About the Committee
Who we are, how we authenticate, and what we won't claim.
Who we are
The Joseph Smith Nuclear Files is published by The Hermanity Press Committee, an informal research collective that has been investigating the documentary record of nineteenth-century LDS history since 2011. The committee is not affiliated with any academic institution, any government body, any religious organisation, or any journalistic outlet. The committee operates on a non-hierarchical, consensus-on-publication basis. Every document we publish has been approved by at least four of our seven principal investigators.
We do not maintain offices. We do not maintain a phone line. Our only public-facing surface is this site.
What we believe
We believe that the documentary record contains evidence of a sustained, multi-generational, multi-institutional effort to suppress a specific category of historical fact about the events of 1823–1844 in the American Midwest. We believe this suppression has been, on the whole, rational rather than malicious. We believe the suppression is, in 2026, no longer in the public interest.
We believe that opening the archive would strengthen, not weaken, public trust in the institutions that have been managing it.
What we won’t claim
We will not claim that Joseph Smith invented nuclear technology. The committee’s position is, and has always been, that Smith held custody of material of indeterminate origin and indeterminate function. The committee does not have a working theory of how the material came to be in Smith’s custody. The committee has, after fifteen years of investigation, no evidence that the material was manufactured in any 19th-century workshop.
We will not claim that any specific named individual, living or dead, is complicit in the suppression. Where we discuss institutional behaviour, we discuss institutions, not persons.
We will not claim that any reader of this site should change their religious belief, their political affiliation, or their evaluation of any other historical question as a result of what they read here. The Files are about one specific question. We do not generalise from it.
How to reach us
The committee can be reached through the encrypted contact form at contact@nukes.hermanity.dev. All correspondence is read by at least one principal investigator. We do not maintain a P.O. box. We do not accept physical mail.