Posted by:
steve benson
(
)
Date: March 17, 2014 02:57PM
I was going through some old files several years ago and came across some recollections I had written down about a phone call I received some years ago from Senator Orrin Hatch, asking me to help him protect Paul H. Dunn from media scrutiny.
The account of the Hatch call was originally intended as part of a presentation I gave at a Sunstone symposium shortly after leaving the Mormon Church, but because of time constraints, it was left unmentioned.
Below is the account from the prepared text:
"One day [Senator Orrin Hatch] called me asking a favor. He had heard that my colleagues at the "Arizona Republic" were investigating allegations that Elder Paul H. Dunn had manufactured claims about his war and baseball careers. He asked me to prevail on my reporter friends to kill the investigation.
"The senator was making the request, he said, because Paul Dunn was 'a good friend' whom he wished to protect from Lynn Packer, a Mormon journalist who had made the charges, [and] whom Hatch accused of having 'an axe to grind against the Church.'
"I felt very uncomfortable and asked Senator Hatch if he had looked into the allegations against Elder Dunn to see if they were true. He admitted he had not. I told him I could not, in good conscience, interfere with the developing story. The phone conversation quickly ended, with Senator Hatch saying he might get back to me. He never did. The story, of course, later ran and Elder Dunn confessed he had, indeed, exaggerated his exploits."
The Mormon Church leadership must have known about Dunn's dubious stories long before he was finally exposed as a consummate fraud.
At BYU, I had a political science professor named Ray Hillam who had edited a book, entitled, "A Time to Kill," featuring wartime episodes from the lives of Mormon soldiers in combat.
It was compiled and published before Dunn was undone. I asked Hillam why, during the preparation of the book, he did not include any of Dunn's fantastic war tales.
Hillam told me that he had done some investigating into Dunn's claims, including speaking with sources inside the Church (whom he did not name), and the consensus was that the exploits were so fantastic that their credibility was highly questionable. Rather than pursue the matter further at that time, Hillam told me he just decided to drop any idea of publishing Dunn's amazing action-packed accounts.
For what it's worth, it seems highly unlikely to me that skeptical opinion of Dunn's tales had not been voiced within earshot of His Fakiness's superiors. Put more precisely, the GAs had to have known that Dunn's tales were suspicious, at best, and lies, at worst.Yet, they did nothing until the media blew the whistle on him--then quietly retired him without firing a shot.
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Here is what "Sunstone" magazine reported on Packer's findings, as they eventually appeared in the "Arizona Republic":
"On 16 February 1991, 'The Arizona Republic' reported that many of Elder Paul H. Dunn’s baseball and war stories had serious factual problems. The highlights of the report were that Harold Brown did not die in Dunn’s arms as Dunn had repeatedly told audiences, but is still living in Odessa, Missouri; and that Dunn never played for the St. Louis Cardinals.
"The story was printed in newspapers across the nation and was widely discussed by the Utah Saints. Some were angry at Elder Dunn; others defended him. Interestingly, some of the strongest hostility was directed toward Lynn Packer, the reporter who uncovered the story and sold his research to the 'Republic' and to a Salt Lake television station.
"There was also a lot of finger pointing among the press as to why the Utah media sat on the story and waited for the 'Republic' to break it.
"In a statement issued at the time of the 'Republic story,' the LDS church stated that it could not confirm the allegations in the 'Republic.' It did affirm that Dunn was made an emeritus general authority for health reasons. Reporters contacted Dunn, who expressed sorrow over the pain the revelations had caused the Church and said his stories were created simply to illustrate moral points, as did Jesus’ parables. . . .
"As expected, the Mormon folk culture immediately began assuaging the tension of the event through humor. Perhaps the most common joke was about document forger Mark Hofmann making Paul Dunn Cardinals baseball cards. Other jokes placed Dunn in unlikely settings, such as catching BYU Heisman quarterback Ty Detmer’s first touch-down pass. Several individuals submitted unsolicited cartoons to 'Sunstone.' 'Sunstone' believes that this event should be confronted so as not to be forgotten and perhaps repeated. The articles we have gathered concerning the Paul Dunn episode are grouped into three general sections: (1) reprints of news accounts which reported the event, including the original 'Arizona Republic' story; (2) an edited version of the original Lynn Packer story, which he wrote for the 1989 Salt Lake 'Sunstone' symposium but did not give because 'Sunstone' felt the story needed to be put into a broader context; and (3) essays responding to the episode.
"Examples of the community effort to deal with the event through humor are interspersed throughout the articles. Although this episode is a painful one, we believe that a sympathetic yet thorough inquiry into the matter is salutory, helping us to become a stronger and more honest community."
(To read the above-mentioned examinations, see the lead article, "The Paul Dunn Stories," by "Sunstone's" editors, September 1991, p. 28, followed by the afore-noted reprinted investigative findings, at:
https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/083-28-34.pdf)
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*see also related RFM link, at:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1207911Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2014 02:23PM by steve benson.