It's been our privilege to pay tribute to many great men on these pages, and Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest and most gifted men ever to have walked this Earth. It was unclear to us, however, for two years whether to include him on our Tribute list, as we were not convinced that he had given his life for his stand for the truth. But having studied the matter carefully, we now join a growing number of researchers in the belief that he was murdered and did not die of natural causes.
A huge amount has been written about the prodigal genius of Nikola Tesla (maybe more even than on JFK, to whom we also pay Tribute), and so there may not be a great need to say more here about his life, his brilliance, his vision, and his achievements. But in brief, Tesla was an extraordinary, intuitive, creative genius who, among a great deal else, invented alternating current (which powers the the modern world) and radio (for which Marconi is often falsely given credit). Contemporary biographers of Tesla have deemed him "the father of physics", "the man who invented the twentieth century", and "the patron saint of modern electricity".
Much of his life's work was about providing for the world free (i.e. zero-cost) energy, which Tesla envisaged would be broadcast wirelessly through the air or through the Earth itself with no need for powerlines - but despite years of trying, he never obtained the funding to achieve this, one of his dreams. It has long since been rumored that he invented or developed a significant number of electrical and electronic devices which were decades ahead of their time and would have been of special interest to US military and intelligence circles. Around 300 patents were issues to Tesla in 25 countries, many of them major and far-reaching in concept.
Many Project Camelot visitors will be aware that it was a protégé of Tesla - Otis T. Carr - who worked with the young Ralph Ring, whom we interviewed in 2006. Carr was not murdered, but his laboratory was forcibly closed by the FBI after he, Ralph and a small team of others had successfully test-flown a 40' diameter disk which operated on a combination of electromagnetic and esoteric principles. (Please see our very comprehensive Ralph Ring page for details.)
The reality of Tesla's murder was brought home to us after listening to this most interesting audio interview (to download: PC users right-click, Mac users option-click). Here, Eric Bermen tells Greg Syzmanski how he discovered his former girlfriend was the daughter of ex-Nazi SS Commando Otto Skorzeny, and thereby quite by chance met the elderly Skorzeny who had been living for years in the US, working as a carpenter with a new identity supplied by the CIA after WWII.
Bermen (who sometimes uses the pseudonym Eric Orion) heard a full confession from Skorzeny, who was nearing the end of his life, and was given a shoebox full of over a hundred photographs to substantiate his claims. Among a number of other highly significant revelations, Bermen heard from Skorzeny that he had personally suffocated Nikola Tesla on January 6, 1943, assisted by fellow-Nazi Reinhard Gehlen. Tesla was then 86 years old.
According to Skorzeny, he and Gehlen had tricked Tesla the previous day into revealing the full details of his most important discoveries. After the murder, they stole the contents of Tesla's safe, which were delivered to Hitler. (Note, of course, that the US military would have fully repatriated this treasure trove of innovation through Project Paperclip at the end of the war.)
Bermen's book is available here - in which a large number of Skorzeny's extraordinary photographs are published - and a useful discussion of Skorzeny's claims can be found here and here. Of great importance - not only regarding Tesla - is the research detail contained in this very comprehensive Don Nicoloff article, which we encourage all readers to study carefully.