U.S. Blocks Shipment of Chess-Playing Computer to Soviet Union
By Philip J. Hilts, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Washington Post
Monday June 7, 1982
Page A7

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 computer chess machine.

Belle won the title at the most recent world computer chess championship
tournament, in 1980 in Linz, Austria. The championships, held every three
years, are sponsored by the International Federation for Information
Processing and the Association for Computing Machinery.

The Commerce Department says the computer might be of military use to the
Soviets. 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 about three weeks ago at John F. Kennedy International Airport in
New York. It was marked with the logo of the Bell Laboratories, known
for its work at the front edge of science. The destination stamped on
the crate: Moscow.

Customs agents quickly detained the shipment and sent for instructions
from Washington, according to Patrick O'Brien, chief of investigations
at the Customs Service. The command post in the basement of the Customs
building then turned to the Commerce Department, whose technicians and
policy makers in the International Trade Administration decide whether
a piece of equipment might be of use to the Soviet military.

In this case, the answer was yes.

The seizure of Belle is part of Operation Exodus, a major new program
in the Customs Service to halt what government officials have called a
``hemorrhage'' of the nation's best technology out 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. Exodus, which has an intelligence branch, 125 new agents
and a team of investigators to carry out prosecutions, has produced
1,150 leads and 370 seizures, including computers, aircraft parts and
communications equipment, in its first nine months, officials say.

In a similar nine-month period last year, the Customs Service made only
122 seizures, a spokesman said.

In April, a Los Angeles company was shipping $3.5 million worth of
extremely sensitive detection gear that can be used to scan the earth
from a satellite. O'Brien says the scanner was bound for Moscow. Customs
agents caught up with the company's eastbound plane in Houston, where the
scanner was removed. Sandbags were loaded into the crate to replace the
scanner and it was sent on its way with the business card of a Customs
Agent attached for those who would receive the load in Moscow.

In February, two Boston companies joined together to ship $500,000 worth
of electronics hardware--including a Fairchild Sentry VII integrated
circuit tester--to Eastern European countries illegally, the Customs
Service said. The equipment was seized in Boston and New York.

More recently, the Exodus program has been netting several shipments
of equipment that might be used by the Argentine military. In one case
in April, Turbine Alloy Company of Washington, N.J., was stopped from
exporting jet engines that could be used in Argentine attack jets. Last
week, a Hughes helicopter and three spare engines were seized on their
way to Argentina.

The Commerce Department would not comment on why the chess computer could
be considered militarily sensitive, but Kenneth Thompson, the scientist
at Bell Labs 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.''

The parts of the machine said by Commerce to be sensitive, Thompson said,
are items available for purchase in this country. ``I just don't see
the point of all this.''

Even though the machine was seized two days before Thompson left for
Moscow, he says customs agents failed to call him to clear the matter
up or at least let him cancel the Moscow chess exhibition.

According to a spokesman at the Commerce Department, Thompson will now
be subject to a penalty for violation of the Export Control Act. The
possibilities range from a cash fine to losing the computer altogether.