The FEF Story

Unbeknownst to most Americans, in 1980 Congress passed the Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act, which called for an Apollo-style program for the development of thermonuclear energy by the year 2000. Most of the scientific community were convinced that such a program could achieve commercial fusion by the beginning of the century. The cost would be $1 billion per year for 20 years. The passage of this bill was largely due to the efforts of the Fusion Energy Foundation, which had been created through the efforts of economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche and a group of scientists, some of whom had been instrumental in the war-time Manhattan Project. The FEF magazine, Fusion, had 90,000 subscribers, who were mobilized in this effort. While Congress passed the legislation and it was signed into law by President Carter, Congress and the incoming Reagan Administration balked at authorizing the required spending and the legislation died on the vine. In addition a political vendetta, the push for neo-Malthusian austerity, and the desire of the oil and gas industry to maintain their hegemonic role in energy production, led to the suppression by the U.S. government of the Fusion Energy Foundation, which was widely recognized as fusion energy's "most visible private supporter".
The book also documents the key role played by the FEF in the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the largely unknown background story to the adoption of the this program by the US President as an olive branch to the Soviet Union .