Search for Bobby Fischer Ends at Japanese Airport, With Fugitive Chess King Captured

TOKYO (AP) - In a bizarre end game, Bobby Fischer - the chess world's most eccentric star - was taken into custody after trying to fly out of Japan with an invalid passport. Checkmate.

Wanted at home for attending a 1992 match in Yugoslavia despite international sanctions, the American former world champion had managed to stay one move ahead of the law by living abroad and being sheltered by chess devotees.

It was not immediately clear if Fischer would be handed over to the United States under its extradition treaty with Japan. But his detention gives Japan a chance to show its cooperation with the United States just days before officials plan to bring an accused U.S. Army deserter, Charles Robert Jenkins, to Tokyo for urgent medical treatment - a case Japanese officials want Washington to overlook.

Jenkins, whose Japanese wife was kidnapped by North Korea in 1978 and returned home in 2002, is wanted by Washington on desertion charges for allegedly defecting to North Korea in 1965. He is suffering from complications after abdominal surgery in North Korea.

Fischer was detained at Narita Airport outside Tokyo after trying to board a Japan Airlines flight to the Philippines on Tuesday, according to friends and airport officials. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday a U.S. consular official had visited Fischer in detention but that he could reveal no further information.

Fischer "didn't know that his passport had been revoked," said Japan Chess Association member Miyoko Watai. "He had been traveling frequently over the past 10 years, and there was never a problem. I don't understand why his passport was revoked."

Watai told The Associated Press she had talked to Fischer in custody. She said he was told he would be deported and was planning to appeal.

Considered by many the best chess player ever, Fischer, now 61, became grandmaster at age 15. In 1972, he became the first American world champion and a Cold War hero for his defeat of Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a series of matches in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The event was given tremendous symbolic importance, pitting the intensely individualistic young American against a product of the grim and soulless Soviet Union.

It also was marked by Fischer's odd behavior - possibly calculated psychological warfare against Spassky - that ranged from arriving two days late to complaining about the lighting, TV cameras, the spectators, even the shine on the table.

Fischer was world champion until 1975, when he forfeited the title and withdrew from competition because conditions he demanded proved unacceptable to the International Chess Federation.

After that, he lived in secret outside the United States. He emerged in 1992 to confront Spassky again, in a highly publicized match in Yugoslavia. Fischer beat Spassky 10-5 to win $3.35 million.

The U.S. government said Fischer's playing the match violated U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia, imposed for Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic's role in fomenting war in the Balkans.

Over the years, Fischer gave occasional interviews with a radio station in the Philippines, often digressing into anti-Semitic rants and accusing American officials of hounding him.

He praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.

He also announced he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version in Argentina, "Fischerandom," a computerized shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the board at the start of each game.

Alexander Roshal, of the Russian Chess Federation and chief editor of the chess magazine 64, said he had "mixed emotions" about the former champion.

"On the one hand, Fischer is a tough, notorious and quarrelsome person, but on the other hand he is a chess genius and contributed so much for the development of chess.

"He is a pathologically perverted anti-Semite, which is strange knowing his origin, and I suspect he is not appreciated in America. But on the other hand, he has done so much good for the country and was the only American to defeat the Soviet grandmaster."

Former U.S. champion Alexander Ivanov of Newton, Mass., who followed the Reykjavik matches from the Soviet Union at age 16, said Fischer "was ahead of his time by about 15 years."

"Chess had been his whole life, so he was sheltered from the world in some ways," she said. "Once he made up his mind, he would never change it, no matter what anyone said. That didn't always make people happy."

Fischer was rumored to be living here and to have frequented a Tokyo chess club. It wasn't clear how long he had been in the country.

"He came here often for short stays," said Watai. "He also traveled to the Philippines, Germany, Switzerland and many places."

Ferdinand Sampol, Philippine airport immigration chief, said the U.S. Embassy in Manila alerted immigration last week that Fischer might try to enter the country.

"But there was no request to exclude or remove him from the Philippines," he said.

Filipino grandmaster Eugene Torre, another old friend, said Fischer had been planning to seek asylum in Switzerland, and was caught off guard by the arrest.

I think at this point, after all the websites posted and all the reiterations across this and related posts to the effect that Bobby is seriously mentally ill, people should at least make some attempt to research the matter and judge for themselves before focusing on the rantings and not the condition of Bobby Fischer. I think with a little reflection, you will come to the same conclusion.

For me, I'm starting to shift to other questions, such as what to do about it. He's almost certainly mentally ill, and continues to make hateful rants that shows he is not improving, and he doesn't recognize how detached from reality he is, so he will never seek help himself. Another big question is, Is he a danger to himself or others? Sure he's mentally ill, but will his hateful rhetoric be taken as merely the ravings of a madman? Probably by most, but obviously not by all, as evidenced in this post. Will he cross the line between words and action? I doubt he is homocidal, but his words may still hurt.

I'm beginning to believe that if he is deported to the US, and gets a fair trial, they will deem his ravings a symptom of his illness, hopefully he will get the treatment that I believe he needs. I'm reluctant that this gets into some free speech issues, but if he is treated by trained professionals who understand his condition, he will be better for it. The John Nash story turned out well, and he also had paranoid delusions and was very anti-semetic in the depths of his delusional state. On the other hand, if he doesn't get a fair trial and/or they don't recognize his illness, and he's thrown into prison as a common criminal, God help him. If you read http://www.ishipress.com/pasadena.htm, and if it isn't just another fantasy of Bobby Fischer, he will not get the fair treatment that the mentally ill deserve, and it will only reinforce his paranoid condition. That would be an ugly ending to the story.

