Nikola Tesla FBI Files - Page 33

KENNETH M. SWEZEY

163 Milton Street
Brooklyn 22, N. Y.
June 25, 1955

Mr. J. Edgar Hoover
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Hoover:

     Back in 1943, the local Alien Property Custodian searched through the belongings of the late electrical inventor, Nikola Tesla, stored in the Manhattan Storage Warehouse in New York City. Tesla had been a naturalized American for more than fifty years, so I believe that the search was made on the grounds that the property was to be sent to Yugoslavia, through Tesla's nephew and heir, Mr. Sava Kosanovi? (Mr. Kosanovi? had been Minister of State under the King's government, later became Ambassador to the United States from the present government, and is now a Minister serving in Belgrade).

     According to the attorney who handled the Tesla estate, Mr. Philip Wittenberg, the Alien Property Custodian assured him that nothing had been held. I have a letter from the Office of Alien Property, dated March 15, 1955, which confirms this statement.

     In gathering material to help in a nation-wide commemoration of Tesla's hundredth birthday next year---which will be participated in by leading scientific and engineering societies, museums, and universities---I have just discovered, however, that Tesla's solid gold Edison Medal somehow vanished during that search.

     As a friend who had known Tesla well during his last twenty years, I was with Mr. Kosanovi? in Tesla's room in the Hotel New Yorker on the day he died. A safe expert was called in to unlock Tesla's safe. Among its contents were several honorary degrees, a volume of greetings which I had gathered for him on his seventy-fifth birthday, a bunch of keys, and the Edison Medal. We kept out the book of greetings (I mentioned this at the time to the assistant manager of the hotel and later to a Mr. Gorsuch of the Alien Property Custodian's office), but everything else, including the medal and the keys, was replaced and the safe was looked.

     Except when it was inspected by the Alien Property Custodian, the safe was never reopened until it