Undaunted, Eric Schiller keeps attacking me again and again. He claims that he is not attacking me. He is merely providing "information" to the public, he says. He adds, "And I have nothing against Sam, except that I don't want to see him elected."
In spite of Eric's vituperative attacks against me, I feel that I am getting the better of this, because every time he says something, he brings out weaknesses and character flaws in the candidate he claims to be supporting, Don Schultz.
For example, in his statements and mailings to the USCF voting electorate, Don Schultz has portrayed himself as an opponent of Campomanes. He blames the problems which FIDE now has on the policy board members who supported Campomanes. The reason Don Schultz says this is that nowadays it is fashionable to portray oneself as an opponent of Campomanes. Furthermore, since Campomanes is now out of power, he cannot do things to help Don Schultz any more, such as appoint him to prestigious committees.
However, Eric Schiller points out a fact which everybody familiar with the situation knows to be true, which is that Don Schultz was throughout his nearly ten years as US delegate to FIDE a staunch supporter of Campomanes. Here is what Eric says:
"I agree with very little of what Sam says. I only note that I was critical of some actions. These are not, by and large, the ones Sam cares about, where I am on the other side, in favor of punishing those who played in South Africa despite clear and widely respected regulations to the contrary. I did oppose Schultz's political agenda, which was pro-Campo. I was part of the opposing, pro-Kasparov, side."
Now, contrast this with what Don Schultz, the man he is backing, said in his April 16, 1996 mailing to the voting members (This statement can be found on Bill Wright's web page at http://members.aol.com/PawnGrubr/oca.html ):
"One year ago our PB overruled our delegation to the FIDE Congress in Moscow. The Policy Board supported Florencio Campomanes' entry into the FIDE elections in violation of the FIDE Statutes. I was the only Policy Board member to vote against Campomanes' entry. Unfortunately, this misguided action by the Policy Board proved decisive, and Campomanes was elected. Campomanes was subsequently forced to resign and the stage was set for relatively unknown Kirsan Iljumzhinov to become FIDE president."
What Don Schultz doesn't explain to the voting members is that in December, 1994, when the events he cites occurred, Campomanes had made a deal with Kasparov to reunify the World Championship. However, Fan Adams, who personally dislikes Campomanes, and who is a buddy and financial backer of Don Schultz, was opposed to the reproachment between Campomanes and Kasparov. Thus, when Don Schultz voted against Campomanes on that one occasion, he was really voting for his friend, Fan Adams. This does not erase the previous ten years of undivided support which Don Schultz gave to Campomanes.
This is only the beginning. Eric makes it even worse for the man he is backing, a man who claims to be a great lover of children, when Eric reveals that the hard core scholastic chess organizers are totally opposed to Schultz. Here is what Eric says about that:
"They were treated to free lectures by leading kid trainers Bruce Pandolfini and Sunil Weeramantry. I don't think Bruce has a vote. Sunil is part of the Scholastic coalition which is usually opposed to Schultz's positions.
.........
In fact, there are people who would prefer to see anyone but Schultz (largely hard-line scholastic people), but even they won't vote for Sloan."
It should be noted that both Bruce Pandolfini and Sunil Weeramantry are USCF voting members. This does not mean that they have sold out. It merely means that Don Schultz offered them a job and they took it. If I had been offered that job, I would have taken it, too. It does demonstrate once again that everybody who has received a job offer from Don Schultz lately is one of the elite of 414 voting members of the USCF.
Please understand how damning the above statement by a Don Schultz supporter is to Don Schultz. At the New York Open, I had a long conversation with a voting member who told me at great length that he was going to vote for Don Schultz because "Don loves kids. Why, I was at a scholastic chess tournament in Fon Du Lac, Wisconsin which Don Schultz organized and he sat there for three hours just talking to kids."
