FBI Tesla Files

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Jim,

Maybe you know that the FBI offers about 256 pages of
docouments related to Nikola Tesla on its FOIA Web site:

   HTTP://www.fbi.gov/foipa/hisfigs.htm#tesla

They are in two large PDF files of 4.8MB and 5.8MB.

In case you've not seen them here's a brief:

None of the papers are by Tesla himself, and most
relate to various inquiries about Tesla's "missing papers,"
based on O'Neil's book claim that the FBI confiscated 
Tesla's papers and effects shortly after his death. The FBI 
claims that it was the Alien Property Office which had Tesla's 
effects and that the FBI had not been involved.

Several focus on Tesla's famous "Death Ray" of the 1940s,
with requests for access to the scientific papers on it, or
warn of its possible use by foreign enemies. To most the
FBI sends a standard disavowal.

However, one is of interest: a Feb 1981 inquiry by the 
Defense Department which stated in a then-classified 
paragraph:

"(C) We believe that certain of Tesla's papers may contain
basic principles which would be of considerable value to
ongoing research within the DoD."

The FBI answers that it never had Tesla's papers but 
reports that a review of those at the Alien Property Office 
by an MIT scientific team found that none of the papers 
contained significant scientific information of national
security interest. Yet, the FBI goes on, the Alien Property 
Office told the FBI in the 1950s that in the only recorded 
visit to the Tesla archive in January 1943 (shortly after
Tesla's death) an unidentified "Federal authority" 
microfilmed numerous papers, film whose whereabouts
the FBI knows nothing.

There's a bit more about electronic research at Wright 
Paterson AFB. And a DoD thank you letter on behalf 
of Dr. S. L. Zeiburg, Deputy Undersecretary
(Strategic and Space Systems).

A once-secret 1983 series investigated a claim that 
Margaret Cheney's biography of Tesla, "Tesla: Man 
Out of Time,"  points to national security threats 
based on allegations of Soviet development of his 
experiments using papers possibly obtained through 
his nephew, Sava Kosanovic, a high Yugoslav official. 
Many pages of Cheney's book marked at threatening 
passages on the "missing papers" are in the file.