A beam recovery efficiency of 99.4% has been demonstrated with a 2.5 MeV, 1.2 ampere electrostatic accelerator electron beam system developed at UCSB to drive single-stage and two-stage free-electron lasers. Beam quality tests carried out at 10 keV and 2.5 MeV show that the measured transverse beam emittance agrees well with the theoretical limit imposed by the electron transverse thermal velocity distrubution generated by a thermoionic electron gun cathode and it is better than a factor of ten below that calculated from the Lawson-Penner relation. Also, a description of the UCSB FIR oscillator experiment is presented.