For three hours! Imagine, he spent three hours! Here in Berkeley we have a woman whom I am sure that almost none of you have heard of named Elizabeth Shaugnessy who has been organizing kids chess in the schools of San Francisco Bay Area for the last 14 years. She has more than 100 schools in her program. She also has a kiddies chess club which meets every Friday evening at 6:00 PM in the Berkeley Woman's Club on Durant between Ellsworth and Dana Streets in Berkeley. Over 60 kids attend every week. I was there this past Friday with my 7-year-old daughter. Every National Elementary School and Kindergarten Championship held in the United States is invaded by a hoard of kids developed in the program by Elizabeth Shaugnessy. Yet, nobody realizes that all this activity is generated by just one person. She is not connected in any way with the American Chess Foundation. She receives no support from the USCF. She does apparently receive some support from the Berkeley School Board, of which she is a former member.
So, who would be better qualified to be USCF President from this point of view, Don Schultz, who talked to the kids for three hours, or Elizabeth Shaugnessy, who has done it, neither asking for nor receiving any recognition, for the past 14 years?
Of course, Elizabeth Shaugnessy is not running for USCF President, and probably would not want that job. I feel that I am qualified to disseminate chess programs for kids, since I have been so highly successful at creating them.
Eric Schiller does not only attack me. He also attacks Bill Goichberg and Jim Eade. For example, in the case of Goichberg, here is what Eric recently said: "I do agree with Sam that PB members should be active players, and most are. Except for Mr. Goichberg, of course. He used to play the game but gave up when he realized there was more money to be made by picking the pockets of active players (multiple re-entries!)."
In fact, Bill Goichberg has a FIDE rating of about 2350. If elected, he will be the strongest chess player on the policy board. In addition, Bill Goichberg has never been criminally convicted of being a pick pocket, so this allegation does not hold up. However, Bill Goichberg does have one serious weakness. He lives in the stone age, by which I mean to say that he is the only candidate for USCF office who does not have e-mail. I have called him several times and asked him to get e-mail and he said that he would, but still has not.
However, several others have rallied to the support of Bill Goichberg, to defend him from the scurrilous attacks by Eric Schiller. Here is what one of them said:
"For 25 years, I have been hearing and reading cheap shots against Bill Goichberg from people who have never contributed one tenth as much to American chess as he has. When I first started playing in tournaments, I quickly learned that there were two kinds of tournaments: Type 1 were the sloppily organized, noisy, smoky tournaments with late pairings, miserable facilities, and directors who were only vaguely knowledgeable of the rules. Type 2 were those run by Goichberg's Continental Chess Association. Never has the difference between true professionalism and half-assed amateurism been so stark.
"Because Goichberg's tournaments stood head and shoulders above everybody else's, I made a general practice of playing only in CCA tournaments. And, like other people who have succeeded, Goichberg attracted jealous sniping by people who lacked his talent and his dedication to excellence.
"Yeah, we would all like to make good money by running tournaments, just as we would all like to have Bill Gates's money from developing and marketing software. We just don't have the talent, and we aren't willing to pay the price. So we whine. To both Schiller and the other whiners, there is a clear message: If you did as good a job as Goichberg (or Gates), you'd be just as successful. But whining and sniping is so much easier, isn't it?"
Eric Schiller has not only attacked me on the Internet. Yesterday, he sent three private e-mails attacking me. He says that he must do this to defend his repetition. He overlooks the fact that he started this by attacking me. Anybody who attacks anybody else, can expect retaliation. Also, if one will read my posts, one will see that I have not said anything bad about him. I certainly have not accused him of being a pick pocket or anything of the sort.
Eric Schiller and all of those who are supporting Don Schultz against me have expressed an excessive interest in finding out who signed my nominating petition to get my name on the ballot. Mike Goodall, in his scandalous mailing to the voting members, raised this issue. Jerome Hanken has also brought this up. In contrast, I am only mildly interested in knowing who signed for Don Schultz. It would never really occur to me to go to the trouble to make an inquiry about this.
