composition of orgone energy accumulator devices to be employed for therapeutic or pro-
phylactic uses by man or for other animals[italics mine M.R.S.].Protecting other species as well as man from the accumulator, the FDA struck a
pioneering blow for animal liberation.
In The Oranur ExperimentReich wrote that, using the language of emotions, orgone
energy responds to nuclear radiation at first with paralysis and later with fury. When he
received the complaint, Reich was paralyzed for three days. When he received the injunction,
Reich responded with rage.
The particular path of discharge for Reich’s rage was a rain-making operation. This
plan seems to have been set in motion only hours after he received the injunction decree^29.
He fired off a telegram to Ivan Tannehill of the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C.,
with a copy to Don Kent, weather reporter for WBZ in Boston, announcing his intention:
According to the Federal Food and Drug Administration, Orgone Energy
does not exist. We are drawing east to west from Hancock, Maine, and Orgonon,
Rangeley, Maine, to cause storm to prove that orgone energy does exist.
Consequences of this action are all your responsibility and that of Federal Judge
Clifford of Portland, Maine. We are flooding the East as you are drying out the
Southwest, You do not play with serious natural-scientific research^30.Snow in Rangeley and rain along the New England coast came after Reich’s weath-
er operations; it had not been predicted. As with all of Reich’s weather operations, it could
be argued that the rain would have come without his intervention. The forecasts may sim-
ply have been wrong, as they so often are. In any case, Reich believed he had caused the pre-
cipitation.He sent off another telegram declaring this conviction—with copies to the
President,J.Edgar Hoover, and the United and Associated presses in Portland, Maine.
Reich’s reactions are quite understandable: he wished to demonstrate his power and
the reality oforgone energy in as dramatic a way as he could. What is less comprehensible
is how he convinced himself that such efforts would have the slightest impact on the author-
ities. No one knew better than he their capacity to explain away events of this kind.
After Reich calmed down from his initial reaction, he went through a phase of plan-
ning to comply with the injunction. On March 30, Ilse Ollendorff, as clerk of the
Foundation and one ofthe defendants, sent a telegram to Mills, advising him that “the
Wilhelm Reich Foundation is far advanced in preparing full compliance with injunction.”
For a period after the injunction, the Foundation did not send out further accumu-
lators or literature. However, accumulators previously rented were not recalled. The renters
were informed of the decree and the decision to keep or return them was left to them. For
the most part,the users decided to keep the accumulators.
Reich could have instituted appeal procedures on limited grounds. There was a clear
394 Myron SharafFury On Earth