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Kudos where kudos are due. Mr. Tanner was the first person to publicly declare the Salamander Letter was a forgery. If only the Church had listened to him.
I suspect you have read neither the book at point or my review.
Fact is, both Jerald and the Church listened to the same experts, at first. (That point is made by Huggins in the biography.) In other words, people fault the Church for listening to the same people to whom the Tanners listened at first.
Plus, the Tanners were the second people to profit from Hofmann’s forgeries. (Mark being the first, of course.) And nobody EVER faults the Tanners for profiting from the forgeries.
Granted, when Jerald became convinced that Hofmann was a forger, he changed his tune. But, quite honestly, so did the Church’s experts. The difference was when the convincing occurred.
I’m willing to grant kudos to the Tanners for changing their stance relative to the forgeries first. Should we also grant them kudos for being the first ones, beside Hofmann himself, to profit from the earlier forgeries?
Another anecdote, this one from Pres. Kimball’s diary, under date given:
“April 23, 1966: I had an appointment . . . with a young man by the name of Reynolds who is not a member of the Church but seems to be playing havoc with some of the girls. He is attractive and personable and he is destroying the faith of some of our students. He seems to be a disciple of the Tanners who have written a large book of anti-Mormon propaganda. I do not know if we helped him or not; we hope we may have helped to save the girl, who sat in on the interview. Brother Yost, Institute Director, also sat with me in the interview. I felt what we said to the young man should have cleared his thinking, but he seems to be pretty well set [in his mind].”
My brother came under their evil influence for some six months, but was able to escape and is now further in the church with a stronger testimony, than before he read their garbage.