Page 18 - Customs Today Winter1984-OCR

By Dennis Murphy

Computer's Return is a Lan

Operation Exodus

On Nov. 9, 1983, West German
Customs officers in the port of Hamburg
raced their patrol boat in front of a
freighter preparing to sail for Sweden.
German Customs officers on the pier
boarded the vessel soon thereafter and
removed three shipping containers from
the ship. In these containers were 15 tons
of highly sophisticated computer equip
ment, most importantly a Digital VAX
11/782, made in the United States and in
the process of being diverted to the Soviet
Union.
More computer equipment also be
ing diverted was found two days later in
containers at the Swedish port of Hel-
singborg. The events which followed
these two seizures caught the attention of
millions on both sides of the Atlantic and
made Operation Exodus a household
word.
The computer equipment was subse
quently returned to the United States by
the German and Swedish governments,
marking the first time that a foreign
government has seized and returned
diverted American technology. The sig
nificance of the event was underscored at a
joint press conference held in Washington
on Dec. 19, 1983, by Treasury Secretary
Donald T. Regan and Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger.
These pictures, taken by Customs
photographer Bill Mason, help to capture
the flavor and importance of the events
surrounding this landmark Exodus
seizure.

Dennis Murphy is Director, Office of Public Affairs,
U.S. Customs Service Headquarters.

Computer equipment seized by West Germany on be
half of U S. Customs is seen here being unloaded after
it was returned to Andrews Air Force Base, Mary
land, aboard a C-141 military cargo plane. The sen
sitive cargo was escorted back to the United States by a
Special Agent assigned to the U.S. Customs Attache
in Bonn, Germany.

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