HathiTrust full-text search (run 2, via Chrome) - 2026-10-03

Site: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls (full-text search) and the volume "search in this text" / plain-text page views. Access: run 1 was blocked by a Cloudflare challenge (HTTP 403) for scripted access. In Chrome the site opened normally; scripted curl is still refused (403). Result: positive. Recheck: yes (other volumes of the same hearing series, and the "separate report" on REA projects, may surface).

Queries tried

• Full text, all words: Moray radiant energy Frazer (38,456 hits, noise)
• Advanced: phrase "Franklin P. Wood" AND Moray (OCR field) -> the three hits below plus noise
• Phrase "Henry Moray"; phrase "Moray radiant energy"; phrase "Industrial Revolution Projects"; phrase "Felix J. Frazer"; Moray AND Halleck AND radiant (noise only); Moray AND Tugman (noise); phrase "Moray Products" (only secondary free-energy books, limited view)
• Search inside volume umn.31951d03587118y: Moray (6 pages), Frazer (pp.1327, 1330, 1344-1347, 1370ff.)
• Search inside mdp.39015038694124 (1988 Senate Energy and Water appropriations hearing) and mdp.39015056094579 (Harper's 1929) for Moray

Findings

1. The printed Senate hearing exists and is Full View [web]

Administration of the Rural Electrification Act: hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, United States Senate, Seventy-eighth Congress, first session, on S. Res. 197 ... Pt. 1-5, December 13, 1943 - May 29, 1944. Volume pt.4-5: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d03587118y (also uc1.b5101574 and the bound "Hearings, Cong. 78 sess. 2, Agriculture & Forestry v.3, 1944", mdp.35112104250388). Public domain, Google-digitized.

Moray appears on printed pp.1344-1345 (the investigators' report, section "Rural Electrification Administration Industrial Revolution Projects", subsection "Radiant Energy") and pp.1370-1376 (staff interview of REA Administrator Harry Slattery, 2 June 1943, cited as exhibit 9). OCR saved: - files/HT_1944_Senate-REA-hearing_pt4-5_pp1344-1346_Moray-radiant-energy_OCR.txt - files/HT_1944_Senate-REA-hearing_pt4-5_pp1370-1376_Slattery-interview-exhibit9_Moray_OCR.txt

Who is speaking (interested parties): the report is by the subcommittee's investigating staff (Supervising Investigator V. A. Young, per Electrical World 11 Nov 1944), in a hostile inquiry into Slattery's administration; its frame is that these were "revolutionary and fantastic" projects "followed through to negative conclusions". Slattery was the accused official and speaks second-hand from R. B. Craig. Neither is a neutral technical assessment.

What the report says about Moray (p.1344-1345) [web, umn.31951d03587118y seq 486-487]: - Moray "claimed that he had developed and unsuccessfully demonstrated on numerous occasions a device whereby it was possible to utilize the vast store of energy of the universe without a prime mover." (Wording as printed; "unsuccessfully" may be the investigators' gloss or an error.) - Fall 1938: Administrator John M. Carmody, "persuaded through constituents of Congressman H. Jerry Voorhis, of California, and REA employees", approved an inquiry "long enough to get a clear view". - Moray on the REA payroll as "power consultant at $25 a day" from 17 Feb 1939 to 28 Feb 1941. REA also "purchased expensive electrical equipment for Mr. Moray's laboratory, which was financed otherwise from private sources." - At Franklin P. Wood's suggestion, "Mr. Feliz J. Frazer, who at that time was an investigator for the Works Progress Administration, and who reputedly was an advocate of technocracy, was employed to observe Mr. Moray's work." Wood, "also a believer in technocracy", told Carmody the device would siphon energy from the atmosphere and called it a challenge to aid in "changing the present stupid system of individual profit production". - Wood's report to Craig, August 1939: the full quotation (as in the Chicago Tribune) continues: "He is stubborn beyond reason and believes that it is a revelation from heaven and that in the Lord's own time ... the Lord will tell him how to bring it out. Meanwhile, in Frazier's picturesque language, the Lord has told him to do as he damn pleases." - "For the next 2 years Mr. Frazier spent considerable time in assisting, begging, cajoling, and threatening Mr. Moray to develop the radiant energy device, all to no avail." - 1940: Senator Elbert D. Thomas (Utah) asked whether the government sponsored Moray, reporting stock sales using that sponsorship; Craig replied he knew of no stock selling, although REA files then held information that Moray's representatives were selling stock (p.1372 adds a Dun & Bradstreet report). - Prof. Orin Tugman, head of physics, University of Utah, wrote Craig in May 1940: he had known Moray about 12 years; investors had had no return; agents had sold stock or rights; one agent said he was told "to stay away from physicists and engineers"; for 12 years his requests for a demonstration met excuses ("the apparatus was not in repair, some extra part was coming from abroad"); demonstrations were "made to men not fitted to be critical"; in his opinion "a very clever hoax".

