The Suppression Apparatus

The institutions

The committee has spent fifteen years documenting the institutional architecture of the suppression. We do not contend that any single institution is a “front” or a “cabal.” We contend that each institution, acting in its own self-interest, has converged on a posture of mutual non-disclosure. The institutions are:

1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — primary holder of the archive; has declined 31 separate committee requests for access between 2011 and 2026.
2. The Smithsonian Institution — primary holder of the Palisade photographs and the Carthage field notes; has not responded to 14 requests for spectroscopic re-imaging.
3. The U.S. Department of Energy — issued the 1972 suppression order on the Utah Desert readings.
4. The Bureau of Indian Affairs — holder of the Catawba-ledger collection; has declined to permit outside translators.
5. Brigham Young University Library Special Collections — holder of the original 1986 thesis; the catalogue card is publicly searchable, the document itself is not.
6. The University of North Carolina Press — published the partial 1994 Catawba translation, then declined to publish the second half of the manuscript.
7. The Illinois State Archives — holder of the first twelve sealed pages of the Carthage deposition.

The families

Two families, both descended from Smith by different lines, have separately asserted a legal claim over portions of the archive. Both claims are currently in litigation. Both litigations have been sealed.

The committee’s position

The apparatus is not a conspiracy in the colloquial sense. It is the emergent behaviour of rational institutional self-preservation under asymmetric information. Each actor is doing what any actor in their position would do. The result is silence.

We do not believe the apparatus is malicious. We believe it is tired.

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