FUSION INFORMATION CENTER, Inc.
3084 East 3300 So.
SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84109
Voice: 801-466-8680 Fax: 801-466-8668
August 3, 1999
To: Special Agent
Office of the Inspector General
Commerce Department
Room 7614
14th and Constitution, NW
Washington, DC 20230
Voice 202 482-0909 Fax 202-501-0710
Dear Ms. Kimberlee Taylor,
Dr. Mitchell Swartz has informed me that you are interested in
information regarding cold fusion and low-energy nuclear reactions and
the policy of the Office of Patents and Trademarks with respect to
patent applications. The following information may be of some interest:
A. BACKGROUND
As the director of the first research laboratory at the University of
Utah Research Park, I was intensely interested in the March 23, 1989
announcement called by the University of Utah administration (not called
by Pons and Fleischmann). The announcement of a new source of energy
was most exciting to me. That day I began the plans for trying to be of
some help (systems engineering background, missile system specialist for
several years). By mid April 1989 we had organized the Fusion
Information Center and obtained offices at the University of Utah
Research Park.
By July 1989, we had decided that information gathering and publishing
such information would be our best role. Our first edition of Fusion
Facts was published in July 1989 and continued as a monthly publication
for several years before being incorporated as a part of the Journal of
New Energy, a peer-reviewed, quarterly, scientific journal (abstracted
from the first issue by Chemical Abstracts -- the world's foremost
scientific abstracting organization).
B. THE ATTACKS ON COLD FUSION
By the fall of 1989 it was apparent that someone had organized and was
carrying out a campaign against the new technology of cold fusion. Here
are the facts, insofar, as we have been able to gather and publish the
facts. Please note that all of this was done in secrecy (except for the
ERAB sub committee).
A subcommittee of the Energy Research Advisory Board traveled to various
laboratories where successes in cold fusion had been claimed. If the
research was measuring neutrons, they were told that it was background
radiation. If the researcher was getting tritium, they were told that
it was contamination. If excess heat was being produced, they were told
that they didn't have proper calorimetry. Except for one small
paragraph in the ERAB final report, demanded by one of the honest
members of the committee, the report was entirely negative of cold
fusion.
An arrangement was made for someone in the Office of Patents (any type
of coercion or reward is unknown) to ensure that no cold fusion patent
application was accepted for patenting. Each person, as far as we have
been able to determine, wAS sent the same information: a copy of a
newspaper article from the New York Times saying that cold fusion
doesn't work; a copy of the paper by 16 Ph.D.s from MIT stating that
they could not replicate cold fusion (this is the paper where the
authors removed the data showing that they did get a small amount of
excess heat).
A person (representing powers-that-be in Washington, D.C.) called many
of the physics and chemistry departments at major universities in the
United States. Here was his message as relayed to me from one such
department: "If you have so much as a graduate student working on cold
fusion, you will get no contracts out of Washington."
All of the editors of the major scientific journals were contacted and
were instructed not to publish articles on cold fusion. All editors but
one then set up barriers against cold fusion publications. The one
editor who did not accept that type of instruction was Professor George
Miley, editor until this year of Fusion Technology, the international
journal of the American Nuclear Society.
An amount of $30,000 (or $40,000 - different sources) was given to
Random House to have a "hatchet job" done against cold fusion. The
result was the widely acclaimed (by orchestration) book by Gary Taubes,
Bad Science, The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion c 1993. For
one knowledgeable on the cold fusion development, it is obvious that
this book was a deliberate hatchet job.
In addition to the above well-orchestrated activities, some appointed,
or self-appointed scientists have been very active in traveling to
conventions, etc. and doing their best to challenge any positive cold
fusion results. Two of these are (were) Dr. Douglas R.O. Morrison
(CERN, Switzerland) and Professor John R. Huizenga of University of
Rochester (chairman of the ERAB sub committee, if my memory is correct).