What Slattery said (pp.1371-1376, 2 June 1943) [web, seq 513-518], all second-hand from Craig unless stated: - Craig told him he saw Moray "with a small aluminum disk that supposedly had this perpetual energy, run a small motor and fans by current, unseen current." - The laboratory was "very expensive", funded by "a foundation group from around Los Angeles", named as something like "The Smith Family", a family enriched by a cement plant; Craig said the laboratory cost ran "into the hundreds of thousands of dollars" and that if Moray secured patents "they would be turned over to R. E. A."; REA understood it "had a contract with him" (Slattery never saw it). - Secretary Henry A. Wallace had met Moray and later asked Slattery "if Moray had made any progress, tangible progress". - "Senator King of Utah" (William H. King, US Senator 1917-41 [memory, high]) called Moray a "nut"; Slattery says the file should hold King's letters; Slattery says he terminated Moray after talking to King, and that Moray was "still with us" in late Nov 1942 (this conflicts with the report's end date of 28 Feb 1941). - "This was about the time that a mysterious story went around that the Germans had tried to assassinate him, and that story got into the Salt Lake papers." (First source outside the family's books to mention an attempt on Moray's life; it reports it as a rumour, and the newspaper story itself has not been found yet: see the UDN run-2 note.) - The investigator likened Moray's claim to "Count" Tomadelli's (convicted of mail fraud in 1920 over a light bulb "said to take in energy from the atmosphere"); Slattery: "pretty similar". - Frazer claimed he spent days at Columbia University "securing advice in connection with the Moray radiant energy matter from Mr. Glassford" (summer 1940). Slattery also says an FBI agent briefed him on Frazer (in connection with Dr. Kruh) and that the FBI sent him a report.

2. Felix J. Frazer as a Senate investigator, 1937 [web]

Phrase "Felix J. Frazer" hits the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee hearings, Violations of free speech and rights of labor, pt.9 (osu.32437122905215, pp.3268, 3318, 3324): Felix J. Frazer served the committee's subpoenas in Harlan County, Kentucky, Feb-Mar 1937. He also co-authored the 1935 Report of the National Survey of Potential Product Capacity (uc1.b3861534). This fits the "investigator" and "technocracy" descriptions; identity across the three records still rests on name, era and role.

3. Other hits (not evidence about the device)

• 1988 Senate Energy and Water appropriations hearing (mdp.39015038694124, pp.1933, 1941, 1946): public statements by free-energy advocates naming Henry Moray. Later advocacy.
• Harper's 1929 (pp.301-311): a short story by Vincent Sheean with a character "Henry Moray". Unrelated.

Bearing on claims

• Claim 6 (REA episode): confirms from the government's own printed record the dates, pay, Carmody's 1938 decision, Frazer's role and the Wood report; adds Tugman's 1940 hostile statement, the Thomas and King complaints, the stock-selling issue, the Los Angeles "Smith family" funding and the 1940 assassination rumour.
• Claim 1: Craig's second-hand account of a "small aluminum disk" running a motor and fans is a new witness description (via Slattery); Tugman says demonstrations were refused to him for 12 years. Both sides now have a primary record.
• 5th-edition dating: the Halleck item was 1944, based on a 1943-44 Senate hearing (not 1942); the printed record names Wood's report date (Aug 1939).