2 February 1998
More at http://jya.com/jimbell8.htm

    Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 22:27:13 -0800
    To: jya@pipeline.com
    Subject: Update on Jim Bell, Feb '98

    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