Date Posted:Tue, December 23 2003, 6:51:48 Author: Katerina Subject: Some more corrections In reply to:
Peter van der Hoog
's message, "Better take this Translation (the 3b edition)" on Mon, December 22 2003, 19:39:11
Both FBI and CIA fooled themselves, or, how Bobby Fischer did not become a spy.
On the Internet, and later in a number of foreign and national newspapers a sensation emerged: it turned out that legendary Bobby Fischer and his mother were suspected of spying for the benefit of the Soviet Union, for many years!
The facts from the disclosed files are as follows.
First, the mother of Fischer, Regina, lived in our country from 1933 till 1938 and graduated from the medical institute. In Moscow she married a German biophysics, and in 1939 (four years prior to birth of the son Bobby) they emigrated together to the USA. Naturally the suspicion arose that they had been taken into service by the powerful Russian KGB.
Secondly, according to the authors of the reports, Regina fervently insisted on Bobby’s trip to Moscow for a chess tournament in 1958. The FBI suspected Regina to be a Russian spy and wanted her son to come in Moscow, to fulfil some task for Russians. The FBI files, of almost 800 pages on Bobby’s mother, reveal that her son in Moscow "was interested in nothing, except for playing chess”. In the telephone conversations with his mother he did not say anything good about USSR. The report affirms also, that the FBI, after Fischer became the champion of the world, finally got convinced that he was not an agent of the KGB and his file was closed.
”Fischer experts" added to the sensational news, that " 59-year-old Fischer almost does not play chess, lives outside USA - in Yugoslavia. His mother died from cancer in 1997 ". The level of knowledge of these experts is immediately clear.
Three years ago I was in the capital of Hungary. I visited Liliental and he invited me for a dinner with him and Fischer. We knew each other as early as back into the thirties, but Fischer approached me nevertheless extremely cautious and immediately questioned me whether I worked for the KGB. My senior friend calmed him down, telling him that he had been knowing me already for forty years, and then Bobby changed his attitude towards me. On my question, whether it is true that he was condemned in America for non-payment of taxes, Fischer answered unhappily:
- I had to follow a difficult road in life myself, nobody helped me. America did nothing for me, and I brought glory to it. Hence I don’t have to pay anything. I was told that the president of USA is ready to forgive me, but I don’t need it and I’ll never come back there. All my life I was hated and pursued by the CIA, the FBI and the KGB.
- But they never acted together, - I tried to object.
- Sorry, but you have no idea of what it is all about. They have been always working together when it was in their interest. Even during the cold war, - Fischer cut off the subject .
As a whole he highly estimated the games of Soviet chess players, but Fischer said, that they frequently were ordered to "play poorly and unite against him". From those he respected most of all, he mentioned Spassky, Keres and Tal, having added about the last one: "Despite he is Jewish... "-
- Do you mean, - I asked innocently, pretending, I did not know about Fischer’s shift on the Jewish theme of the last years, - all the Jewish grandmasters are so bad?
- The depressing majority, -Fischer answered somberly. – They love themselves too much and do not love others...
- But, excuse me, you are friends with Andre Arnoldovich, for example?!
- He and Tal and a couple of others are exceptions. Both on talent, and on sincerity and kindness, - Bobby said a bit softer.
And here I allowed myself an error, then my dialogue with the great champion ceased and there is little chance it will ever continue again. I said:
- Excuse me, Bobby, but they say that your mum, Regina was Jewish too...
Fischer stood up, made an arm gesture, as in lack of air, and cried out to Liliental something in German (as I later found out, "Grandmaster you have a bad choice of friends "), and he escaped! I stayed in Budapest three days more, but didn’t see Fischer anymore. Moreover, as I learned later, Fischer took resentment towards the veteran and did not visit the Lilientals for some weeks until he forgave his friend. The incident also affected my friend- the famous trainer Nikitin. A year later he visited the Lilientals and also had dinner together with Bobby. He asked Nikitin about me. Nikitin answered unsuspectingly, that we are old friends, then Fischer stood up from the table and left.
And soon my other friend - Vasukov - also visited Budapest, but we warned him about everything, and consequently the supper with Liliental and Fischer passed quietly. But their conversation was similar: "the CIA, the KGB... Now they want me to kill... "
And two years back, having learned that Hungary enters NATO, Fischer told Liliental: " I need to run, they will get me... " And soon he disappeared and made phone calls to his friends from... Japan: " Only here I can be rescued from their prosecutions ". He didn’t give them his phone numbers but promised "to call frequently".
But let us return to the other "facts". So, the mother of Fischer lived in our country for 6 years and even graduated from the medical institute. I doubt that. And here is why. When Bobby arrived to Moscow (in 1958 indeed, but not for a tournament but, as he said it himself, " to play blitz with the champion of the world Botwinnik"), he was not alone, but with his sister Joana. She was 3 years older than Fischer and gave me a small interview. A fragment from it is here:
- Have you or your family ever been to our country?
- Bobby and me have never been here but my mum told me, that many years before our birth, early in her youth, she had lived in Ukraine for almost a year: there was hunger at the time, and she, being a nurse, with a team of German medical experts helped to treat ill children.
- Then this trip is especially interesting for your mother...
- I do not know why, but she was for some reason against it. Bobby hardly managed to convince her. He only wanted to come here because he never saw Botwinnik and wanted to play with him.
- But Botwinnik never plays blitz!
- My brother did not know that. However, you see, he plays the whole days through with other chess masters.
And that was a fact! Bobby played blitz with others all day long!
So the speculation that it was his mum that sent the son to Moscow, is rather doubtful. And in general it is known, that Bobby had a warm relation with his sister. She taught him to play chess. And the mother of the champion never came up anywhere and nobody saw her. The American chess players many times said that Bobby had an uneasy relation with his mother and he never mentioned her... Alas, the beautiful legend about mum Regina – an agent of the Kremlin and her son, spiritually close to her, does not work out.
So it looks like the mother really lived in our country for some time in her youth, but never studied at the medical institute, remaining a nurse up to the end of her life. It is also known that Bobby never came back to the USA, and when the mother and daughter Carolina died soon after eachother, Bobby did not attend either of the funerals.
There is only one thing I want to add. There, in the West, and here we have enough "connoisseurs", cooking up any crazy stories for the sake of sensation. They forget, however, that many of us, the witnesses of the near past are still alive and know and remember the true events. Fischer is an utterly complicated and controversial man, he has his own shortcomings. But to write about "dullness" of the real chess genius, the man who single-handedly studied four languages (including Russian, by the way), and who reached very high knowledge in many ranges by self-education, is at least not serious.