I was going to joke that Bobby could be the subject of a sequel Ron Howard could direct, "An ugly mind", but I am very concerned for this man. I'll reiterate, he has done tons for this country before he slipped off the deep end (granted he's been a big detractor since), and deserves better than cruel treatment in a prison.

And thank you Bob and Tooters for the pat on the back. I don’t come here looking for anything more than a healthy discussion and to learn more about this bizarre hero to madman story. When I’m attacked for being too “new” (I don’t see this has any relevance to the discussion), or being a “liberal” (GD Independent is more like it – I try to sort out the events of the world looking at it from all angles), or “unpatriotic” (‘nuff said about that – I want what’s best for my country), it adds nothing to the discussion and I take offence.

I try to look at the big picture, and not limit myself to a particular side, just to understand things better – there’s no reason discussion of a chess genius/madman should be polarizing. But it’s annoying to hear comments that reflect such ignorance, like playing chess with someone who not only brings their queen out early, but doesn’t even know the piece values enough that they’ll take a pawn for a queen, just for the sake of being on attack. Maybe I should just ignore it and let it go, but I like to point out the error in such attacks, and maybe strike back with a little extra, in hopes of discouraging future pointless attacks. But if it’s more about entertainment than reasonable discussion, I’ll play my role in the show. Apologies regarding the ADHD remark – I don’t want to equate that to intellect, but I saw that symptom and thought I might try and drill a point home. And normally I wouldn’t disgrace a veteran if it weren’t for the hateful crap. But I do applaud his service at the same time, and wouldn’t want to discourage anyone to add to the discussion, albeit in a civil manner.

Ah well, back to the subject… This story is fascinating to me, how a genius chess player can focus so much of his life on chess that he has absolutely no people skills, and then gets a hold of some anti-semetic literature and joins a cultish religion that just warps his mind so completely. Almost every day I read something new about it, that well before his 1972 World Championship, when he was on top of his game, he was spouting off anti-semetic crap and hanging pictures of Hitler over his bed. And he had become involved with that bogus religion as early as 1962, with many of the same cult practices as the People's Temple, made infamous by the Jonestown Massacre. By his own words, he recognized the brain-washing tactics they had used against him, but the article I posted (118 above) suggested that he slipped back into that cult.

New questions this brings to mind are, How do these influences completely take over one’s mind, and at such a large scale? We know what happened in Nazi Germany with Hitler, another “charismatic” (barf) supposed genius who himself was influenced by the false legend “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and authored Mein Kampf to stir the anti-semetic beliefs of the German people to bring himself to power and serve his ends. That same literature influenced Bobby Fischer in his early years.

In search of answers, I’ve come across some grotesque websites about Hitler (with links like “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century”, referring to the Holocaust, right next to “Jew Watch”), but found one more palatable historically accurate: http://www.remember.org/guide/Facts.root.hitler.html

And then, I found a website with archives from the “Ambassador Report” a magazine published by Worldwide Church defectors (alumni and students of Ambassador College, which was subjugated by Worldwide Church, located in Pasadena):

http://www.herbertwarmstrong.com/ar/index.htm

For my fellow chess geeks, this is a treasure trove of how Bobby Fischer, genius of 180 IQ, was mindwashed by this cult. In his own words, “BOBBY FISCHER SPEAKS OUT!”, he intelligently describes how they controlled his mind – any sane thought was that of the devil; false prophecies of the end of the world (fear, panic, guilt) to sucker people in for more money; and don’t question their authority. He identifies Armstrong as an egomaniac who would love to rule the world, and with a massive inferiority complex - dammit Bobby, look inward! And check out the money he gave!

And then sadly, he slips back under their control. In “Chess Champion Becomes Pawn”, Bobby has sued the “Ambassador Report” to put them out of business, but it becomes evident that WCG is behind it. And more evidence of Bobby’s paranoia, followed by a description of “floating” (Bobby’s period of doubt about the cult) and how often despite this doubt, people are dragged back in.

Next, in AR4, after negative media attention to WCG and lessening cooperation from Bobby in a law suit, they dropped him. After this betrayal, Bobby lashed back, and claimed the WCG lawyers were taking their orders from a "Satanical Secret World Government." Quite delusional, don’t you think? In AR26: Speculation of his whereabouts; continued evidence Bobby thinks the Russians and Jews are after him, and continues to warn against a “Satanic Secret World Government”. AR40 updates his whereabouts in 1988, still fearing the KGB is stalking him, still studying chess and a book promoting white supremacy that he has memorized word for word, still reportedly mentally ill, but foreshadowing a comeback to the tournament scene. Finally, AR72 in April 1999 reports his rantings on the radio to that date, and posts an article regarding the sale of Bobby’s property.

Fascinating material that carries this discussion beyond Bobby Fischer, to the subject of mind-control over and above mental illness. All this new stuff serves as a warning to be very critical of what you take in and adopt as your own strongly-held beliefs. Question your beliefs and refine them, even if it makes you uncomfortable. That's my research for the day...It's Saturday Night!

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