Tesla’s Documents

The following are excerpts from an article written by Sarah Pruitt in May 2018 and updated in November 2018.

After Nikola Tesla was found dead in January 1943 in his hotel room in New York City, representatives of the U.S. government’s Office of Alien Property seized many documents relating to the brilliant and prolific 86-year-old inventor’s work.

It was the height of World War II, and Tesla had claimed to have invented a powerful particle-beam weapon, known as the “Death Ray,” that could have proved invaluable in the ongoing conflict. So rather than risk Tesla’s technology falling into the hands of America’s enemies, the government swooped in and took possession of all the property and documents from his room at the New Yorker Hotel.

What happened to Tesla’s files from there, as well as what exactly was in those files, remains shrouded in mystery—and ripe for conspiracy theories. After years of fielding questions about possible cover-ups, the FBI finally declassified some 250 pages of Tesla-related documents under the Freedom of Information Act in 2016. The bureau followed up with two additional releases, the latest in March 2018. But even with the publication of these documents, many questions still remain unanswered—and some of Tesla’s files are still missing.                                                                                               

Then there’s the nagging question of the missing files. When Tesla died, his estate was to go to his nephew, Sava Kosanovic, who at the time was the Yugoslav ambassador to the U.S. (thanks to his familial connection with Serbia’s most celebrated inventor). According to the recently declassified documents, some in the FBI feared Kosanovic was trying to wrest control of Tesla’s technology in order to “make such information available to the enemy,” and even considered arresting him to prevent this.

In 1952, after a U.S. court declared Kosanovic the rightful heir to his uncle’s estate, Tesla’s files and other materials were sent to Belgrade, Serbia, where they now reside in the Nikola Tesla Museum there. But while the FBI originally recorded some 80 trunks among Tesla’s effects, only 60 arrived in Belgrade, Seifer says. “Maybe they packed the 80 into 60, but there is the possibility that…the government did keep the missing trunks.”  

For the five-part HISTORY series The Tesla Files, Seifer joined forces with Dr. Travis Taylor, an astrophysicist, and Jason Stapleton, an investigative reporter, to search for these missing files and seek out the truth of the government’s views on the “Death Ray” particle-beam weapon and Tesla’s other ideas.

There is evidence that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president, Henry Wallace, discussed “the effects of TESLA, particularly those dealing with the wireless transmission of electrical energy and the ‘death ray’” with his advisors, according to FBI documents released in 2016. Along the same lines, Seifer and his colleagues in The Tesla Files uncovered the role played by Vannevar Bush, whom FDR appointed as head of the Manhattan Project, in the evaluation of Tesla’s papers. They also looked at the possibility that FDR himself may have sought a meeting with the inventor just before he died.

By visiting some of the key places in Tesla’s life—from his laboratory in Colorado Springs to his last living quarters at the Hotel New Yorker to the mysterious wireless tower he built at Wardenclyffe, Long Island—Seifer, Taylor and Stapleton sought to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the celebrated, enigmatic inventor. They also traveled to California, where some of Tesla’s other groundbreaking ideas —many of which were seen as unrealistic or even crackpot during his own lifetime—now fuel some of the most dominant industries in Silicon Valley.

Although some of his more sensitive innovations may still be hidden, Tesla’s legacy is alive and well, both in the devices we use every day, and the technologies that will undoubtedly play a role in our future. “Tesla is the inventor of wireless technology. He’s the inventor of the ability to create an unlimited number of wireless channels,” Seifer says of the inventor’s lasting impact. “So radio guidance systems, encryption, remote control robots—it’s all based on Tesla’s technology.”

Presidents and UfOs (con’t)

Kennedy                                                                                                                                                                 A story that combines UFO cover-ups with the assassination of John F. Kennedy is a gold mine for conspiracy theorists. And that’s just what author William Lester says he uncovered while conducting research for a new book on Kennedy: a memo written by JFK and addressed to the CIA in which the president requests confidential information about UFOs.

In the never-before-seen, top secret memo supposedly written on Nov. 12, 1963, the president ordered the CIA director to organize the agency’s intelligence files relating to UFOs, and to debrief him on all “unknowns” by the following February. Ten days later, Kennedy was assassinated.

The newly surfaced document is bound to add fuel to the undying fire surrounding the president’s death. But first things first: Is the document authentic?

‘Something odd about it’
Lester, a paranormal researcher and author of the new book “A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier” (Wasteland Press, 2010), said he obtained the memo along with two others from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The government regularly declassifies documents after a certain amount of time goes by, and then you have to file a request for those documents,” Lester told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site of Space.com. “When I was in the process of filing, those letters had just become declassified and released to the public.” This happened in 2006 or 2007, Lester said. “At the time, I think other people were getting them too.”

