This is the letter which stated in part: "There is nothing wrong with being Jewish but I don't believe ex-Russian Jews should be running the USCF. ... Nigel Eddis is the agent of immigrants from the Soviet Union who are trying to take over the USCF ... Don Schultz isn't perfect, but he offers us an AMERICAN federation."

One reason why I have developed a sudden interest in this letter is that now I am running against Don Schultz for election myself. Whomever wrote this letter, whether it be a supporter of Don Schultz or an opponent, can be expected to write and mail a similar letter attacking me. This letter will not come out soon. It will probably be mailed either in late June or early July, just about the time that the ballots go out. I already know just about what this letter will say. One does not have to look far to find things in my background which would cause a misinformed voter to vote against me.

Don Schultz resurrected this issue himself in his April 15 campaign mailing, when he stated:

"Past USCF elections have been tainted with misleading mailings. These mailings caused confusion, were outrageous in content and were either unsigned or falsely signed. The mailings were sometimes aimed against the candidate(s) they pretended to support. Often they arrived just as the ballots were being sent out, thereby not giving the candidate time to respond. The best way to handle such mailings is to throw them away."

It is true that outrageous mailings are a common feature of USCF elections. However, the only instance of which I am aware where the accusation has been made that the "mailings was aimed against the candidate it pretended to support" was the aforementioned mailing in the Schultz-Eddis campaign.

Now, the question is: Is it really true that the mailing was sent out by a Schultz opponent, as Don Schultz claims, or is it rather more likely that the Schultz campaign itself mailed out this letter?

Unfortunately, I have never seen a hard copy of this letter. I am right now trying to obtain a copy. I have not been able to obtain the full text of the letter, either. Therefore, my observations are severely limited to whatever little information I have.

The reason that this question becomes especially important now is that, for the past four years, Don Schultz has militated for strong action against whomever wrote that letter. Among other things, Schultz got the USCF to hire the Pinkerton Private Detective Agency to investigate Grandmaster Larry Evans and determine whether he mailed the letter. Therefore, if it should turn out that Schultz has known all along who wrote the letter and that indeed it was a member of the Schultz campaign, that should be something for the voters to consider.

Just from what I know about the letter and what I have seen of its contents, I find it impossible to believe that this letter was sent by a Schultz opponent. In the first place, the letter asks the voters to vote for Don Schultz. I cannot imagine that a true Schultz opponent would make such a strong appeal to the voters. Next, the main thrust of the letter was that the efforts of newly arrived ex-Soviets to take over the USCF must be stopped. This is certainly a view which is or has been held by certain USCF politicians and top players. Without naming any names, certain top players are resentful of the newly arrived Russians because, as a result, these top players cannot get into the US Championship any more or cannot get on the US team any more and indeed are no longer top players any more.

However, my concern is exactly the opposite. What I worry about constantly is the fact that there are still some strong Russian chess players left in Russia. I want to get them all over here. I also want to get all of the Filipinos and all of the other strong chess players around the world into this country. I feel that perhaps one reason why the USCF now has a record nearly 85,000 members, more even than during the Fischer boom years, is due at least in part to the contribution which these Russians, Uzbeks, Filipinos, Hungarians, Rumanians, Israelis and other nationalities have made to US Chess. We native born Americans certainly have had little to do with the recent boom of chess in America.

However, Don Schultz is apparently among those who want to keep U.S. chess under the tight control of his old cronies. Therefore, Schultz must have been alarmed when ex-Soviet Max Dlugy was elected USCF President in 1990 and ex-Soviet Lev Alburt was previously elected to the USCF Policy Board.

In short, based upon the evidence of the letter, it seems clear that the letter was not written by a true Schultz opponent.

An additional factor is that there is a certain art to writing letters which actually favor the opposite point of view. I am sure that if I put my mind to it, I could easily compose some fake neo-Nazi type racist diatribe which would offend a lot of people and would actually look like it supported Don Schultz. Fortunately, I do not have to write my own letters attacking me, because I have Jerome Bibuld out there writing such letters free of charge. There are many examples of true propaganda, letters written during wartime or in the course of political campaigns or distributed by agencies like the CIA or the KGB, intending to disseminate dis-information about the other side. Letters like that written during the course of political campaigns are carefully worded to make sure that they do not backfire and win votes for the wrong side. In contrast, this particular letter supporting Don Schultz for election seemed clearly designed to win votes for Don Schultz and indeed it almost certainly did so. Schultz won by a landslide.

