This morning I received the following e-mail (all links removed):

URGENT! USCF EXECUTIVE BOARD ELECTION
by Bill Goichberg
Please vote in this crucial election for four members of the seven person USCF Executive Board. Ballots will be in the June issue of Chess Life and the TLA Newsletter, and any member age 16 or over, who was also a member on April 30, may vote. Members who do not receive a ballot may request one from the USCF office.
The Executive Board currently includes a member who has sued USCF, the organization she has a fiduciary duty to support and protect, for $25 million (later reduced to $10 million), a lawsuit I believe is totally without merit. Her husband, who has refused to deny under oath charges that he made many anonymous and defamatory internet posts, is also on the Board. If two candidates are elected who support or tolerate the outrageous conduct of these two, I believe that the Federation will be in great peril. See www.uschess.org/legalupdates for details regarding numerous legal problems that USCF now faces.
See www.checkmate.us for my detailed commentary on the election. I am a candidate for re-election to the Board, but am not eligible to continue as President due to a term limit. The Board elects the President, so with the support of just two more Board members out of the four to be elected, the next President of USCF could actually be someone who has an active lawsuit against the Federation which, if successful, would bankrupt the organization!

Please don't let this happen! - Vote: GOICHBERG, HARING, ATKINS, BERRY

FOUR PAST USCF PRESIDENTS ENDORSE BILL GOICHBERG.

Tim Redman, USCF President, 1981-1984, 2000-2001- USCF ISSUES - May 13, 2009

Dr. Leroy W. Dubeck, USCF President 1969-1972, was responsible for the “Fischer membership boom” when USCF membership more than tripled in 3 years.

Steven Doyle, USCF President 1984-1987, was responsible for creating and funding the Life Member Assets (LMA) fund with over $1 million in cash as well as paying off the mortgage on the USCF’s headquarters. The LMA pays for the costs of delivering service to our thousands of life members.

Beatriz Marinello, USCF President 2003-2005, saved the USCF from bankruptcy in 2003 after the USCF had run deficits for many prior years.

ENDORSEMENTS IN THE USCF ELECTION BY THREE PAST PRESIDENTS

Click here: ENDORSEMENTS IN THE USCF ELECTION

BRIAN LAFFERTY WITHDRAWS (May 23)

Endorsing - GOICHBERG - HARING - ATKINS - BERRY

Click here: Checkmate
by Bill Goichberg

While there are a number of offensive notions present in this political Spam - two things really tweaked my melon.

1) What are candidate statements in Chess Life magazine for if by a whim Bill can type an e-mail and send it to the entire continental chess list (assuming that he didn't use the USCF e-mail or Life Member list ... that would be unethical). I don't remember giving Bill permission to send me political e-mails. Tournament announcements and important USCF member news, yes - political trash from ANY CANDIDATE (EVEN ONE I SUPPORT) ... nope. The editor of Chess Life will be hearing from me on this one.

2) Bill all but mentions Susan Polgar by name. Even if I agreed with Bill's view of the suit it shows poor judgment on his part to add a negative spin to the campaign. The question isn't "who should I vote for?" ... after reading this the simple minded reader could be confused and read the question as "do I want to be sued?" Nobody wants to be sued (or at least no sane person welcomes the notion). The truth is that Susan cannot maintain a suit against individuals when those individuals acted in their official capacities ... no judge on the planet would alloy it.

Quite frankly, the notion that I'm held responsible for the actions of the executive board (positive or negative) makes me ill. Perhaps I should run for an executive board seat in the future ... at least then I would be responsible for MY OWN ACTIONS.

this story is so new I don't even have the February CL cover

I got my February issue of Chess Life magazine yesterday (kudos to Editor Daniel Lucas!).

I noticed the new membership options on page five. Jeez! $1,500 now for a life membership! When did this happen? The other dues look the same to me although I haven’t compared (except the sustaining dues which has obviously changed). Is the poor man not supposed to become a life member of the USCF? The average poor guy makes a meager living and at $8/hour (above minimum wage in the United States but probably close to average in most areas). By my math that means that working eight-hour days it would take you over a month to make $1,500. And what about eating? A place to sleep? The clothes on your back? Water and power?

I guess chess is destined to be a game of the aristocracy. I’m a little ashamed of the USCF. It already made no sense that memberships were so high but now after the complaints that life membership rates were dropping, etc. there is now this rise in the rate. Are we in financial trouble again or still? I can’t remember the official story.

At any rate, as a self-appointed representative of the little guy I’d like to see the price for life membership drop dramatically as well as the other rates. The consequence would be more members ... and more activities. I’m afraid the next Bobby Fischer is out there but all he has is two nickels to his name.

