NY Times and Lawsuits

Dylan,

You may recall that we spoke by phone at least once earlier this year regarding the USCF election and executive board. You may know that I was one of the four candidates elected and am also named as one of the defendents in Sam Sloan's lawsuit.

I'd like to call your attention to at least two important factual errors and add a couple of other comments.

The article writes that "Since Mr. Mottershead published his report, the chess federation's executive board, including Mr. Truong and Ms. Polgar, have met several times to discuss what to do." That is not correct. There have been NO meetings of the Executive Board since the report was published. While there have been email discussions among Board members, they have been sporadic and in many instances have not involved the entire Board.

The article also leads with the claim that "Susan Polgar and Paul Truong . . . posted thousands of remarks . . . " yet there is no suggestion in Mottershead's report that Susan was responsible for the postings. Allowing this claim to stand without mention of that fact is unfair to Susan and demonstrates a lack of balance not usually found in a New York Times article.

I'm also surprised that you would accept at face value Sam Sloan's claim that "If I ever want to apply for a job, nobody's going to hire me because there are thousands of obscene messages supposedly from me on the Internet." As I'm sure you know (or should have known) Sam Sloan was a very controversial member of the Executive Board who was soundly defeated for re-election - coming in 10th of 11 candidates. Much of the controversy arises from content on Sam Sloan's website, which is surely as obscene (I would argue more so) than any of the posts by "the fake Sam Sloan." Should you doubt this, I would suggest you follow the links below to Sam Sloan's website (and these are just a representative sample of the tasteless, vulgar and obscene crap you will find there):

http://www.ishipress.com/girlspic.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/spread.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/virgins.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/laxson.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/league.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/sailors.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/sfl-no26.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/holmes.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/badporn.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/pokepoll.htm

Finally, Sam Sloan's long standing claim to have won a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court is, as typical with Sam, more hat than cattle. In fact, as has been detailed many times in discussions on the chess newsgroups, Sloan's "victory" was on a technicality that had little bearing on the end result - Sam lost his license to sell securities. As noted in the opinion, "During this series of suspensions respondent Sloan ...filed a petition in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit challenging the orders on a variety of grounds. On October 15, 1975, the court dismissed as frivolous all respondent's claims, except his allegation that the "tacking" of 10-day summary suspension orders for an indefinite period was an abuse of the agency's authority and a deprivation of due process." Justice Rehnquist on SEC v Sloan.

Quite frankly, I would have expected a bit more balance and background. Sloan is a "serial suer" which you can also detail on his website. As far as I can tell, Sloan has lost in nearly every instance. Again, this history would paint a more balanced picture of the viability of the lawsuit.

I would, of course, be happy to discuss any of these issues with you. Feel free to write or call me.

Randy Bauer
USCF Executive Board