beneath can still be thousands of lines.
Rainsong: nods
Kate Embers: Could add that it counts the amount of numbers with the perceptage of their frequency and the derivation from the random chance. Though you’ll probably have to repeat that a lot until you get some proper data.
Kate Embers: something like 1 – 154 times at 13,4% (+3,4%)
Rainsong: And while the amounts spent seem trivial in terms of the American military budget, it must be remembered that it is a country that has sometimes been a little wary of the paranormal, with members of Science Committees (!) objecting to remote viewing research on the grounds that it is something ‘you shouldn’t know until you’re dead’
Kate Embers: o.O
Kate Embers: oh dear
Rainsong: The officer who was reporting in the specific instance I’m thinking of, left the meeting with a snide “My mistake. I thought this was a Science committee”
Rainsong: Anyway, yes, to get some proper data, I think the Grill Flame people had the right idea: sets of 100 trials per run, and fifteen or so runs.
Kate Embers: The biggest issue here is that numbers are a very conscious concept. The subconscious can’t really do a lot with these. Not on that level. Which is why it translates comparatively poorly. If you’re to determine whether the PC will show a triangle or a circle you’re gonna be a lot more successful compared to whether it would be a 6 or a 7.
Rainsong: Yes, and that’s why these tests used other kinds of feedback such as sounds and graphics
Rainsong: Rolling of dice is easier to influence if you’re visualising the pips on the die-face…. harder for the D20, therefore.
Rainsong: I wonder if a virtual rolling of dice will be harder or easier to influence than regular dice: A 3D animated kind of video game. The coding for this is also very, very easy, and the modeling is pretty basic. Hmmm
Rainsong: Once the RNGs demonstrated remote perturbation exists beyond reasonable doubt, they tried influenceing mechanical switches for circuitry, and discovered that this also worked.
Kate Embers: switches in what sense?
Rainsong: A physical mechanical object that turns a ciruit on or off
Rainsong: There were a lot of these involved in operating missiles
Rainsong: And a translation of the summary of that part of there research is “Oh shit. People can mess with our devices from just about anywhere just by thinking at them. How do we stop this from happening?”
Rainsong: The bulk of the pk effects they studied were small, easy ones, for a very good reason: large effects are unnecessary to cause catastrophic failures and/or errors with their equipment, and more people can produce small effects than large ones, after a fairly minimal amount of training
Rainsong: Purely electronic devices are almost trivial to mess with.
Rainsong: Something that requires a turn of a dial or pressing a button is a bit more work.
Rainsong: But still demonstrably do-able. They demonstrated it
Rainsong: Therefore, they were concerned
Rainsong: Questions? Comments?
Kate Embers: What did they do as a reaction?
TehOldeSourcerer: Couldn’t come to lecture due to techno issues T_T
Rainsong: It’s now a matter of public record that they wrote a very alarmed report. I imagine they also exercised their invective before writing the report
Rainsong: That’s unfortunate, Teh. Happily, it’s a textchat and can be read at your leisure if the subject is interesting
TehOldeSourcerer: Aye thank you
TehOldeSourcerer: Will be checking the site for the RV lectures, thank you for posting those 🙂
Rainsong: Happy to hear they are of interest. Thanks to ShadowRain for posting them on the website 🙂
Rainsong: Would this kind of history topic be of interest for future seminars?
Wayfarer: Always, yep, particularly about operational stuff!
Kate Embers: depends on the topic :thinking:
Kate Embers: but generally yea
Rainsong: Kate: Which history topics are most likely interesting to you?
Rainsong: Clearly we have a vote for operational military and intel history, from Wayfarer
Kate Embers: I’ll know when I see it :sweatsmile:
Rainsong: Fair enough.
Rainsong: Thanks for participating, everyone.
Rainsong: Teh: The RV lectures are incomplete, because people tend to drop out halfway through. (Who knew military-grade professional stuff might involve effort?)
Wayfarer: We usually start that stuff with like 5 or so people and most people disappear by stage 3, of those maybe 2 have actually figured out that they’re supposed to write the shit down exactly as directed.
Rainsong: Considering the professionals often spent a year just at Stage 3, working at it full-time, it’s not something to rush, anyway
Wayfarer: And not like, freeform wing it
Rainsong: Also true
Wayfarer: There’s nothing wrong with freeform winging it, unless you’re doing CRV, in which case everything is wrong with it.
Rainsong: Exactly so
Rainsong: Happily, for some fairly practical purpopses, doing it properly just through Stage 2 can be effective.
Rainsong: cough ARV cough cough
Wayfarer: Was going to say, ARV or like, demos.
Rainsong: I believe this is why Lyn Buchanan suggests that RV students learn the game of Baccarat
Wayfarer: Still, if the ARV is gonna be valid you need to confirm signal line acquisition…and if you’ve confirmed signal line acquisition why wouldn’t you want to go all the way?
Rainsong: All you need to do for each round is predict which hand is better, or if they will tie.
Kate Embers: thanks for the lecture ^^ I’m off to bed >.> 02:23 am
Wayfarer: Ending at 3 also makes sense sometimes, because 4 and 5 usually take multiple days to actually move through.
Rainsong: Thanks for participating, Kate. Sleep well 🙂
Rainsong: When you’re still learning the ropes, it can be difficult to stay in structure long enough for a full session.
Rainsong: But it’s nice to be able to use it for something while still in the early stages, just for motivation. Of course, getting through the slump of the ‘crash’ near the beginning of the process is a task on its own
Wayfarer: 4 and 5 require moving out of contact with the signal line over and over and I wouldn’t expect those to be done in one sitting anyhow if the target is of any gravity.
Wayfarer: But 4 and 5 are also where the team itself can come into play with a properly blinded monitor helping in the analysis by directing the viewer or asking pointed questions about specific objects etc.
Wayfarer: You can get some of that engagement in 3.