R help - Feb 2024 - Trouble reading a UTF-16LE file

Dear R-help,
    I am having trouble reading a UTF-16LE formatted file. The issue appears to
be a byte order mark at the beginning of the file. I have tried readLines(file,
encoding='utf-16LE') but that got me

[1]"\xff\xfe1"	""	""	""	""
""


This is a tab delimited text file, despite the ANA extension. It is created by a
custom software program that interfaces with some specialized scientific
equipment.

Thank you for your help.


Regards,
Tim