The Executive Order prohibits U.S. persons from performing any contract in support of a commercial project in Yugoslavia, as well as from exporting services to Yugoslavia. The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the performance of your agreement with a corporate sponsor in Yugoslavia to play chess is deemed to be in support of that sponsor’s commercial activity. Any transactions engaged in for this purpose are outside the scope of General License no. 6 which authorizes only transactions to travel, not to business or commercial activities. In addition, we consider your presence in Yugoslavia for this purpose to be an exportation of services to Yugoslavia in the sense that the Yugoslav sponsor is benefiting from the use of your name and reputation.
Violations of the Executive Order are punishable by civil penalties not to exceed $10,000 per violation, and by criminal penalties not to exceed $250,000 per individual, 10 years in prison, or both. You are hereby directed to refrain from engaging in any of the activities described above. You are further requested to file a report with this office with[in] 10 days of your receipt of this letter, outlining the facts and circumstances surrounding any and all transactions relating to your scheduled chess match in Yugoslavia against Boris Spassky. The report should be addressed to:
The U. S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Enforcement Division, 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Annex—2nd floor, Washington D.C. 20220. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact Merete M. Evans at (202) 622–2430.
Sincerely, (signed)
R. Richard Newcomb
Director
Office of Foreign Assets Control
Mr. Bobby Fischer
c/o Hotels Stefi Stefan (Room. 118)
85 315 Stefi Stefan
Montenegro, Yugoslavia
cc:
Charles P. Pashayan, Jr., Esq.
1418 33rd St., N.W.
Washington, DC 20007
Choate & Choate
Attorneys at Law
The Pacific Mutual Building
523 West Sixth Street
Suite 541
Los Angeles, CA 90014
U.S. Embassy
Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Bobby, who had an almost anarchistic disdain for the U.S. government and had refused to pay taxes since 1977, was totally blasé about the receipt of the letter and the threat of a $250,000 fine and ten-year imprisonment for violating the sanctions. As for the public, the sentiment among most people was: “What are they going to do, throw him in jail for ten years for moving wooden pieces across a chessboard?” Well, according to Charles “Chip” Pashayan, Bobby’s pro bono lawyer, the Treasury Department could and would fine and imprison him. He sent Bobby a letter on August 28, 1992, practically begging him to postpone the match, and pointing out that Vasiljevic, to show his good intentions to the world, had promised to donate $500,000 to the International Red Cross for those suffering in the Balkans. Pashayan believed that the Treasury Department might appreciate the humanitarian gesture and eventually might allow the match to go forward by giving Bobby a special license to play. If Bobby returned home immediately, the match could still take place at a later date once the sanctions were lifted. “It is absolutely imperative that you comply with the attached order,” he warned. Bobby was supremely obstinate, and although he could not really justify his decision to play, under the circumstances his tenacity, heart, and pocketbook prevailed. His response was to kill the messenger: He ultimately fired Pashayan.
The Yugoslav prime minister, Milan Panic, whose reasons for wanting the embargo lifted went way beyond chess, backed Bobby and said of the impending match: “Just think how it would be if the sanctions forbade a potential Mozart to write music. What if these games were to be the greatest in chess?” When the match’s venue was moved to Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, met Bobby and Spassky and asked to be photographed with the two. He used the occasion to trumpet his propaganda to the international press: “The match is important because it is played while Yugoslavia is under unjustified blockade. That, in its best way, proves that chess and sports cannot be limited by politics.” Milosevic was later charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, and died in prison.
Despite the missing years, Bobby was being Bobby again. His list of demands continued to grow. Vasiljevic’s strategy of appeasement was to give him whatever he wanted, even though the item might not have been mentioned in the contract. Bobby rejected six tables as inadequate, before asking for one from the 1950 Chess Olympics in Dubrovnik. Even that one had to be slightly altered by a carpenter to satisfy his demand. The pieces had to have the right heft and color, and he chose the same set that had been used at the Dubrovnik Olympics; he particularly liked the small color-contrasted dome on the bishops’ heads, which prevented their being confused with pawns. It’s difficult to believe, but Bobby rejected one set because the length of the knight’s nose was too long; the anti-Semitic symbolism was hardly lost on those who heard the complaint. As a test of the size of the pieces and pawns in relation to the area of the squares, he placed four pawns inside a square to see if they overlapped the edges of the square. They didn’t, so he accepted the size of the pieces as well. He asked for the lighting to be adjusted so that it wouldn’t cast a shadow on the board. And oh yes, spectators were to be kept back sixty-five feet from the stage.
Bobby’s invention of a new chess clock that operated differently from those traditionally used in tournaments had to be specially manufactured for the match, and Vasiljevic had it made. Bobby insisted that it be used in the match. The game would start with each player having ninety minutes, and upon his making a move, two minutes would be added to each player’s time. Bobby’s theory was that in this new system, players would never be left to scramble to make their moves at the end of the time allotment with only seconds to spare, thereby reducing the number of blunders under time pressure. The pride of the game was the depth of its conceptions, Fischer contended, not triumph by mechanical means.
Not all of Fischer’s demands concerned the playing conditions. He also wanted the lavatory seat in his villa to be raised one inch.
According to the tale told by Washington Irving, when Rip Van Winkle awoke and returned to his village, twenty years had passed, and many things had changed. When Bobby Fischer, chess’s version of Van Winkle, emerged after twenty years, the thing that had changed the most was him. The smiling, handsome Bobby Fischer who immediately after the 1972 championship charmed audiences on television shows and crowds on the steps of New York’s City Hall, had been replaced with a swaggering Bobby Fischer filled with angst, irritation, and pique.
The very idea of Bobby Fischer wanting to talk to the press was astonishing, but this new Fischer called for a press conference the night before the match was to begin. He’d been interviewed throughout his chess career, sometimes by assembled groups of journalists, but this was his first formal press conference in more than twenty years, and he was coiled, ready to pounce on any question. Most of the members of the press were ready to see a ghostlike Bobby Fischer appear, someone totally apart from the hero of Reykjavik; many of the journalists who were assembled had never seen him in the flesh before—nor had the public had a glimpse of him during the two decades of his Wilderness Years. Bobby strode in, looking larger and healthier than imagined, and swiftly took his seat on the dais. He appeared not quite as physically impressive as a football linebacker, but certainly looked like a broad-shouldered athlete, perhaps a retired Olympic swimmer.