Marc Seifer and the Unsolved Mysteries of Nikola Tesla Page 11

is to say when a highly charged negative ionic belt comes in contact with a negatively charged particle that particle will be repelled out at a terrific speed. That principle is the same mechanism behind the rail gun.

Macy: In the book, you indicate that this dismissive position was not at all the attitude of the British government. You bring up General Andrew McNaughton, for instance, who seemed quite interested in Tesla’s particle beam weapon. Who exactly is General McNaughton, and how do you know all of this?

Seifer: I studied Tesla’s correspondence with the British War Office, which was in the mid-to-late 1930s, at the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. I had spent a considerable amount of time physically at the Museum in the 1980s when I wrote Wizard, and again in 2017 when we were shooting “The Tesla Files” and through those connections I was able to continue my research online, paying the Museum for access to certain letters.

Macy: How did you come to look at McNaughton?

Seifer: Well, in one letter from General Hugh Elles to one of the heads of the British War Office, Elles mentions, almost in passing, that he decided to send Tesla’s proposal to General McNaughton, and I keep reading. But then I said to myself, “Who the heck is General McNaughton?” I asked the Museum if they had any correspondence with him. And the Museum said yes and forwarded a dozen or more letters between Tesla and General McNaughton, who it turns out was head of secret weapons development for the Canadian government! Further investigation revealed that McNaughton was on the cover of both Time and Life magazines and was, at that time, third in line to head Allied Forces behind Eisenhower (who got the job) and Mountbatten (the present day king of England’s grand uncle). Image search on Google shows General McNaughton poring over maps with Winston Churchill during the height of World War II. After the war broke out, McNaughton headed up Canadian forces in Europe. When I got the personal letters between McNaughton and Dr. C.J. Mackenzie who replaced him on the home front, I found that the general was flying to Washington, DC on a frequent basis to meet up with Vannevar Bush and President Roosevelt. In other words, General McNaughton was a big deal, at the very height of power for Allied Forces, and this was the guy who was quite actively negotiating with Tesla to get the details of his particle beam weapon as a way to protect England from a possible air and sea invasion by the Germans.

Macy: You mention that Tesla was negotiating with Ambassador Fotic, who predated Tesla’s nephew Sava Kosanovic as ambassador from Yugoslavia. This was in 1937. Yugoslavia seemed to originally support Tesla’s plan, paying him several thousand dollars, but then they ultimately passed on this weapon. Why originally support it and then not?

Seifer: You ask the key question, which could also be asked about Great Britain, who apparently paid Tesla for the details.

Macy: Do you know, did Great Britain pay Tesla or not for his weapon?

Seifer: I don’t know for sure. I know that Tesla was demanding a lot of money, ultimately about $12,000 pounds for the details and then a very expensive royalty should the weapon be constructed and prove successful.

Macy: How much for the royalty?

Seifer: Tesla asked for $10 million pounds, which would be somewhat north of $50 million in today’s dollars. There is a lot of new information in this book. Tesla never got over ripping up his royalty contract with Westinghouse almost 40 years earlier during the War of the Currents with Tom Edison. But to get back to your question, I don’t know if England paid Tesla, but what I can establish is that after they dickered about the price, at some point, Tesla changes his tune and begins to describe in detail the workings of this amazing invention. This suggests that some monies did exchange hands, but I don’t know that for sure.

Macy: What I found fascinating is the timing of some of the meetings happening in Washington, DC involving not only General McNaughton but also Eleanor Roosevelt. You report that Tesla negotiates and clearly gives key details of his particle beam weapon to the Brits in the late 1930s. World War II breaks out but the U.S. is neutral for the first few years, and during that time General McNaughton flies into Washington to confer with Vannevar Bush and FDR, then Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and we enter the war.

Seifer: Yes, and two weeks before President Roosevelt writes to Columbia University to “get the low-down” on Nikola Tesla, Vannevar Bush meets with the president to tell him the bad news that his scientists at Los Alamos think that the Germans will be able to build the atomic bomb in two years but they calculate that it will take us three years to accomplish the same feat.

Macy: But you can’t prove that McNaughton discussed the details of his negotiations with Tesla with Bush or FDR?

Seifer: No. But all of this is one heck of a coincidence. However, what I can prove through actual documents is that Tesla was giving the details of his weapon to the British and that he shared its details with Ralph Bergstresser, who was working for military intelligence for the U.S. in the latter half of 1942. Then, shortly thereafter, with the real threat