Limiting chess to a selective group of people is not the stated purpose of the United States Chess Federation.

The 24 invited players will include:

the top 12 American players by rating, using the April rating supplement;

the top two female players by rating, using the April rating supplement;

the 2008 U.S. Champion;
the 2008 U.S. Junior Closed Champion;

the 2008 U.S. Open Champion;

the 2009 U.S. State Champion of Champions;

* a total of six wild card spots, to be determined later.

Source: Chess Life Online

I hate to drag poor Susan through the mire but it seems she already has been and I'm just passing it along. It's interesting to note that the following article on Susan's legal entanglements appeared in the New York Times(!) but didn't appear in any chess media. Granted, it's not Chess Life article material but I haven't heard all these details in any chess forum or anything ... it's all very hush-hush. Anyway, I'm giving you the full NYT article because I think a blurb just won't lay the whole thing out for you:

Claims of Fake Web Postings Roil the Chess World
By DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN
Published: August 16, 2008

Chess can be something of a staid affair. But a dispute involving members of the governing chess organization in the United States has erupted into a legal fight that has all the passion of a Bobby Fischer tantrum.

There are claims of fake sexually charged Web site postings, stolen e-mail messages, and rival lawsuits, with one side alleging harassment and the other, slander. Even the Secret Service is looking into the situation.

The dispute began more than a year ago, when Samuel H. Sloan, a former member of the United States Chess Federation’s executive board, accused other federation members of using his name to post nasty remarks on two Internet bulletin boards devoted to the politics of the chess world.

One of the tamer examples supposedly from Mr. Sloan advertised the sale of an X-rated DVD.

An administrator of the federation’s Web site then placed a report in the group’s internal discussion forum saying that he had discovered that the person who had posted the items attributed to Mr. Sloan was almost certainly Paul Truong, who last year was elected, along with his wife, Susan Polgar, to the board.

Mr. Sloan, who lives in the Bronx, filed a federal lawsuit in Manhattan in October claiming harassment and seeking $20 million in damages. He named as defendants Mr. Truong, Ms. Polgar, the five other members of the federation board, the federation itself, several of the group’s officials and Texas Tech University, where Ms. Polgar and Mr. Truong work. The lawsuit contends that the remarks were posted in an effort to defame Mr. Sloan and defeat him in his bid for re-election to the board. He was defeated.

Mr. Truong said on Saturday that he did not post comments in Mr. Sloan’s name on the Web. The federation hired Karl S. Kronenberger, a San Francisco lawyer, to look into claims that Mr. Truong had faked the postings.

Then, in late June, Ms. Polgar, in e-mail messages with the board and on a chess forum Web site, quoted from confidential e-mail messages between Mr. Kronenberger and a litigation subcommittee set up by the federation. In one message, posted on several Web sites, including a chess politics bulletin board, Mr. Kronenberger outlined strategies that included ways to persuade Mr. Truong to resign. In January, the board had asked Mr. Truong to resign, and he refused.

Both Mr. Truong and Ms. Polgar have denied intercepting internal federation e-mail messages.

Mr. Kronenberger said that he asked Ms. Polgar how she had seen the e-mail messages, and that she declined to answer. Ms. Polgar said in an interview on Saturday, “The messages were public knowledge; they were on the Internet.”

On June 25, the federation, contending that the e-mail messages had been stolen, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court seeking subpoenas for Internet service providers to turn over the Internet protocol addresses that had been used to gain access to the board’s e-mail accounts. The federation was also seeking to take depositions from Ms. Polgar and Mr. Truong about the issue.

Mr. Kronenberger said that the service providers provided the Internet protocol addresses. He said he believed that the unauthorized access to the e-mail between him and the litigation subcommittee, in addition to compromising attorney-client privilege in the case, constituted wire fraud. He said he had turned the information provided by the Internet service providers over to federal authorities.

Edwin Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service, which investigates certain instances of wire fraud, said the case had been referred to its field office in San Francisco.

On Aug. 7, Ms. Polgar, a former women’s world chess champion, filed a lawsuit claiming libel, slander and business disparagement, among other things, in a state district court in Lubbock, Tex. She named as defendants Mr. Sloan, the federation, four of its members, and a number of other people involved in the case.

The suit claims that Mr. Sloan and others tried to damage her credibility with Texas Tech, which last year created the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence. “They have made a concerted effort to harm me, my family and my career,” Ms. Polgar said on Saturday.

Mr. Sloan called Ms. Polgar’s suit “entirely frivolous,” and said he had never contacted Texas Tech or the Lubbock police about her or her husband.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 17, 2008, on page A30 of the New York edition.