Publications: 1956-1957 31. The Destruction of Orgone Energy Accumulators and Burning of Reich’s
and the Burning of Reich’s Publications: 1956-1957
Any hopes that Reich would revise his legal strategy after the trial were soon
dashed. He continued with the same kind of arguments he had used in the pre-trial hearings
and at the trial itself. He did re-engage Charles Haydon as lawyer, although only to prepare
a brief for the Foundation. Silvert was to submit his own brief.
The brief that Reich submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals in October 1956 con-
tained his old assertions about a conscious, organized conspiracy against his work, although
on this occasion he granted a larger role to pharmaceutical and other commercial interests
than he did to the Red Fascists. For the first time in a legal paper, he introduced the erro-
neous notion that the U.S.Air Force was fully aware of a motor power in orgone energy.
Even while Reich was making extremely irrational statements, he was also asserting
who he was more plainly than ever: “The injunction did not concern a routine case of fraudulent pro-
duction to deceive the public. It was, on the contrary, the most crucial discovery ever made in nat-
ural science by an acknowledged, widely-known scientist and physician, arbitrarily misrepre-
sented to the court as a quack and fraudulent crook.”^1
The briefs by Haydon and Silvert essentially followed Reich’s position. In addition,
Silvert emphasized that he had not acted “in concert with” Reich in shipping accumulators
and orgonomic literature, and that the literature did not constitute “promotional” material
for the accumulator.
On December n,1956,the Court ofAppeals issued a four-page decision affirming
the view ofthe District Court. In answer to the argument of FDA fraud, the decision stat-
ed that even a fraudulent injunction had to be obeyed until it was legally overturned.
The rejection by the Court of Appeals hurt and angered Reich, but he soon
bounced back with renewed hope for a final appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court briefs submitted by Reich, Silvert, and Haydon contained
expansions on previously presented arguments with one major addition: Reich submitted his
volume Contact with Space, as an appendix to the briefs. It is rather extraordinary that he
should have done so since Contact with Spacedoes not deal at all with the specifics ofthe FDA
case. In his last appeal, Reich maintained his course: the FDA became just one theme in his
contrapuntal melody of life against death (or pollution, armored human beings, and emo-
tional plague attacks like the injunction).
Even while the appeals were in process, the destruction of accumulators and
Reich’s literature began. There was little Reich or Silvert could do to prevent this measure
424 Myron SharafFury On Earth
