00:00Did you know the U.S. government turned a chess player into a Cold War weapon,
00:03then watched him destroy himself for 30 years and did nothing?
00:07In 1972, Bobby Fischer sat across from Soviet Grandmaster Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland.
00:14Both governments treated it like war.
00:16Fischer won.
00:17America had its symbol.
00:19Then the symbol broke.
00:20Fischer vanished.
00:21He stopped playing entirely.
00:23He grew paranoid, erratic, consumed by rage.
00:27The country that plastered his face everywhere had no plan for what came next.
00:31On September 11, 2001, Fischer went on international radio and called the attacks wonderful news.
00:38He cheered.
00:39He laughed.
00:40In 2004, Japanese authorities arrested him on an expired passport.
00:44The U.S. moved to deport him.
00:46He renounced his citizenship entirely.
00:48Iceland, the country where he had his greatest triumph, gave him refuge.
00:53He died there in 2008.
00:55Stateless.
00:56Alone.
00:5764 years old.
00:58America built him into something mythic.
01:01Something it needed him to be.
01:02When he shattered, it simply looked away.
01:05That is the part no one talks about.
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