Jim Bell Update

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998

Hi, John.   Received a letter and phone call from Jim, as below.

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.   He had a little altercation with a fellow prisoner ("through no fault
of my own" - he thinks he was set up) and his privileges were reduced for
35 days, so that he could only make one phone call each week.

.   In reference to the bad publicity (all those articles and news alerts)
which his case received, he speculates that the government gave a copy of
AP to a 'think tank' like Rand, etc., with the request to figure out how to
stop or delay AP. But it is his conclusion that AP is unstoppable, although:

"I think that one last (temporary) hope for government is to delay AP.
Chances are good that the "think tank" decided thatt the best way to delay
AP is to discredit me, its author.  It was a desperate gamble, particularly
because the act of harrassing me automatically gives AP more publicity.
That's the reason they will fail; the more they try to "get" me, the worse
it will be for them."

He wants it noted that his writing and discussions of AP ideas are in the
sense of a "prediction", a "warning", or even a "vision", not an advocacy
of it.

.   Regarding his guilty plea, he said it was because he realizes that he
did do a few things wrong and that, although he did think that some of the
charges against him were overblown and distorted, there was enough of a
risk of being found guilty that it didn't make a lot of sense to contest
them.  He adds, "I also felt (and still do, of course) that government had
already 'lost the war' so to speak."

.   He expects to be out around mid-April. Upon his release he wants to
go to some of his favorite restaurants, and to have several BIG pizzas.  He
hopes he can get his old job back as electronics designer, and has some
ideas he wants to work on for a virtual reality peripheral device which
will bring everyone steps closer to the Star Trek Next Generation 'holodek'.

- end