You are referring to a book written 30 years ago. After that I could not find anything else that qualifies as source...
In reality, Santilli went on to develop his own Foundation and  a publicly traded  company while at the same time  getting his work out there and published in peer reviewed journals and also self-published. This is the greatness of America, there is room for everybody and his story is a good example..... In regard to Kook ideas ....fringe ideas....opposition from peers     I suggest that you all

Wake up and follow the money trail

On April 29, as they were getting ready to launch the space shuttle Enedeavor, National Public Radio had a piece about the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS which was going to be carried into space by the shuttle. This instrument,   that cost to you and me and to all  taxpayers  2 Billions of dollars is supposed to look for antimatter created in the Big Band . This project was proposed by nobel Prize  physicist  Samuel Ting many years ago, it was controversial and several time Congress tried to cancel the program but could not overcome the lobbying by all the scientists  involved in the project. In the same piece NPR interviewed Professor Gregory Tarle , a physics professor who  said  'This project was a tremendous expenditure of money that was not justified....while the AMS was originally planned to search for primordial  antimatter, recent research show that that there is no way that it will find any".         
This physicist is from the University of   Michigan    and I am sure, people working with  Ting or other scientists  who were on the salary to built the machine , considered this man a kook, a subversive and tried to discredit him in any way. Do you think that if he now goes to the lab where the machine is built he is going  to get a job? Do you think that when you go to a professor who is the recipient of  a grant on a specfic subject and you tell  him that the subject he is studying has some alternatives and that he is basically studying an old theory and there are alternative ones, that professor will just tell you that you are great and that   you deserve a piece of the pie? Don't  you admit the possibility  that  he  is going to discredit you and send your work to a friend who is going to write a report....and do you think that that report is going to be  in support of the new alternative so his friend loses his grant? 
I am not sourcing this since it is a discussion on a different subject and it is very easy to find on the NPR site , however it is very pertinent to the discussion about Santilli saying that he was opposed....that is a normal event and if Santilli talked about this opposition is he  a kook and a fringe and should he  publicly disparaged???
Forgot, you may not like NPR so my whole discussion is disqualified.....Scuranova