The top-secret memo hasn’t turned up anywhere else besides Lester’s book, however, and some archivists question its authenticity. A research technician at the JFK Library in Boston, who asked not to be named, was unable to find a carbon copy of it in its presidential archive, which holds copies of all of JFK’s letters.

“We did some research into the presidential papers to try to find any evidence of the Nov. 12, 1963, letter to the director of the CIA, John McCone,” the technician told Life’s Little Mysteries. Despite the fact that JFK kept carbon copies of all his letters, even the classified ones, “in searching through the president’s office files — CIA, NASA and National Security files — we could find no evidence of this memo or anything like it.”

Furthermore, it doesn’t look like other top secret memos Kennedy wrote during his presidency.

“Something is a little odd about it,” the technician said. “It is sanitized in very odd places: the director’s name, the top heading of the document (which usually distinguishes which agency is generating it) and then the tiny “top secret” print at the top of letter. Top secret items are usually stamped in large dark ink on the letter.”

The missing link?
Lester claims that the new declassified memo is thus the missing link in a conspiracy theory surrounding another document that many conspiracy theorists think indicates that the CIA killed Kennedy to prevent his involvement in a UFO cover-up. However, this second document, and thus the conclusion, is also suspect.

This document, called the “burned memo,” was passed to the fringe media in 1999 by an anonymous source claiming to be a former CIA operative. The alleged leaker said he worked for the CIA between 1960 and 1974 and pulled the memo — which experts have never verified as authentic — from a fire when the agency was burning some of its most sensitive files.

In the “burned memo,” the CIA director at the time (his name is blacked out) allegedly wrote: “Lancer (the CIA’s codename for JFK) has made some inquiries regarding our activities, which we cannot allow. Please submit your views no later than October. Your action to this matter is critical to the continuance of the group.”

The new memo, Lester said, proves JFK really was probing the CIA about UFO intelligence, and that the CIA might have taken steps to prevent this. “If Kennedy had gotten some level of control of this issue from NASA or the CIA, who’s to say he wouldn’t have disclosed that information to the American public? Who knows where that would have led?” Lester commented.

Given that most historians believe the “burned memo” is a fake, however, the connection to the CIA’s secret plot to assassinate JFK doesn’t stick.

Alternatively, even if the burned memo is fake but the newly surfaced memo is real, there are several perfectly logical reasons why Kennedy might have written it. Lester believes the president was interested in UFO intelligence for three reasons.

First, Lester said, Kennedy was concerned that UFOs seen by the Soviets would be misinterpreted by them as being U.S. aircraft behaving provocatively. This may be what Kennedy implied when he (allegedly) wrote, “It is important that we make a distinction between known and unknowns in the event the Soviets try to mistake our extended cooperation as a cover for intelligence gathering of their defense or space programs.”

The second reason for Kennedy’s inquiry could have been his obvious interest in space travel; at the time of his (alleged) writing, NASA was a new agency, Lester explained, and “the whole question of outer space and life in outer space was at the forefront of everybody’s thinking.” Third, there was a natural concern about UFOs at the time due to a spurt of incidents thought to be sightings.

In the 1960s, nearly everyone was interested in UFOs — JFK, NASA, the CIA and citizens alike.

Carter   Jimmy Carter files report on UFO sighting

Future President Jimmy Carter files a report with the International UFO Bureau on September 18, 1973, claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969.

During the presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic challenger Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO. He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called “the darndest thing I’ve ever seen” in the sky. Carter, as well as 10 to 12 other people who witnessed the same event, described the object as “very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon.” Carter reported that “the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance.” He later told a reporter that, after the experience, he vowed never again to ridicule anyone who claimed to have seen a UFO.

Raegan                                                                                                                                An old tale about former President Ronald Reagan seeing an unidentified flying object over Bakersfield has made news in Korea.

The Korea Herald, an English-language publication, revisits Reagan’s 1974 experience in “Public figures who believe in aliens.” The story cites a (British) Daily Telegraph list of 10 “top public figures who said they believed in the existence of aliens.” That list includes astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, former President Jimmy Carter, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Reagan.

Of Reagan’s reported sighting, The Korea Herald reported:

“The former U.S. President Ronald Reagan claimed that he had seen a UFO himself while in an airplane flying above Bakersfield, California in 1974. ‘It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens,’ he said.”

Reagan later recounted his experience with Gorbachev, during a meeting of the then two-most-powerful men on Earth, according to The Herald:

“At a private meeting between them in 1985 at the Geneva Summit, Reagan asked Gorbachev: ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’

” ‘No doubt about it,’ Gorbachev answered.

” ‘We too,’ said Reagan.” The preceding are just a few examples. For a more complete history of this subject check out:  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250040510/thepresidentsandufos