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Samuel Howard Sloan (b. September 7, 1944), also known as M. Ismail Sloan, is an American author, chess player and former securities trader. While having no formal legal training, he once orally argued and won a case in front of the U. S. Supreme Court. In July 2006, he was elected to the Executive Board of the United States Chess Federation.

He has been married five times and has eight children. He once drove a taxicab in New York City and is involved in organizing chess tournaments.

Biographical highlights

Sloan attended the University of California, Berkeley majoring in mathematics. At the time U.C. Berkeley was a center for student protest during the social unrest of the 1960s. Sloan became the president of the Sexual Freedom League. His book Sex Marchers, co-authored with SFL founder Jefferson Poland, called for sexual emancipation.

After dropping out of UC Berkeley, Sloan made a living trading stocks on Wall Street. The SEC brought civil actions against Sloan in 1971-1975 alleging he had failed to maintain adequate books and records. In 1975, the SEC revoked Sloan's brokerage license. After years of litigation, Sloan in 1978 prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Sloan argued the case pro se even though he was not an attorney. The opposing attorney was Harvey Pitt, who was later Chairman of the SEC from 2001 to 2003. Sloan won before the U.S. Supreme Court 9-0. Sloan is the last non-lawyer to argue before the court.

Sloan has written a (somewhat idiosyncratic) lexicon of Khowar, a language spoken in Chitral, Pakistan. He writes that his first wife was a native of that region and their only child together, a girl, was named Shamema.

In 1986, Sloan fled the US with Shamema and established a new home in the United Arab Emirates. In 1990, while Sloan was away on business, Shamema was abducted by Christian fundamentalists from the Lynchburg area of Virginia, where Sloan had been raised. The abduction was officially deemed a kidnapping by the UAE, although U.S. state and federal authorities have continuously declined to pursue the case. The same Christians were also allegedly involved with corrupt local attorneys and judges in wrongfully imprisoning Sloan's elderly mother in a Virginia nursing home (where she languished and finally died around 2005, still trapped) in order to seize her assets.

Sloan lost his custody rights to Shamema and, after a visitation incident in 1991, was convicted in Virginia in 1993 of attempting to abduct her. (Lynchburg Circuit - Criminal - CR91003195-00; total of 10 case numbers). Shamema was sent by the Christians to a high school affiliated with Jerry Falwell's church and Liberty University. Eventually Shamema enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in order to escape from the Christians, and served a tour of duty in Kuwait as an aircraft munitions specialist, loading ordinance into fighter-bombers during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Upon her return from the war, she settled in the state of Washington and married a fellow Marine in a posh Las Vegas ceremony and banquet.

Chess

Sam Sloan is a Class A chess player, chess journalist, and member of the Executive Board of the United States Chess Federation (USCF). He was master strength when he played for U.C. Berkeley in the National Collegiate Chess Championship in Toronto in the late 1960's. He claims to have traveled to nearly 80 countries, primarily attending chess tournaments. He has claimed to have "won the World Championship of Chinese Chess in Beijing, China, in 1988." Sloan also claims to have competed in tournaments in Thai (Makrook) and Japanese (Shogi) chess. Sloan is also a longtime and frequent cross-poster to Usenet groups.

USCF Special Election 2006

In July 2006, Sam Sloan was elected to the Executive Board of the USCF. He placed second from a field of five candidates (behind Randall Hough of California) vying for two seats on the board that had been vacated by the resignations of former board members Greg Shahade and Timothy Hanke, resulting in a special election. Sloan ran on an outsider platform, stating that two of the five then-incumbents were former USCF employees and that a third had previously also done paid work for the USCF, and saying the board was supposed to be completely independent from the staff. He advocated a major expansion of scholastic chess, stating that the USCF should establish a program to certify school chess teachers. He also criticized the USCF's recent move from New Windsor, New York to Crossville, Tennessee.

As second-place finisher in the special election, Sloan will serve a one-year term on the board (the first-place finisher will serve a three-year term). Sloan's term of service began in August 2006, after the election was certified by the Board of Delegates at the USCF Delegates Meeting. and "seamy" .

At a meeting of the USCF Executive Board on May 19-20, 2007 Sloan advocated an immediate reduction of personnel costs of $80,000 but this was rejected by the board. Sloan did succeed in having a proposed raise for all employees of 3.2% cancelled.

Recent activities

Sam Sloan has operated his website since the mid-1990s, posting over 3,000 pages of information and opinion on a wide range of topics, including court transcripts that Sloan has himself transcribed into web pages for the many other cases that he has initiated and attempted to argue pro se.

In an April 30, 2006, email to Michael Badnarik's 2004 Presidential campaign mailing list, an individual claiming to be Sloan announced his intention to seek the Libertarian Party nomination for Governor of New York State.

From 2002 to 2006, Sloan was deeply involved in the Libertarian Party of New York (http://www.ny.lp.org) attempting to influence its policy, candidate nominations and agenda. A member of the Queens LP, Sloan also regularly attended Manhattan LP (http://www.ManhattanLP.org) meetings and conventions and became involved in numerous controversies, including The Scott Jeffrey Fiasco and constant battles with then-MLP leadership over due process and member rights. Sloan repeatedly attempted to secure LPNY nominations to run for public office, but was usually thwarted by other members who had a fierce vendetta aginst him apparently due to his controversial website postings and personal lifestyle. Finally in 2006 Sloan was elected as an officer to the Manhattan LP County Committee, yet he soon vanished from regularly attending meetings when he was elected to the more prestigious and visible U.S. Chess Federation Executive Board.

Books

• Sex Marchers (with Jefferson Poland, eds., Elysium, Inc. 1968) ISBN 0-923891-13-7
• Khowar English Dictionary (as Mohammad Ismail Sloan, 1981) (published in Pakistan) ISBN 0-923891-15-3
• Chinese Chess for Beginners (1989) ISBN 0-923891-11-0
• How to Take over an American Public Company (1992) ISBN 1-881373-01-0
• The Slave Children of Thomas Jefferson (1992) ISBN 4-906574-00-9
• The Farm Book by Thomas Jefferson with light notes and annotations by Sam Sloan ISBN 0-923891-80-3

References

1. SEC v. Samuel H. Sloan, 436 US)
2. Building a Better Advocate, Tony Mauro, The American Lawyer.
3. According to then-Expert David Forthoffer, who was also a team member, along with Expert Bob Hammie.
4. at 1'00"
5. USCF Elections
6. USCF Board Candidates Statements, "Sam Sloan for USCF Executive Board", http://beta.uschess.org/frontend/magazine_124_28.php
7. http://www.uschess.org/org/govern/SpecialElection2006.php
8. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.politics/browse_thread/thread/5d9740dba7df3a32/cf91c441db6eca84?lnk=gst&q=%22not+entirely+Platonic%22&rnum=9&hl=en#cf91c441db6eca84
9. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.politics/browse_thread/thread/ad446fa4f998aedc/f143056987eb3c90?lnk=gst&q=Response+to+Ethics+Complaint+by+Herbert+Rodney+Vaughn&rnum=1&hl=en#f143056987eb3c90

External links

• Sam Sloan
• Sam Sloan at IMDb
• US Magistrate Judge Marilyn Go on Sloan: Factual Background
• US Tournament record for Sam Sloan
• The Chess Games of Sam Sloan
• The Man in the Yellow Cab: Sam Sloan
• Sam Sloan for Governor on Google Video
• Chessbase News article mentioning Sloan's background

• 1944 births
• American chess players
• Chess players
• Usenet people
• Living people