The First Casualty

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Re: Nikola Tesla

File No. 2121-70

TOP SECRET

Date: October 21, 1941

To: J. Edgar Hoover, Director

From: Tim O’Flaherty, Director, Manhattan Field Office

Interception of subject’s mail at the request of British Secret Service Bureau and authorized by secret Presidential Directive 42 indicate frequent mail contact with family members in the Independent State of Croatia. The director will recall this small country became a signatory to the Triparte Pact on 6 June of this year, thereby becoming a formal ally of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as well as Imperial Japan and a number of smaller countries, although Croatia has been considered a Nazi puppet state under the N.D.H. since the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April of this year.

Since subject holds a number of patents of a scientific nature with possible military implications, the possibility exists of his family being used as hostages by the country’s pro-Nazi government in an effort to obtain access to subject’s inventions for use as potential weapons. Subject’s nephew, Dari, has volunteered to join the 369 Reinforced Croatian Infantry, the troops Ante Pavelić, Croatia’s “leader,” has promised to send to aid in the German invasion of Russia. Whether this young man has done so out of a love of the Nazis or the long-lived Croatian hatred of Russia is unknown.

The director will recall subject attempted to sell some sort of ray to the British military and succeeded in doing so to the U.S.S.R. for a reputed $25,000.

So far, there is no evidence subject’s communications contain anything more significant than family news. Surveillance will continue.