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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.
I hope they don't release my FBI file about me watching TV and on the computer all day.
Free Instant Site Inclusion
Have they finally confirmed that he's playing on the internet? :)
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
> that chinese dude
Who? Are you talking about Wen-ho Li? The guy from LANL? That guy was railroaded by the Justice and Energy depts. They basically ruined the guy because he [allegedly] mishandled information on obselete data that although officially classified, was known by everyone anyway. And the guy was in prison for a year before his case was dropped. That's right. The charges were dismissed. So obviously he's a pretty big spy if his case is thrown out. Or you could be talking about someone else... at least I hope so...
Andy
Yes, you caught us. America is a military dictatorship. You found us out. Our military state is run by those pesky Jews, who go around making up things like the Holocaust, and running Hollywood, and exterminating the Palestinians, and running the FBI and the CIA and all the black ops agencies I can't tell you about because the Zionist Conspiracy told me not to.
You and the nutty, paranoid anti-semites like yourself should grow up and grow a sack. Jews are people like any other people, some are violent and hawkish, some are pacifist doves, some are in between. Many are selfish, many are selfless. Some are brilliant, some are morons, most are just somewhat above average (typical for those from a culture that values learning and intellectual accomplishment).
Why do Jews have a lot of influence in America? Because Jews work hard and achieve success in academia, business and other areas at a higher rate than the rest of the population. Some other ethnic groups have achieved similar sorts of success in America. Do Jews control the US? Give me a break. That's as likely as your implicit claim that all those Palestinians are entirely innocent and are just getting slaughtered like hogs. Granted, lots of innocent blood has been shed on both sides (no, telling me that 4 times as many Palestinians have died doesn't make a fuck bit of a difference to me as in no way makes for a moral argument) in Israel and the occupied territories, but implying that somebody is turning a blind eye to some mysterious atrocities is ridiculous.
And you are any better? You seem to be predijuced aginst southerners yourself. I am what you would call a "southern redneck", as I am from Jackson MS, and drive a large truck. I hunt, and fish, and even have a deer's head mounted on my wall. Does that make me a bad person? I wouldn't say so. Does it make me stupid, or slow? I hardly doubt it. What it does mean though, is you should watch your words more cloesly, and realize that when you judge others, you yourself are open for judgement.
--Forest C. Adcock--
Fischer's anti-semitism and his apparent approval of the attack on the World Trade Center might make him an asshole, but it doesn't make him a terrorist, and it certainly doesn't retroactively make him a Soviet spy in the 1970's or vindicate any of the FBI's suspicions.
As explained in the article, the FBI had a long-running investigation of Fischer and his mother back in the 70's and earlier. It's just another illustration that the US govt has been spying on its own citizens for decades, long before there was any sort of terrorist rationalization.
I concur. They are making it seem like a crime to hold a certain attitude towards a certain population, the jewish people.
... even if unsubstantiated. With freedom of speech, people will be able to distinguish truth from falsity. When restrictions are placed and a portion of the population is given special untouchable-from-criticism status, the people are not given this opportunity to guage truth from falsehood and suspicion and corruption of truth will brew even more so.
Case in point. John McCain has more than once voiced his anti-Vietnamese attitude. You don't see the press calling him the Anti-Vietnamese Senater.
Of course if Joe Smoe says anything negative about jewish people, IMMEDIATELY everyone (like a reflex action) labels him an antismetic and it's like he is a pedophile and they discount everything that he says, even the truthful elements.
I find this behavior troubling because: 1. it creates restriction on freedom of speech and thought for the general population. 2. It creates white/non-jewish backlash against minority groups.
Both of these troubling, growing situations can be prevented by BEING FAIR and not trying to make the jewish population untouchable from public comments, even if the comments happen to be negative
Of course, I'm sure I will be labeled anti-semetic after this post by the ignorant and by pro-censors. But, please think about it. I'm advocating freedom of speech, an essential pillar of our democratic society that is being chiseled away at for the past decade or so.
> Newton for instance (probably) died a virgin. /. masses. ;)
What a great idol for the
Millions of people getting burned and treated like animals called a sham or a conspiracy is awful, despicable, and just down right inhumane
Like when turkey denies the 1.5 million armenians that were killed in the armenian holocaust? Nobody seems to flich.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
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.
Because it shows the scum fuck for what he really is. A hate breeding mongrel.
It's who he is, you don't write about someone and neglect who they are. Do you write about hitler and not mention he hated jews?
