If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear as it is, infinite.
- William Blake
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2000 2:51 PM
Subject: Einstein's Death Ray
>
> The Scotsman - 20 March 2000
>
> FBI set sights on Einstein in great ray gun conspiracy
>
> ANDREW DENHOLM
>
> IT IS no secret that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the
> leadership of that redoubtable crime fighter, J Edgar Hoover, was not
> averse to paranoid delusions.
>
> But files released in Washington show it surpassed itself in the
> suspicion stakes when it came to the greatest thinker of the 20th
> century.
>
> The documents show the FBI launched an investigation into Albert
> Einstein to examine the possibility that he had invented a ray gun
> which could "destroy entire cities".
>
> The dossier on the physicist, running to 1,500 pages and compiled over
> 23 years, also included reports that he was a go-between in a Russian
> spy ring, engineered a communist plot to take over Hollywood and
> invented a robot capable of reading human minds.
>
> However, the outlandish allegations made against the German-born
> scientist were later found to be unsubstantiated or of doubtful
> credibility.
>
> The FBI began to monitor Einstein's activities in 1932 because of his
> association with a number of communist groups and because of his
> outspoken support for pacifism which made Hoover increasingly
> concerned about his influence.
>
> The first few pages of the FBI's Einstein file state that he "believes
> in, advises, advocates or teaches a doctrine which would allow anarchy
> to stalk in unelected and result in government only in name.
>
> "He is affiliated with communist groups that advocate the overthrow by
> force or violence of the government of the United States. Not even
> Stalin himself is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist
> international groups."
>
> A large section of the file centres on allegations that Einstein was
> reported to have used an office in Berlin in the early 1930s as a
> cable address for Soviet agents to pass information via coded
> telegrams.
>
> According to the reports, one means used by agents in Shanghai and
> Canton to contact their headquarters in Moscow was to send coded
> telegrams to agents in other countries such as Egypt and France where
> the messages were recopied and forwarded to telegram addresses in
> Berlin.
>
> A secret file on the operation stated: "Einstein's address proved very
> successful because he normally receives a large amount of mail,
> telegrams and cablegrams from all parts of the world.
>
> "Einstein's personal secretary turned the coded telegrams over to a
> special operator whose duty it was to transmit them to Moscow by
> various means."
>
> However, the FBI was never able to satisfy itself whether Einstein
> knew the content of the coded telegrams.
>
> The most bizarre section of the file deals with rumours that were
> circulating at the time that Einstein had invented a robot which,
> "under the control of certain electrical devices", was able to read
> the human mind "irrespective of the wishes of those involved".
>
> The report stated that the purpose of the device was to pass US
> military and state secrets to Russia.
>
> However, the allegations were too bizarre even for the FBI to believe
> and, after further research, it was discovered that the source of the
> information was, in fact, "suffering from a deranged mind" and had
> been the inmate of an asylum for the insane.
>
> Another section deals with concerns that Einstein had perfected a
> laser weapon so destructive that, through it, "500 could rule a
> nation".
>
> According to an informer's report, Einstein and "ten former Nazi
> research brain-trusters" held a secret meeting at which they put on
> asbestos suits and watched a beam of light melt a block of steel "as
> quickly as the light switch in any home could be turned on".
>
> The report, dating from May 1948, added that the "atomic bomb was
> child's stuff compared to this new development" and reported claims
> made elsewhere that the secret weapon could be operated from aircraft
> "to destroy entire cities".
>
> However, after urgent consultations with leading scientists across
> America, the FBI concluded that any such ray would never work outside
> the range of a few feet.
>
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