The FBI and the Missing Tesla Papers Page 465

articles. It should therefore be expected, and is substantiated by Exhibit D that this disclosure subsequently proved unworkable."

Discrepencies in the Trump report. If we look at Exhibit D, Trump states that Nikola Tesla's answers to the "Soviet engineers....are fairly similiar to the belt conveyor electrostatic generator methods proposed by Van de Graff and do not appear to offer any unusual features." Thus, Trump reasoned that Nikola Tesla had sold a somewhat worthless or commonplace idea to the Soviets and therefore there was no point in pursuing either the Soviet connection or the total ramifications of the so-called death ray.

What I find astounding, however, is that Exhibit A, not discussed at all in the Trump papers, but printed in full in Scientific American, states quite clearly that the Van de Graff method was unlike Nikola Tesla's; furthermore it was highly inferior. Nikola Tesla wrote that although the Van de Graff generator can create impressive and noisy sparks, this is "far from being" an indicator of great energy:

The Van de Graff generator is not a producer of electricity, like a dynamo, but merely a receiver or collector with amplifying qualities.... If the columns were as tall as the Empire State Building and the spheres 500 feet in diameter, the monstrous machine could not have any more energy than is supplied to it by the electified belts and no matter how much improved, this type is fatally doomed to small output and low efficiency. (Nikola Tesla, 3/1934, p. 133)

Thus, we can clearly see that Trump was in error with his conclusions that Nikola Tesla's devices were similar to the Van de Graff generators. Trump actually knew Van de Graff, as both men worked at MIT. It is possible that arrogance or jealousy lay at the basis for Trump's somewhat deprecating remarks regarding Nikola Tesla's invention. For in concluding that "nothing was new here," Trump's report served as a smoke screen which placated anyone who read it, while at the same time hid from view any serious attempts to understand the Nikola Tesla weaponry technology.

Exhibits D, F and Q apparently refer to a highly technical and heretofore underground Nikola Tesla treatise written in 1937 and obtained by Andrija Puharich, and published in the 1985 Nikola Tesla Centennial Symposium proceedings. The work is entitled "The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through the Natural Media." The article, (discussed in Chap. 25 on laser beams), contains a very explicit description of a particle beam weapon for destroying tanks and planes and for igniting