No, you most certainly do write about someone and neglect some details, given the topic at hand. It's completely appropriate to neglect the fact that Hitler hated Jews when discussing his economic policies or military decisions in the same way that it's appropriate to neglect the fact that Fischer is an anti-Semite when discussing chess strategies or one of many other topics.
Now, this article is a historical summary and the anti-Semitism is rather pertinent. I probably would have been upset if the authors had left it out but only because that detail pertains to the topic at hand--not because I think Fischer is a "hate-breeding mongrel."
I can probably find a point of disagreement with anybody I know. Does that mean I have to mention that fact every time I write about them?
Disclaimer: I don't agree with Fischer's views on Jews, either. That doesn't mean that I get to slap "ANTI-SEMITE" across anything he's said/done and subsequently ignore it.
" How come Israelis and JEws who call for the murder and ethnic cleansing of palestinians are never called "Anti-arab"or "Anti-muslim"?"
They are
"Then just 30 years later pol pot is commit genocide of an unprecedented scale in combodia but no one gives a good god damn cuase they are just some broke ass asians."
Because we got our asses kicked in that part of the world trying to do them a favor (we entered vietnam at south vietnams request).
Check your history, America isn't the worlds police. We don't go around saving everyone, it's their job to save themselves. We don't have to "give a shit", but if you would like us too then I suggest you give us a reason to "give a shit" by not strapping bombs to your chest and going kamakazi through grocery stores and bus stations.
There is actually a lot more to it than that. John McCain takes issue with the VC (VietCong) who were notoriously evil in combat. These were mostly 12-18 year old boys and girls in black pajams who setup traps using their own women and children as bait. They frequently slaughtered entire villages of their own people by purposely putting them in the line of fire so they could get the liberal Jane Fondas of the world to say "LOOK AMERICA IS KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE".
Men like McCain who had to fight them now just how evil they were. Ad to that his stay in the POW camps, the deaths of close friends, etc and you have a recipe for a life times worth of anger hate and general anxiety.
That part of the world is not a good place. No matter what the liberals would like us to believe, the south east asain governments do not respect life. However the vietnamese people as well as cambodians etc are generally good people.
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.
ECONOMICALLY? How so? We alienate the arab nations, which control half the world's oil supply, in order to support a nation that has no oil whatsoever. We support Israel so much, in fact, that fully 1/3rd of their GDP is in the form of American aid. That's right, essentially one in three Israelis is living off of American handouts. How does this provide the USA with an economic benefit?
No, there are reasons that we support Israel, but money ain't one of them. We support Israel because of the holocaust. After WWII, the Allies decided that because of the horrors the Jewish people had endured (not only at the hands of the Nazis, but throughout their history), Israel would be turned over to them. Because we made that commitment, we back them. The second reason is suicide bombing. The Israelis may commit military actions which are of dubious morality (at best), but they've never sent in suicide bombers, or taken actions with no strategic value whatsoever. The third reason is historical. The arab nations in the middle east attacked Israel repeatedly without provocation. Each defeat has made them more and more hostile. Between terrorist actions like the slaughter of the Israeli Olympic team and wars of agression from the First Arab-Israeli War onward, it's easy to be sympathetic to Israel.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
How did that dude get so fucked up.
Its called paranoid schitzophrenia [295.30 DSM-IV]. One of Bobby Fischer chess contemporaries, Reuben Fine, was a psychologist, and noted symptomatic behavior when Fischer was a teenager. It also explains a lot of odd behavior Fischer has exhibited throughout his life. Its sad, really.
BTW, southern white trash redneck anti-semitism is not much different than your pro-zionist prejudice.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Violent talks just lead to violent acts.
And violent acts lead to more violent acts - that's why September 11th happened. Arabs hate the US because they sponsor Israel, a state which has pursued policies similar to the Third Reichs for more than fifty years. For example:
So here we have a state that uses military aggression against civilians, essentially its own citizens. They pursue research and production of weapons of mass destruction, and have violated other states sovereignty to assasinate figures they don't like. Sounds like Iraq, but it also applies equally to Israel. Of course Israel doesn't have massive oil reserves, and the US has a powerful pro-Israeli lobby along with a president financed by oil hungry industry.
