• he R Q nDe l Uo 1000 CONN ECTICUi AVENUE N W I • WASHINGTON 0 C 200J6----------- 3 4 November 1969 VvL 613 y Dr Stephen Lukasik Deputy Director ARPA Office of the Secretary of Defense Washington D C 20301 THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN DOWNGRADED TO- •ut LASSIFIEP_ 2 4 SEP JS L Per P rc'cjr r 1 i M f ELf T 0 Dear Steve REVIEW OF PROJECT PANDORA EXPERIMENTS Following our recent discussions I have gone through the data on the ·Pandora Experiment as they have been presented by Major Mcilwain Maj Mcilwain has done a superb job on reassessing -----the-material of the last few years and presen1ing 1t Lri an easily understood form During the course of this review I spent approximately 8 hours October 22 1969 looking at the material and in related discussions In brief I am forced to conclude that the data do not present any evidence of a behavioral change due to the presence of the special signal within the limits of any reasonable scientific criteria There is evidence of behavioral change in some cases but this change could be attributed to a variety of causes or systematic measurement errors all well within the limits of experimental methodology Evidence of other effects such as EEG histology and chromosomal analyses have not accumulated with either adequate detail or control to tell whether effects due to radiation are present A One should not infer from these statements ·that there is no value to the work done there is unquestionably considerable value in development of protocols and facilities and the possibility of extending this to a variety of useful work which I will discuss later The primary experiments have been to look for the effect of the special signal on specially trained monkeys at intensity levels comparable - P'J' i l' crdESl2P fic 1 ·22u 6 rmTsmbsr JOBS o r 1 ed ·-·--·--·----· 1 It om a t mat jg J· 6¥t Ht Ho 1·e i_JJ fitat n · Dr -Stephen Lukasik Page 2 4 November 1969 WL-613 o especial site environment As I recall the data there have been four operant conditioned animals which have been exposed in total 7 _times to the special signal 2 times to a square wave l time to a tri angular wave and l time to cw The intensity generally used has been 4 6 mw cm 2 which l mi ght point out is probably in excess of the special --Site-environment Exi eriments are not run at higher intensity since this is the maximum possible for the equipment using two carriers At least one animal was run at very low intensities correspon ing perhaps closer to the action site ranging from w cm 2 to l mw cm but I recall nothing particularly significant for this run compared to the others The basic parameters measured were the PR prompt response DRL differential reinforcement of low rate and the latency time to go into DRL I will not attempt here to detail the various particular runs generally of 20 to 30 or more days in duration but rather give my general impressions There were certainly individua 1 days where differences were observed which were statistically significant in terms of the individual day's experiment These behavioral changes however were well within the limits of causes other than radiation such as change of the animal from one room to another day night variations or perturbations caused by malfunction of equipment - - r t i c u l a r there seem to be a considerable number of malfunctions in the pellet-feeding gear In the case of one animal who was exposed at two different times approximately two years apart it was interesting to note that the variation in his behavior during the 2nd exposure where he had the opportunity for long continued training was much smoother than the first period It is also important to note that while a large number of performance degradations were noted most of these occurred either in the form of very small variations from a normal count i e number of food pellets obtained or occurred the day following a significant equipment malfunction There may have been one case animal number 673 where there was a performance time-out of some significance In general one would consider the unexposed animal or a period of nonexposure to be the control I would also say that in view of the problem associated with the special signal an equally significant control would be the cw signal However as mentioned above there was only one case of this sort of run and this quite a few years ago It was difficult for me to see how one can have a viable protocol for any stimulus when the stimulus intensity has not been brought ta a level which creates · -a positive effect and this then compared to the required operational level • Or' Stephen Lukasik - Page 3 4 November 1969 WL-613 For example such a level might be in excess of 10 mw cm 2 The equipment used in a combined single-mode manner could certainly produce approximately this level of power Another type of experiment that could be classified as behavioral was the reaction time studies Four animals were used here two with food reward and two using shock avoidance The basic concept here is for the animal itself to adjust his reaction time to a comfortable value and to look at changes in this as a result of various stimuli or environmental conditions Of the four tests run three showed no effect one did show an effect but this effect could be either eliminated or emphasized by a change of the timing program I believe in general these reaction time studies have been used in the behavioral field primarily for relatively short-term