There is no doubt that Don Schultz intends to punish all those who vote against him or who signed my nominating petition. One need only look at the behavior of Don Schultz in the aftermath of the 1986 election campaign between Lincoln Lucena and Campomanes for FIDE President to see an example of this. After Campomanes, who was backed by Don Schultz, won, Schultz had International Master Ricardo Calvo declared persona non grata by FIDE in retaliation for the fact that Calvo was one of the leaders of the Lucena campaign. Schultz explained in an article published in Inside Chess for January 13, 1988, page 17 that he had done this because, "In the publication New in Chess ... he openly stated that he violated election ethics by offering free Kasparov simuls to certain countries in exchange for voting for Lucena." In fact, the Calvo article did not say that. It merely started that "my only weapon was a letter by Gary Kasparov giving me full powers to arrange a tour of simuls, exhibitions and lectures to most Latin American countries". See New in Chess, 1986, No. 8, page 8. Nowhere in this article did Calvo ever say that he offered a simul in exchange for a vote for Lucena. All persons familiar with the facts agree that it was Don Schultz, assisted by Arnold Denker, who led the campaign to have Calvo blacklisted. It is said that Denker wanted to have Calvo barred from international chess competition for ten years! Later, when Don Schultz claimed that he had not even opened his mouth on this issue, Kasparov told Inside Chess, "Of course, Schultz opened his mouth. It's absolutely clear. His claim is so ridiculous that I don't even know how to comment on it." See Inside Chess, August 24, 1988, Issue 17, page 9.
So, the record is clear. Anybody who votes against Don Schultz can expect to have a hard time if Schultz gets elected. For this reason, I have until now refused to reveal the names of the persons who signed my nominating petition, even though it would be to my personal advantage to do so. Here is what Eric Schiller said about that yesterday:
"I take any assaults on my reputation seriously, and I will now make your defamatory remarks part of the campaign. "
Later Eric said, "In a message dated 96-05-25 12:32:01 EDT, you write:
<< There were two internationally titled players who signed for me, plus authors, magazine editors, and three of the leading chess tournament organizers in America who signed for me. A truly distinguished list. Several of them are in a highly vulnerable position and undoubtedly will be punished if Don Schultz gets elected.
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Oh boy, two titled players (anonymous). Gee that is a lot. Authors? Again unspecified. Three leading organizers? Who? And again, 3 out of how many? What kind of mirror are you gazing at?
Your paranoia about "punishment" is pathetic. You have offered not a shred of evidence that Don Schultz (not his friend Denker) has "punished" anyone for personal reasons. People who win by a landslide don't bother to punish their few impotent enemies.
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Rachel Lieberman told me at the National Open that they have been requesting the names of the persons who signed for me and that she has not told anybody and that only she (and her husband) knows at this point. She said that she was going to put a complete list of all who signed for everybody in the BINFOS. However, she has not done so yet.
Hanken claimed that he already knows who signed for me. He said that they are all now embarrassed that they did so. However, he refused to tell me the names. I doubt if he is telling the truth. >>
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on this last point, at least, I agree with you. But of course the names must be made public. This is public information as part of an election. I will lobby for the rapid release of these names so that the world can see who your secret admirers are!
For someone who claims to be a believer in freedom of information, you are remarkably uncooperative when it comes to your own campaign.
Eric"
All this time, Don Schultz, my actual opponent, has not responded. In my opinion, he is following the best strategy. There is overwhelming evidence to prove that every thing I say about him is true. Nobody has been able to dispute that fact. If he did respond to me, he would just get himself stuck in a quagmire. The one response he has made, not to me but to another Internet poster, which was his explanation last week for why he voted to give every woman chess player in the world, except for Zsuzsa Polgar, 100 free rating points, has not helped him any. It has only made him look worse.
Most important is the fact that my audience, the people who are reading this, are almost entirely not USCF voting members. Also, most USCF voting members do not even have e-mail. Why should Don Schultz bother to respond to what I say here?
As a result, Eric Schiller has become the de facto spokesman for Don Schultz. However, I suspect that Don is not too happy with the way that this dialog has been going, as Eric's revelations about Don Schultz are not likely to be helping him.
Sam Sloan