The FBI and the Missing Tesla Papers Page 480

this area, this is strong evidence in support of the claim that Tesla did, in fact, sell the schematics of such a device to them in the mid-1930's.

The article(s) also mentioned the use of "young geniuses under [the age of] 29...located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton Ohio" to try and conceive of a breakthrough in the technology; and also, surprisingly, that "the President [Jimmy Carter] was screened from vital technical developments by the bureaucracy of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency" (Wade, pp. 957-958). The source was General George Keegan, former head of Air Force Intelligence.

Three intriguing points emerge: (1) the concept of high secrecy on particle beam weapons; (2) the mention of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; and (3) the policy of utilizing bright young geniuses. All of these variables are evident in the FBI files on Tesla reviewed earlier. Great support is lent to the hypothesis that Tesla's work and papers were systematically hidden from public view in order to protect the trail of this top secret work, which today is known as Star Wars.

Particle beam weaponry is still more a dream than a reality, i.e. in 1986. Therefore, if indeed the inner sanctum of one or both superpowers has access to Tesla's plans, why is it that no death ray has ever been constructed? Perhaps there are prototypes that I do not know about, but it seems to me that they should have been tried out in the field such as during the Vietnam War or in Afganistan. This part of the story must remain a mystery.

Nevertheless, the secret weaponry papers episode is not sufficient in and of itself to account for the disappearance of Tesla's fame. As Cheney noted in her letter to me, the inventor's reputation was already on the decline at the time of his death; however, the confiscation of his estate was still a contributing factor. Other components that were at least as important, include suppression of the inventor's contribution by the corporations and also Tesla's ties to the occult, more specifically, his insistence on the inevitability/actuality of interplanetary communication.