One of the most active protagonists has been Robert Parks, with some
association with the American Physical Society. (The current president
of the American Physical Society, in a recent conversation, denies that
Robert Parks speaks for the society.) Parks was instrumental in
preventing a recent conference from being held in a proffered auditorium
in a government facility. Parks has an email list of many people in the
DOE and about once a month or more often sends out statements that
ridicule any cold fusion or low-energy nuclear reaction experiments,
papers, books, etc.
Please recognize that this was a very-well thought-out and orchestrated
scheme to destroy cold fusion. These were clever and well-done
operations. We have been told that were it not for Fusion Facts and its
rapid exchange of information of successes in various parts of the
world, cold fusion would have been dead. That is more credit than we
deserve.
C. THE COLLECTION OF PROFESSIONAL PAPERS
The Fusion Information Center, Inc. is believed to have accumulated the
world's largest collection of papers on cold nuclear fusion,
new-hydrogen energy (the Japanese label), low-energy nuclear reactions,
and other enhanced energy papers. We have collected and reviewed over
3,000 papers on cold fusion and low-energy nuclear reactions, read the
papers, written reviews, and published the reviews. Over 600 papers
from over 200 laboratories in 30 countries report some successes in
replicating or extending the original work of Pons and Fleischmann. Dr.
Mitchell Swartz and I have presented papers on this extensive review of
the literature.
In addition, this office has published New Energy News, for the past six
years. All members of the Institute of New Energy receive this
newsletter. In addition, beginning in January 1996, this office began
publishing the Journal of New Energy, a quarterly, peer-reviewed,
scientific journal. The reason was the lack of professional journals
that would publish some of the new-energy and new-science papers. For
example, we have published six papers about torsion field fluctuations
which report on formerly highly-secret work done by over 25 laboratories
in the former USSR. This journal has published two issues providing the
proceedings of two International Conferences on Low-Energy Nuclear
Reactions.
All of this published information (Fusion Facts, New Energy News, &
Journal of New Energy), covering a ten-year period, have now been
published on a CD-ROM. If a copy of this CD-ROM would be of interest to
you, we would be pleased to send you a copy.
D. THE ROLE OF THE DOE
As is well-known, political appointees to government agencies come and
go but the real work of the agency is accomplished by the network of
civil servants who bear the burden of continuing and exercising the
Congressional mandates for their offices.
Here is a summary of the current situation in DOE:
The DOE is required by law to handle the disposition of all high-level
nuclear wastes including weapons-related liquid wastes (such as at the
Hanford Site, Washington state) and the spent-fuel pellets from nuclear
power plants and from nuclear submarines. In about 1993 or 1994 a
contact was given to the National Research Council to prepare a study on
the best methods for separation and/or transmutation of nuclear wastes.
The result was the following large publication printed and distributed
in 1996:
Nuclear Wastes: Technologies for Separations and Transmutation,
Committee on Separations Technology and Transmutation Systems, Board on
Radioactive Waste Management, Commission on Geosciences, Environment,
and Resources, National Research Council, published by National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C. c1996 by the National Academy of Sciences.
It is not known if the contract was awarded with counsel and advice on
the expected outcome. However, the end result was a statement to the
effect that there is no known method of handling radioactive wastes that
is more cost-effective than geologic storage. That has been and still
is the major objective of the DOE - geologic storage. Any proposals
that claim to have new technology that will stabilize high-level
radioactive wastes are rejected. In one DOE document asking for
proposals, it was explicitly stated that no cold fusion proposals would
be accepted.
Several laboratories, included our own, has demonstrated that there is
technology that appears to be effective in transmuting radioactive
wastes. None of this work, to our knowledge, is government funded.
Apparently, the network of those opposing cold fusion and other
low-energy nuclear reactions is most effective throughout the DOE as
well as in the appropriate division of the Office of Patents. It is
believed that this opposition group is mainly related to the hot-fusion
community of scholars and lobbyists and that the activities are being
largely supported by federal funds provided to the hot fusion community.
If you have any questions or would like to have more information, I
would be pleased to help in any way that I can, including my personal
testimony in any hearings. My home phone number is 801-467-3338.
Best personal regards,
Hal Fox, President, Fusion Information Center,
Editor, FF, NEN, and JONE