starr@shell.UUCP (Bob Starr) (01/09/84)
I saw the following in the January 2nd issue of Time, and found it humorous. Thought you might enjoy it. Cementing a Deal The episode smacked of suspense fiction: forgery, smuggling, state-of-the-art electronics, a Moscow address. But it also had an all-American punch line. Last January, Teledyne Geotech, Inc. got an order for one of its $114,000 seismometers, which are used to measure the force of nuclear blasts. Officials made a routine check of the number on the export licence submitted by the would-be buyer, a Colorado company that wanted to ship the device to West Germany. U.S. Customs in Washington confirmed that the document was a fake. Agents began watching the officers of the Denver concern, Norman Cormerford and Bruce Adamski, who had ordered a $54,000 krypton laser from another manufac- turer. That device, used to etch computer microchips, was also bound for West Germany. Custom agents suspected the real buyer: the Soviets. Aided by West German customs officials, they found a manifest for the laser with a most incriminating ad- dress: a pysics lab in Moscow. Cormerford and Adamski, charged last week, each face up to seven years in prison. Prankish federal agents decided to send along the Soviet-bound parcels- sort of. They filled the crates with 700 lbs. of concrete and, inside one, thucked a two-word note, in plainest English: "F___ you!"