G:asa (06/08/82)
>From the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (Mon., June 7, 1982; reprinted from
the WASHINGTON POST):
Russia Off Limits
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U.S. IMPOUNDS CHESS COMPUTER
Washington
The U.S. Customs Service, intent on stopping the flow of
sensitive technology to the Soviet Union, has seized and impounded
indefinitely a machine called Belle, the world-champion chess
computer.
Belle won the title in 1980 at the most recent world computer
chess championship tournament in Linz, Austria.
The Commerce Department says the computer might be of military
use to Moscow. The frustrated scientist who wanted to take it to a
Moscow chess exhibition -- and now isn't sure he'll even get it back --
has a different view: "The thing plays chess. That's all."
Customs officials said a squad of special agents spotted
Belle's computer case bout three weeks ago t John F. Kennedy
International Airport in New York. The destination stamped on the
crate: Moscow.
Agents quickly detained the shipment and sent for instructions
from Washington. Customs then turned to the Commerce Department, whose
International Trade Administration decides whether a piece of equipment
might be of use to the Russians. In this case, the answer was yes.
The seizure of Belle is part of Operation Exodus, a major new
program to halt what officials have called a "hemorrhage" of the
nation's best technology to the Soviet Union and its allies.
Customs officials are delighted with the new program, which
they say has tripled the number of seizures of illegal exports of
sensitive equipment and technology. They say Exodus has produced 1150
leads and 370 seizures, including computers, aircraft parts and
communications equipment, in its first nine months.
The Commerce Department would not comment on why the chess
computer could be considered militarily sensitive, but Kenneth
Thompson, the scientist at Bell Laboratories who was responsible for
the shipment, says the only way it could be used militarily would be
"to drop it out of an airplane. You might kill somebody that way."
A spokesman at the Commerce Department said Thompson would be
subject to a penalty for violation of the Export Control Act. The
possibilities range from a cash fine to losing the computer
altogether.
Thompson said the parts of the machine said to be sensitive are
available for purchase in this country. "I just don't see the point of
all this," he said.