changes Certainly there was some indication of statistically valid variations over a period of months but this could not be correlated to on off times of the signal It might be noted also that negative results were obtained for a tone substitution versus the microwaves for shock avoidance • • In summary you could say that there are some changes in the 'distribution of the various parameters at various times but there were few or none uniquely correlated with a special signal There were certainly no trends observed any statistically valid changes were single day and there was certainly no evidence of anything that could be described as a catastrophic effect The effect of low frequency modulation on the EEG has been reported a number of times by this project Implanted electrodes are placed into various brain regions of the monkey and the resulting EEG tapes were analyzed off-line by Dr Adey's laboratory in California The time delays intrinsically involved in this process may be significant in explaining some of the experimental procedures followed or not followed If the animals are irradiated by sine wave modulated at various low frequencies in the alpha region the autocorrelated power spectrum analysis shows reinforcement of the modulation frequency in various portions of the brain At this date there is no convincing evidence that this effect is not an electrical artifact of the procedure There are several variations of protocol which could determine this using an on-line system I believe a fast-fourier transform analyser is on order for purposes of going on-line Experiments were run with the animals' head shielded under anesthesia killed during the experiment and even with a perfused brain However none of these were satisfactory for positive elimination wcoa ai Dr Stephen Lukasik C Page 4 4 November 1969 WL-613 A f the possibility of an artifact In fact variations of head position 9 ersus autocorrelation spectrum did tend to lend some evidence for an antenna action for the probes Additional programs are underway for chromosomal analysis using karotyping of cultured lyrr phocytes and for testicular and brain histology but no substantive res1 1lts have been reported yet other than a few isolated observations that cannot be considered significant until placed in the con- text of systematic data As stated earlier the value of the behavioral protocols procedures and equipment should not be summarily dismissed In addition not only does the present working facility represent a substantial capital equipment investment but also the new facility nearing completion is a magnificent laboratory indeed with three additional exposure chambers and all the various ancillary histological biochemical and conditioning laboratories that could be required at least for studies in the microwave region The issue of determining whether or not there is a biological effect at relatively low levels below the 50 to 100 mw cm2 levels which constitute directly _observable hazards is not limited to the question of the special signal Failure to have absolute scientific evidence of the presence or absence f a n effect and its threshold region can leave the U S vulnerable to a - w ampaig·n-against tne iise· of surve1llance radai's ·foreign·and domestic military and civilian as well as high powered communications equipment A possible public and consequent Congressional reaction on scare material particularly if encouraged by inimical forces could result in a catastrophic impediment to the use of various equipments essential for the national security It would appear that the problem should be viewed on three security levels First the compartmented signal and data derived from it should be put aside under adequate security protection for the present if there is to be any understanding of this the present program is probably wrong to start with One should start with an examination of various basic wave forms and then the combinations resulting in possible intermodulations and demodulations by biological tissue A program that might look at possible behavioral implications from the point of view of a weapon or interrogation device could be handled on a SECRET level The more pressing issue is the safety problem and that could be handled on a CONFIDENTIAL or OUO level during acquisition of data with eventual declassification as the goal • '•' '' Jr' Stephen Lukasik - Page 5 4 November 1969 WL-613 As an example of a protocol one might consider starting at a fairly high level 10 or 20 mw cm2 then looking at 5 mw cm 2 and 1 mw cm2 for-cw and 50% 1% and 0 1% pulsed duty cycles with equivalent average power t do not mean to imply by this that either I or ARPA should design the experimenter's protocol but rather that one should start with a level high enough to get some o fservable effect and then continue to look at real world levels and modulations The new facility is certainly adequate to handle the microwave problem still leaving currently urgent problems of ULF and HF VHF The important objective now should be to determine at what level modulation and exposure regime chronic intermittent etc a biological effect as distinguished from a hazard exists These two terms should not be confused If an effect is observed at that time an adjudication of various opera tiona I situations should be made to determine what hazard if any exists - s Research Council SK bt cc Augenstein Mcllwain Tamarkin - 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