Marc Seifer and the Unsolved Mysteries of Nikola Tesla Page 12

that Germany might beat us in building the bomb, FDR seeks to contact Tesla. Unfortunately, Tesla died literally about a week after FDR writes of his interest.

Macy: What really intrigued me was your suggestion that President Roosevelt’s interest in Tesla’s so-called “death ray” might have actually stemmed from his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. How much did you find on Eleanor’s knowledge of Nikola Tesla and his particle beam weapon? Who led Eleanor to Tesla?

Seifer: I’m not really sure. Tesla was involved in certain societies that Eleanor was also a part of. However, I can show with actual documents that the day after Tesla died, the president thanked Eleanor for certain documents related to Tesla and returned them to her. This is clear evidence that the president’s wife played a key role in this incredible story. I think the important thing to keep in mind is to put yourself in President Roosevelt’s place. He obviously knows, in late 1942, while Tesla was still alive hawking his death ray, that if the Germans build the bomb before we do, Adolf Hitler would win the war. So it makes perfect sense for FDR to cover all his bases and explore the feasibility of constructing such a potentially powerful defensive weapon. At the same time I show that part of military intelligence headed by John G. Trump and most likely Vannevar Bush dismissed Tesla’s invention whereas another part, headed by Bloyce Fitzgerald and General L.C. Craigie at Wright-Patterson, wanted very much to keep Tesla’s military papers and not ship them across the Iron Curtain because the very fate of the nation might rest in developing this unique device. I also located a photograph of a big meeting where Vannevar Bush and General Craigie are at this same meeting, so obviously they knew each other. At least for me, this is very exciting stuff!

Macy: Your familiarity with Tesla’s political thinking interestingly contrast with your quoting the tribute written by Guggenheim Fellowship winner Louis Adamic, and read by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia at Tesla’s funeral, in which Tesla is justifiably praised for his contributions to humanity through his scientific genius, being a poet in science and contributing such extraordinary, amazing, miraculous things for mankind. And for his services he, according to Adamic, did not charge anything.

Seifer: Yes, Adamic’s amazing eulogy read by the New York mayor is actually easily available online and I highly recommend your readers hearing it.² Mayor LaGuardia was an incredible orator. But Adamic was writing with rose colored glasses. Tesla was not this great altruist that he is made out to be, although he did offer his weapon to the United States with no thought of compensation once we entered the war.

Macy: You go on to report that Colonel Henry Breckenridge, who was a pallbearer at Tesla’s funeral, was a political opponent of Franklin Roosevelt, and like Tesla and his other friend William Randolph Hearst was opposed to the New Deal. A very complex picture of Tesla emerges, in which you go as far as to suggest that Tesla might have sold the particle beam weapon to the Soviet Union because of this opposition. Trump says he did sell it to the Soviet Union. Did you see any further documentation of this?

Seifer: There is no doubt that the particle beam weapon paper that Dr. Puharich introduced to the world back in 1984 at the Tesla Conference held in Colorado Springs was the exact same paper that Tesla sold the Soviets back in 1934 for $25,000. At the height of the Great Depression, when you could feed a family of five for about a dollar, that was a lot of money. When we shot “The Tesla Files” and I was at the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, I saw the correspondence between Tesla and the Soviets establishing that Tesla did, in fact, really sell the weapon to the Soviets. There, in the Soviet files, I saw the very same paper that Puharich presented at the 1984 Tesla conference. And because of the TV show, recently a fellow who had been in the Soviet Union in a graduate program sent me declassified Soviet documents further establishing this and also proving that Joseph Stalin himself had to okay the purchase.

Macy: You have that document?

Seifer: Yes. It’s listed in the endnotes of Wizard at War.

Macy: But you didn’t answer my question. Do you think Tesla sold the weapon to the Soviets because he was opposed to Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal?

Seifer: The fact that Tesla did indeed oppose the New Deal, did play a role in Tesla, at first, not wanting to offer the weapon to FDR’s administration. However, it was Roosevelt’s actions that allowed Tesla to make this deal. What Roosevelt did was allow the Amtorg Trading Company, which was initially co-owned by the Soviets and by Armand Hammer, a U.S. citizen, to open up trade with the Soviets in 1934. Amtorg continued to operate in that capacity for the next 50 years. So, at that time, mid-1930s, the Soviets were actively trading with such companies as Ford, General Motors and literally hundreds of other companies. I personally am not happy about Tesla’s decision to sell a weapon to the Soviets and as I point out in the book, it is clear that Tesla’s closest friend, Robert Underwood Johnson, was opposed to this decision by FDR because it enabled the Soviets to infiltrate America with their communist propaganda. But for Tesla to sell this weapon to the Soviets at that time, it was perfectly legal.

Macy: So, Tesla’s closest friend Johnson would have opposed Tesla’s decision?

Seifer: Yes, exactly. That is why, most likely, almost nobody knew about this Soviet deal. I doubt very much that Johnson knew, and I think he would have been appalled had he found out. However, if we give Tesla the benefit of the doubt, he also saw this weapon as what he called a “Peace Ray.” It was Tesla’s belief that because this weapon was so destructive, and because it was purely or mostly defensive, if every nation had such an electronic shield, no country would ever invade another country because it would be suicide. This idea, which morphed later into MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction), with regards to the insanity of having a nuclear war, was Tesla’s rationale for selling it to the Soviets. Tesla’s plan was to sell it to every country except Germany because of the Nazis.

Macy: Is that because Tesla feared he could be killed by the