Therefore, the idea that this letter was written by a Schultz opponent can be discounted. The next question is whether it was written as part of the Schultz campaign or whether it was composed by some distant and unknown Schultz admirer.

In the first place, unlike real political campaigns for public office, where there are Democrats and Republicans and official campaign staffs, in chess we have loose groupings of people most of whom are connected simply because they have known each other for many years. Among those running for election this year, I have known five for more than twenty years. Yet, I am perhaps unique in that I am not a member of any group or clique in chess. Actually, Jerome Bibuld has accused me on the Internet of being a member of the KKK which, according to Bibuld, means the Keene-Kasparov-Klan. The truth is that I have been trying to join that Klan for many years, but so far my membership application has not been accepted.

In these chess elections, there are no official campaign staffs. For example, in this election I have been attacked, and expect to continue to be attacked, by Eric Schiller, Jerry Hanken, Mike Goodall and Jerome Bibuld, all of whom support Schultz for President. However, none of them are really part of the Schultz campaign. Schultz cannot be held responsible for anything they say.

The question is, regarding the 1992 letter, was the person who mailed that letter completely unknown to Schultz, as he claims.

I find this difficult to believe. I believe that whomever wrote that letter would be expecting some kind of reward from Schultz. To begin with, the letter was mailed to about 400 voting members, so the postage alone plus the photocopy costs were at least $200. Another important factor is that official USCF mailing labels were involved. This needs to be explained and indeed this was something which I did not even know about until recently.

The USCF issues official mailing labels to qualified persons. It would be almost impossible for anyone outside the USCF to create these labels. First, a lot of typing would be involved. More importantly, the list of USCF voting members changes constantly. Every few weeks, a member resigns and is replaced. Only the USCF has an accurate and completely up to date list of USCF voting members.

Because of these constant minor changes, almost every time the USCF responds to a request for the mailing labels of the voting member list, a new list will be issued. No two lists will be exactly the same. Probably not more than 20 people have an unused mailing label list at any given time. Since this particular mailing was conducted by a list obtained from one of those sources, this means that it should be possible to identify the source of that list with almost pin point accuracy.

Why hasn't this been done? The obvious reason is that someone in a position of authority in the USCF does not want it known who actually conducted this mailing!!

So, this narrows the field considerably. Whoever conducted this mailing was not some random unknown stranger. Rather, it was or must have been someone among us. Someone whose name is known to all of us. Someone who had either direct or indirect access to the mailing labels of USCF voting members.

This explains why Don Schultz tried to pin the blame on Grandmaster Larry Evans, who was supporting Nigel Eddis for election. Schultz has long been known to dislike Evans, so he decided to blame him.

Now, the situation is reduced to this. The letter was not mailed by a Schultz opponent, but rather by a Schultz supporter. It was mailed either by a voting member or delegate or by someone close enough to such a person as to be able to obtain a set of official USCF mailing labels. In short, the mailing was done by a USCF insider who was supporting Schultz for election to the Policy Board.

Now, the key questions are these: Is it reasonable to believe that this Schultz supporter, who went to all the time, trouble and expense to mail this letter to all 400 USCF voting members, never told Don Schultz that he had done this and that Don Schultz really believed that Grandmaster Larry Evans, a supporter of Nigel Eddis for election, had mailed out this letter, which attacked Nigel Eddis and supported Don Schultz for election? Was Don Schultz justified in insisting that the USCF hire at membership expense the Pinkerton Detective Agency to investigate whether Grandmaster Evans had mailed this letter?

I have formulated an opinion as to the answer to these questions. I believe that Don Schultz knows who mailed the letter. I believe that Don Schultz did not compose the letter himself, nor did he authorize its mailing but that nevertheless he knows who did and he knows that it was not Grandmaster Larry Evans.

In short, based upon my personal knowledge and familiarity with Don Schultz and with the dirty, dastardly, disgusting, despicable, double-dealing deeds Don did during these past two decades, that Don did this dirty deed as well.

Sam Sloan