The Telegraph article linked to a number of times in this Slashdot thread should be taken in context. It's published in Britain by a dubious Canadian with pro-Israeli views, a man who censures his own staff and others if they write anything that criticises Israeli policies or highlights Palestinian grievances. Of course Fischer isn't going to be portrayed in a balanced light by the Telegraph ... ignore Fischers disgust at the way the US has treated him and his likely mental issues, he looks more anti-semitic that way.
Chris
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
Except J Edger Hoover. They thought HE was straight...
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
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.
Israel and Palestine do the same shit to each other. But we label attacks by Palestine terrorism. BS. Both countries engage in it, we just support one of them.
I must be watching a different news show, reading a different newspaper than you. What happens is some palestinian nut job comes into Israel, blows himself up, and tries to take as many innocent lives as possible. Then after this provocation, Israel attempts to either assassinate the people involved with the planning of the attacks, or take out their entire neighborhood with tanks.
Here's a good question: How many Israeli suicide bombers have you read about?
It's not terrorism when you're responding to an attack, and trying to localize your response to the perpetrators.
"And like that
Here's a good question: How many Israeli suicide bombers have you read about?
How many Nazi suicide bombers have you read about? How many Soviet suicide bombers have you read about? If you have tanks, you don't need suicide bombers.
It's not terrorism when you're responding to an attack, and trying to localize your response to the perpetrators.
They take out their entire neighborhood with tanks. Imagine your neighbor went nuts, so they rolled up tanks on your front lawn. Would you feel that that was a localized response?
I'm not arguing that Israel is in an easy position, but they are far from lily-pure here.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
Several--there was that nut a few years back who massacred all those Palestinians praying.
But the reason Isreal doesn't have suicide bombers is because they have a GNP 10000 times larger than the Palestinians. They've got bombs. Recall that operation recently where they blew up an apartment complex to get one guy? That isn't because the majority of Isrealis support things like that, but because in any conflict there will be crazies. You could be sure that if the situations were reversed (hell, if you put any two groups of people in the world in that situation) suicide bombings would be used by the weaker side. Hell, just look at all those nutty settlers. They are camping out in Hebron now (with Sharon's voiced approval).
The fact is that the Palestinians have a reason for grief, after being driven out (or leaving voluntarily, depending on the historian) during the war of Isreali independance. And after that, having their land occupied (after a war Isreal had with someone else) since the '67 war.
Anytime you have something like that, you can depend on people not simply giving up. You can depend on them using whatever means are at their disposal to fight. And on the Israeli side, Isreal was founded by Jews running from European persecution--and later the holocaust--and now it is populated mostly by people who have been living there their entire lives, and have no other home.
You could have predicted all this from the first kibbutz built in British Palestine. Or maybe since the first Jew burned by the Inquisiton. There is overwhelming blame to go around, but it will never be enough. The responsibility of leaders on all sides is to build a peace however they can.
there are people who advocate hatred in every society. the nazis rounded up millions of civilians and slaughtered them. israelis have not. for you to equate the israelis with the nazis is ignorant.
Just because there are people advocating hate in every society doesn't make it right. And you may want to check your own level of ignorance, last time I checked there were millions of Palestinians rounded up into the West Bank and Gaza, having been evicted by force from land they had lived on for centuries. And as for slaughter, check up on the activities of the Jewish forces during the foundation of Israel - murdering Arab civilians was common place.
I can and will equate the extremists in Israeli society with Nazis, because they are very vocal about the policies I attributed to them in my previous post. The proposals to ethnically cleanse the West Bank by any means necessary is not conjecture, but the avowed policies of some of the parties represented in the Knesset. It's also the view of the head of the Israeli land forces.
israel invades neighbors defensively, in response to attacks, such as missiles and mortar fire coming from across the border in lebanon
Israel threw the first stone. It's a state born out of violence, and perpetuated by violence.
try educating yourself about the facts if you want to post about such issues. most likely you're just being a troll, though, i don't know why i waste my time responding to you.
I've been to Israel, met many different people both Arabs and Jews. Go back far enough in my family tree and you'll find Jewish blood on my fathers side. I'm not a troll, I'm simply cheesed off with the misinformed gibberish that most people spout about the Middle East. Having lived in America, I can understand the bias there - the popular press is rabidly pro-Israeli, and any politician who upsets the Jewish lobby can kiss their career goodbye. The sad thing is there are people on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide who are level headed and reasonable, but their voices are drowned out by populist bullshit from all sides. Even when the cheif Rabbi in Britain questioned Israeli human rights abuses, he was shouted down by the loudmouted Israeli apologists in his won society.
Chris