Chapter 1114: Caught
Do you know where you were at on the morning of February 16th, 1991? I do. I received a call early that morning from my Ward (LDS congregational unit) Executive Secretary. He said there was a special meeting that morning for the Bishop and his staff to attend at the Tempe Stake Center. (An LDS Stake is a regional grouping of church units.) He asked that I meet him and the staff at our local building to carpool to the Stake Center where parking would be limited. Mormons are habitually late to church meetings, frequently arriving on MST – Mormon Standard Time. With upwards of 400 people attending this meeting we purposely arrived early to get good seats. I scanned the chapel to find it largely empty before suggesting to my bishop and his counselors that we sit on the front row. To my surprise, they agreed; I sat in the very middle directly in front of the podium.
The chapel filled to capacity. At the appointed starting time no less than Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor to the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entered the room with an underling. (Prophet/President Ezra Taft Benson was thoroughly debilitated by dementia; Hinckley was de facto leader of the church until Benson died in 1995.) This surprised everyone in the room; none of the church hierarchy just showed up unannounced. It was the equivalent of the Pope walking into a Diocese without prior notice.
Hinckley had worked for the Church nearly his entire adult life focusing his efforts on print, radio, and public relations. A truly self-effacing yet confident man, he submitted to unscripted interviews with Mike Wallace on Sixty Minutes and Larry King on Larry King Live. His performance on February 16th, 1991, was no less bold. With an opening hymn and prayer out of the way, Hinckley stood at the podium no more than six feet in front of me. He raised in his right hand a copy of the morning newspaper – the Arizona Republic – and forcefully proclaimed: I didn’t know anything about this! Having not read the morning paper, I had no idea what he was talking about.
Paul H. Dunn was a mid-level Mormon church authority and minor cultural celebrity throughout the 1970’s. He traveled widely to LDS conferences and firesides telling motivational stories of his major league baseball career with the Saint Louis Cardinals, of having served in the Pacific theatre during World War II where his best friend died in his arms on Okinawa, and other remarkable death-defying accounts in battle. He sold cassette tapes of his talks and authored no less than a dozen books – all selling well to his Mormon audience. He was named Utah’s Father of the Year in 1972. Like many Mormon youth of that era, Mrs. RD cried over some of Dunn’s stories.
The luster of Dunn was tarnished by the time I engaged in Mormonism. In addition to his church employment, he accepted a position as Director with a property development company, AFCO, acting as its promotional ambassador to a Utah Mormon-dominated audience.(73) Dunn lost his shine when AFCO filed for bankruptcy in 1982 and the principal owner was convicted of defrauding $20-50M from Mormon investors. Dunn lost further credibility when it was revealed at trial that he had backdated his resignation notice three years prior to the bankruptcy yet still received a new car every year and attended board meetings until the bankruptcy filing. Unfortunately for Dunn, his star had further to fall.
On the morning of February 16th, 1991, the Arizona Republic published investigative reporter Lynn Packer’s findings(74) that Dunn had never played professional baseball – not for the Saint Louis Cardinals nor any other team. Neither had he served in active combat nor earned a Purple Heart. His wartime friend who had reportedly died in his arms on Okinawa was still alive, healthy, and living unwounded in Missouri. It was all a lie - over a decade of unfettered, brazen lying because it was faith promoting and served the purposes of the church: have the members of the church feel the Spirit and attract converts.
Packer was a nephew of prominent Mormon Apostle Boyd K. Packer. Boyd, was often called Darth Vader because of his draconian, emotionless delivery of his sermons; he taught Not every truth is useful to promote the teaching of faith promoting church history against the onslaught of objective, factual history. Fellow Apostle Dallin H. Oaks once quipped about Boyd: You can’t stage manage a grizzly bear. Lynn’s employer, church university BYU, required him to submit his work detailing Dunn’s infidelity with the truth to Church Headquarters. He met with two Apostles who expressed genuine concern over the allegations. The Church submitted the evidence to its attorney who verified the facts. Realizing they had a public relations timebomb on their hands, Dunn was demoted to emeritus status in October 1989 – a change that one would reasonably assume required the approval of the executive ranks: the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Not a single news organization in Utah would touch the expose. The Arizona Republic purchased Lynn’s work, independently vetted its accuracy, and published it. February 16th was damage control day. At twenty-seven years of age with only three years of corporate exposure, I didn’t have the experience to recognize what was going on: organized, strategically and methodically planned institutional lying. After his opening salvo, Hinckley went on to do something I never saw before nor ever after in the Mormon church: he opened the floor for a question-and-answer session. In retrospect, it was a power move - effectively daring anyone to call him out. No one took the bait.
As the effective CEO of the church corporation and Apostle since 1961, there is no plausible way Hinckley didn’t know of Dunn’s outright fabrications significantly before February 16th, 1991. Indeed, he likely knew as early as late 1989 – over a full year before the story hit the presses. And if he didn’t know, what does that say about his capability as prophet, seer, and revelator or commonly touted spirit of discernment. One can parse I didn’t know anything about this six ways from Sunday, splitting hairs with legalese, but I later concluded Hinckley, the man controlling and managing the affairs of the church, was lyin’ for the Lord.
Under intense pressure from church leaders, Dunn publicly admitted his failings and accepted unspecified formal censure from his brethren – the penalty for violating KLR’s second rule: Don’t get caught.
For Hinckley, it wasn’t his first time caught out. There is a well-known photograph taken in 1985 of Hinckley, Boyd K. Packer, and other high church authorities standing next to Mark Hoffman inspecting a supposedly historical document forged by Hoffman to embarrass the church. His ploy worked; they paid Hoffman tens of thousands of dollars to own and sequester many such documents. Caught in his own web of deceit, Hoffman was convicted of murder for two victims of bombs he planted to distract others from his forgery activities(75). He remains incarcerated in the Utah state prison system without any chance of parole.
(73) Dual employment by church authorities was common in the 1970’s as the church paid meager wages even to its highest officers; they often relied on corporate board positions to supplement their income – a practice Hinckley later brought to an end.
(74) Lying for the Lord – The Paul H. Dunn Stories, Lynn Packer, 2015; Mormon Stories Episode #1363: Lying for the Lord: The Paul H. Dunn Scandal – Lynn Packer, Part 5
(75) The Mormon Murders: A True Store of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death, Naifeh/Smith, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988; St. Martin’s Press, 2005