Marc Seifer and the Unsolved Mysteries of Nikola Tesla Page 8

people and facts will emerge after this book comes out, as they did when you wrote Wizard?

Marc Seifer: Yes. In particular, I think that more facts will emerge concerning additional details of the precise arrangement Tesla had with the British War Office in the run-up to the Second World War, and we will find out more about how Tesla’s top secret particle beam weapon evolved into today’s comparable weapon, the U.S. Navy rail gun.

Macy: You report (p.190) that the government dossier on this topic written by MIT Professor John G. Trump (uncle of a future president of the U.S.) “stated overtly that Tesla had sold the details of his particle beam weapon to the Soviet Union via the Amtorg Trading Corporation for $25,000 and that Tesla also attempted to sell the weapon to the British.” You go on to report that you interviewed “a somewhat mysterious World War II veteran, Ralph Bergstresser, who told me outright that the aging inventor had lent him various documents, including the particle beam weapon paper, so that Bergstresser could make copies to help the country in the war effort.” The Bergstresser thread goes from June 1942 until Tesla’s death in January 1943. What do you think his role was or might have been?

Seifer: In essence, I found out that Bergstresser spent considerable time with Tesla during the latter half of 1942. At that time, he took microfilm images of the secret weaponry papers, gave them to military intelligence and also kept a copy for himself. Then Bergstresser sat on the so-called death ray paper for the next 40 years before handing it off to a go-between who gave the paper to Dr. Andrija Puharich, the parapsychologist who, coincidentally, had introduced the Israeli spoonbender Uri Geller to the world.

Macy: Why would Bergstresser give the paper to Dr. Puharich?

Seifer: As I explain in Tesla: Wizard at War, Dr. Puharich had close ties to three people who knew Tesla intimately: Agnes Holden, who was the daughter of Katharine and Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century Magazine, who was Tesla’s closest friend; John Hays Hammond Jr., who was Tesla’s partner circa 1912, and an expert in radio guidance systems; and John O’Neill, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the first major biography of Tesla, who knew Tesla for 40 years. Puharich had real inside knowledge about Tesla and, further, he had written a book (which was never published, but which I have a copy of) on Wardenclyffe, Tesla’s world telegraphy center. Dr. Puharich was the perfect person to pass this all-important heavily sought-after paper to. And it was Puharich who then presented the paper to the world at the 1984 Tesla Centennial Conference held in Colorado Springs, where I was also a speaker.

Macy: What is in the Puharich book on Wardenclyffe? Is there any hitherto unreported information or revelations?

Seifer: Dr. Puharich titled the book Tesla’s Magnifying Transmitter: How to Protect Yourself from Omnipresent Electromagnetic Pollution. He claimed that the reason the book was not published was because “this mss. has been classified by the FBI.” This statement remains ponderous. Had he claimed that the CIA had prohibited publication, that would have made some sense, as Puharich secretly worked for the CIA, particularly with his studies at Stanford Research Institute with the superpsychic Uri Geller, which were CIA funded. The table of contents discusses Tesla’s life and accomplishments, gets into how Puharich thinks the Wardenclyffe wireless tower was supposed to operate and then covers “Titanic Forces Unleashed by the Soviet Union during 1976-1979 and by the USA during 1980-1984.” Linked most likely to today’s concerns that the Soviets have been bombarding U.S. embassies with microwaves which are causing headaches and other negative affects on our diplomats, Puharich cites “Alexandr P. Dubrov, of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR [who] has some 1228 references on…the history of Soviet research in affecting living things with electromagnetic radiation.”

Macy: You report on Bergstresser’s background (p.193), which includes, as you put it, being “ostensibly” raised with Tesla acolyte Bloyce Fitzgerald. Why “ostensibly?” Are you suggesting this history is fabricated? What are you suggesting with that adverb?

Seifer: When I read the O’Neill Tesla biography Prodigal Genius, he mentions pretty much in passing one Bloyce Fitzgerald, who emerges around the time of Tesla’s death. This was such an unusual name, and because of that, I became intrigued. I thought, perhaps, at the time, that he was from the OSS. Then, when I got access to the FBI files through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), this would be back around 1990, I found out that a Mr. Fitzgerald and also a Mr. Doty, who were portrayed as hotel managers, were present at Tesla’s room the very day after Tesla died. Since I had other papers which mentioned Colonel Ralph Doty from military intelligence and Bloyce Fitzgerald, who had written to Tesla extensively from about 1935 until the inventor’s death, I hypothesized that these were one and the same people, that they were not Hotel New Yorker managers but members of military intelligence. In writing this second book I was able to get new unredacted FBI files now that they were declassified and I was able to establish that I was indeed right.

However, I also found out that both Bloyce Fitzgerald and Ralph Bergstresser were raised in Wichita during the same time, although Bergstresser was four years older. I used the word “ostensibly” with the meaning of presumably. I presumed that since they were both electrical engineers from a relatively small city and they both were conferring with each other at the time of Tesla’s death, that they most likely knew each other growing up. This was a significant find for me, as before I wrote this new book I didn’t really know of their connection.

Macy: You go on to say that in 1945 Bergstresser was working for military intelligence and was concerned that Tesla’s secret weaponry could pass to Tesla’s heir, Sava Kosanovic, who, as ambassador to Yugoslavia, would pass these military weaponry papers to the Communists because Tito was in power and was, at that time, aligned with the Soviet Union. Bergstresser (p.193) writes a brief to the FBI where he states he is working with Fitzgerald who is at Wright Air Force Base