Slashdot Mirror
Bobby Fischer FBI Files Released Under FOIA
An anonymous reader writes: "Philidelphia Inquirer has a stroy detailing the results of a FOIA request for chess great Bobby Fischer." Turns out they thought the anti-semitic chess grandmaster(and his mother) was a soviet spy.
Just in case anyone was wondering whether the FBI were getting this guy all wrong here's Bobby Fischer's radio call-in on 9/11 applauding the terrorists [mp3] [Newspaper report on Bobby Fischer's 9/11 radio call].
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Bobby Fischer's wild paranoid anti-semitic rants really make him come across as a total asshole.
Some time after he was locked out of the USA by the state department, he would go onto foreign radio shows and say the most outrageous things.
In his own opinion, he did more for the image of the US during the cold war than any other individual. Indeed.
And they fucked his family and him over. Instead of respect he got suspicion and hounding.
So perhaps in his own opinion, he can do more to damage the image of the USA by spouting off. Retracting and degrading everything he did for the US image.
Trying to take back what he gave them.
Well, no one wants to hear about what happened in vietnam. It was one of the ugliest wars in history. Its a vast and complex issue that brings up a lot of feelings, good and bad.
Ultimately, both sides were wrong. However there are a lot of people that just wanna beat America down, for a multitude of personal reasons, so America is the bad guy.
No one wants to hear about how South and North Vietnam were at war long before we came into the picture. That we were asked to help because of our minor success in Korea.
I think a true testament of what we are made of as a country is the fact we came together after vietname. Russie fell apart after its war in Afghanistan, literally. America learned a lot of lessons in the 60's and 70's and so far hasn't repeated any of those same mistakes.
Blah, whatever, no matter what we say in a slashdot thread, the world still hates the top dog. Just part of life I suppose.
The FBI did have a legitimate national security interest in the Fischers. His mother lived and attended medical school in the Soviet Union. The KGB and GRU recruited agents from foreign students attending schools in the Soviet Union. His father fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. That in itself isn't a problem, but it puts him in a group that was heavily infiltrated and influenced by the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence operations. The FBI didn't have the right to harass the Fischers, but I think they had a legitimate national security interest in investigating their activities to see if they were involved in espionage or other crimes. The CPUSA (Communist Party USA) was heavily involved in Soviet espionage operations.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
A truely great movie, I've watched it about ten times over the last few years. It has a great Bobby Fischer narrative woven into the story of Josh Waitzkin that prompted me to read more about Mr. Fischer. I have gotten the impression that he and his family were hounded enough by the FBI to drive them towards the mindset that they were being investigated for in the first place.
Bobby Fischer seemed to drop his interaction with most people when the FBI would investigate the people he came into contact with. It would be enough to make me very paranoid at a minimum. When I try to emulate his perspective based on his approach to chess, it gets more interesting.
Look at a chess board and see a massive parallel and deep attack. The pieces only represent positions, the real battle is mental between two powers. Victory comes from overpowering and outlasting your opponent. If you loose concentration and perspective, it is easy for your opponent to start using your own pieces against you by limiting your movments with your pieces. That seems to explain his withdrawal from public interaction, he limited the liability of having others around that would be a liability. He would have seen the FBI as an opponent with thousands of pieces that had to be controlled. If most of those that would be considered his opponents could only focus on him, then they became the ones that had limited movment and got in each others way.
It is late and I may be rambling a bit, but for a perspective on the different level of mental capability Bobby Fischer has over the average person,
read this google cached page about Josh Waitzkin and try to relate. Josh has studied Bobby Fischer in great depth and can see many of the flaws in Bobby's game/life. From what I can see from Bobby Fischers perspective, I would have become a paraniod freak from the pressures that he and his family endured.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
And it is easy to make generalizations if one is unknowledgeable about the history of Palestine. I think you should read this in order to understand the roots of the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Keep this in mind: In the beginning of the 20th century only one person in 10 living in Palestine is a Jew. Now it is exactly reversed.
Put yourself in the shoes of the Palestinians: you have no american supplied F-16s, no Merkava tanks, no way of waging a Geneva Convention type war. How are you going to fight for your beliefs, your people and your history? Is it a wonder that the only way a desperate people can fight is through suicide bombings?
Please do not immediately label me an anti-semitic. I do not hate Jews, but I do deplore how the Israeli (and specially the Sharon) government's treatment of the Palestinian problem seems to mirror the way Hitler treated the Jewish problem. One has only to read Israeli newspapers to realize that many Israelis themselves are aware of these and actually criticize their own government.
I know many Jews here will agree with me. The problem with Israel is that it is not a nation of Israelis but a Jewish state. For as long as the Israeli government refuses to make itself into a truly representative, truly non-discriminatory nation it will continue to hold the entire world hostage to its ailment.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey