Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844)
Founder of the Latter-day Saint movement. Dossier subject. Our working hypothesis: he knew exactly what he was holding.
What is publicly known
Joseph Smith Jr. was born in Sharon, Vermont in 1805 and moved with his family to western New York in 1816. In 1830 he published the Book of Mormon and founded the Church of Christ, later the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was killed, with his brother Hyrum, at Carthage Jail, Illinois, on 27 June 1844.
What is less publicly known
- Smith received no formal education beyond the third grade. His surviving writings include no descriptions of any industrial process, workshop, or refinery consistent with the procurement of ██████ at any scale. The ledger entry of 1842 nonetheless implies such a procurement, conducted through him, with full prior knowledge.
- Smith’s published revelations between 1831 and 1844 contain four distinct passages describing, in language that has been traditionally interpreted as metaphorical, phenomena that match a fission chain reaction’s precursor states. The committee has annotated these passages in Appendix C of our forthcoming book.
- Smith’s personal physician, Dr. ██████████, recorded in his private casebook (declassified 1989) that Smith exhibited chronic bilateral cataracts and a persistent faint luminescence around the temples that “I have observed in no other patient in twenty-six years of practice.”
The committee’s position
We do not contend that Smith invented nuclear technology. We contend that he inherited, or was given custody of, a small pre-existing stockpile of indeterminate origin — possibly trans-temporal in provenance — and that he managed that stockpile through the seventeen years between the 1827 retrieval of the plates and his death.
The plates were a decoy.