The FBI and the Missing Tesla Papers Page 459

Lozado, Spanel said, had called back shortly after their conversation and said that the government was "vitally interested in Tesla's papers" (Cornels, 1/9/1943). This message, it appears, derived from at least Vice President Wallace and maybe even from President Roosevelt.

Spanel had also contacted one Bloyce Fitzgerald "an electrical engineer who was a protege of Tesla's," who had also called Cornels of the FBI the day before (i.e., 1/8/1943).

Having met Fitzgerald at an engineering meeting a few years earlier, Spanel became highly interested in the Tesla weapon and probably hoped to become involved in a profitable business developing and selling the death beam devices to the military.

Fitzgerald, a rather young man still in his twenties, had been in postal communication with Tesla since the mid 1930's. But it had only been within the last year or two that he had been able to meet the inventor and borrow the various papers in which he was interested. Fitzgerald, who had worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and also for the Ordinance Department for the US Army, told FBI agent Cornels that he:

knows that the complete plans, specifications and explanations of the basic theories of these things are some place in the personal effects of Tesla....[and] that there is a working model [of the death ray]...which cost more than $10,000 to build in a safety deposit box of Tesla's at the Governor Clinton Hotel. (Cornels, 1/9/1943)

To corroborate this story, another acquaintance of Tesla's, Charles Hausler, a hired hand who took care of Tesla's pigeons, wrote to Leland Anderson (president of the Tesla Society in the mid 1950's) that Tesla:

had a large box or container in his room near the pigeon cages, and he told me to be very careful not to disturb the box as it contained something that could destroy an airplane in the sky and he had hopes for presenting it to the world. (quoted in Cheney, 1981, p. 264)

Hausler also added that the device was later stored in the basement of a hotel.

Fitzgerald also reported that Tesla had claimed that he had 80 trunks in different locations in the city containing inventions, manuscripts and plans of his various work. The young engineer reiterated the need for the government to obtain the Tesla papers "for use in war." He was also worried about the "loyalty and patriotism to the Allied