How Epstein Destroyed The Careers Of Pons & Fleischmann
Jeffrey Epstein claims to have destroyed the career of ‘cold fusion’ co-creator Stanley Pons, which is perhaps not a bad thing
Three federal exhibits released as part of the DOJ’s January 30, 2026 Epstein document disclosure — EFTA02437662, EFTA00740161, and EFTA00740600 — contain an email exchange between Jeffrey Epstein and Al Seckel dated October 1–14, 2009.
Seckel was a perceptual scientist, TED speaker, and board member of Milken’s Knowledge Universe, a private education company.
The exchange took place approximately one year after Epstein’s June 2008 guilty plea to soliciting a minor in Florida and his registration as a sex offender.
On the morning of October 1, 2009, Epstein wrote to Seckel:
“regarding cold fusion. i killed pons years ago”
Seckel responded the same day:
“How did you kill him? There is still a group of these guys going strong…”
Seckel then pressed further:
“Don’t leave me hanging Jeff. I want to know you(r) relationship to Pons and cold fusion… :-)”
Epstein replied with specifics:
“the origidnal senate funding came out of congress, and wayne owens senator from utah ,, i was there an argues against, it, had ot meet with the head of the mormon church.”
The poor punctuation and mis-spelling in the quote above is original, not mine 🙂
What Epstein actually Claimed
Epstein’s account, across his two responses to Seckel, describes:
- That the original funding for cold fusion research came through Congress, via Wayne Owens of Utah.
- That Epstein was physically present — “i was there” — and argued against the funding.
- That Epstein had to meet with the head of the Mormon Church — almost certainly because BYU’s institutional involvement in the cold fusion dispute was routed through the LDS Church’s governance of the university.
- That Epstein took personal credit for the outcome: “i killed pons years ago.”
As far as is known, no-one else has mentioned Epstein had been connected to the cold fusion work, and he claims to have persuaded Congress to withdraw funding.
What is Cold Fusion?
For those unaware of who Stanley Pons was, he was an electrochemist at the University of Utah who, together with Martin Fleischmann, announced in March 1989 that they had achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature, and the term ‘cold fusion’ was born.
The announcement generated global headlines and, briefly, the prospect of virtually unlimited clean energy.
Their apparatus was relatively simple; a glass vessel containing ‘heavy water’, a form of water containing an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium. Deuterium is used as a moderator and coolant in nuclear reactors, and is used to produce another hydrogen isotope called tritium, which is used in nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, (or MRI as it is more commonly known, the word ‘nuclear’ being dropped due to paranoia surrounding many things nuclear).
There were two powered palladium electrodes in the water, which they claimed produced heat, which could be used to drive steam turbines to generate electricity, the way it is done in current nuclear reactors.
The big problem was Pons & Fleischmann refused to divulge full details of their experiments, and many other laboratories attempted to replicate their experiment with limited information over the next two years, and all failed to work.
In 1992, the two scientists persuaded Toyota to fund their work at their IMRA lab in France, but after the experiments failed to produce the heat claimed, Toyota abandoned the project after spending an astonishing $40 million on it.
Further funding never appeared, and while Pons & Fleischmann continued to claim they had achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature, no-one in the scientific community took the concept seriously.
I remember watching a tv documentary about their ‘discovery’, with them filmed in their laboratory with the equipment working, and the first thing I thought of was ‘why are they still alive?’
If they really were creating nuclear reactions with no shielding, the neutron flux would have given them a lethal dose of radiation in less than an hour, and probably irradiated everyone else in the building.
They remained alive of course, Stanley Pons is now 82, and living in France.
Martin Fleischmann passed away on August 3rd, 2012, at the age of 85 in England, following a long battle with Parkinson’s disease and other health issues.
Cold Fusion has now been relegated to the realms of science fiction, along with over-unity energy, zero-point energy, Red Mercury and the ‘Biefield-Brown Effect’.
About the author: Andy Rowlands is a British university graduate in space science and Principia Scientific International researcher, writer and editor who co-edited the 2019 climate science book ‘The Sky Dragon Slayers: Victory Lap‘
Header image: The Pauling Blog