One possibility that suggests itself is the content of my most recent posts. They were about my brother’s experience with federal and local law enforcement. His Facebook and google accounts got messed with, but were allegedly reinstated due to public outcry.

No one bothered to notice that my blogs got smashed. Therefore I don’t even know if the disappearance of months of posts was even correlated with my brother’s experience.

Nice to know that it’s just me and the spambots, apparently.

So I updated my blog the other day so regular people can actually post comments at my regular website. Before it was not clear how to post comments, and you had to have a WordPress username and password to do so.

Alas, now I find myself receiving comments on months-old posts. The comments are sometimes pretty innocuous. But why would someone bother to post something little more than a written “thumbs up” to something I wrote over a year ago?

I apologize to any of you who aren’t spambots who are merely trying to “stroke” me for something you read today that I wrote years ago. If you can’t differentiate yourself from a spambot, I won’t approve your comment.

I think I’ll go find out how difficult it is to insert one of those irritating bot-busting tests – you know, the twisted word pictures you usually have to type in to prove you’re a real person. I think blogger does that automatically, hence why I haven’t noticed the bot problem before now.

Tonight we were discussing Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day. I was pleased to realize that none of my forebears died during war, despite lots of participation in war. Thank goodness for talented fellow soldiers, advanced technology, and dumb luck.

To the families of those less fortunate in war than my forebears, thank you for the freedoms I have. I know the cost, even if I and mine haven’t personally been called upon to pay that price.

Since this is the eve of the hearing, I am posting an e-mail I sent to the Provo PD Detective I was told is in charge of this matter. I’ve received no reply.

My brother has sent a certified, notarized GRAMA request (Government Record Access Management Act) for documents pertaining to his case. He hasn’t received any reply, though he has received a judicial summons to appear in court on charges he resisted arrest. That court date is 28 June.
_____________

From: Meg Stout
Date: Mon, May 3, 2010 at 7:11 PM
Subject: Richard ——–

Hello Detective —–,

I had the pleasure of chatting with John Wright of the FBI on Friday. His version of the story was somewhat comforting, since until then we believed my brother had been effectively incarcerated by the FBI in an extra-legal manner. As a federal employee myself, I was troubled.

Mr. Wright advised me to request the records relating to my brother’s case under the Government Records Access Management Act (GRAMA). I’m presuming that would be best handled by someone local to Provo. Is that the case?

I have spent several hours over the past week on the phone with my mother and brother. They both say they were told the individual in charge represented the FBI. Neither of them was shown a badge or provided with names and badge numbers. Neither of them was aware the intent of the officers’ visit to their home was to have Richard brought in for evaluation by crisis management at the direction of Wasatch Mental Health. They were not shown the “pink sheet” authorizing this evaluation.

I’m curious why the officers spoke in a manner that allowed two Merit Finalists (i.e., my mother and brother) to infer they were FBI. I’m curious why the pink sheet was never shown to justify the officers’ request that Richard leave the “safety” of his home. I’m curious why the officers stuffed my brother into a car rather than wait for the ambulance that arrived shortly thereafter. I’m curious why my brother was badgered in the emergency room to admit he’d written the inflammatory threats contained in the precis used to justify the operation – if Richard was merely to be evaluated by crisis management, why did it matter to the officer whether or not the precis accurately reflected my brother’s writings and position?

The psychiatric judge at the 30 April hearing allegedly said he didn’t know what justified the police tasering Richard. Given the June 9th death of Brian Cardall, linked by autopsy to being tasered twice, it is surprising that the Provo PD would have tasered my brother thrice when he was merely to be brought in for psychiatric evaluation, was unarmed and unshod, and was surrounded by five officers.

Mr. Wright thought there was simultaneous correspondence from family members to the FBI reporting concern about Richard. As far as we are aware, the only e-mail correspondence that remotely fits this description was from my mother on April 27-28 (i.e., days after the tasering incident) to Royce Hull, at the request of Royce Hull asking for Richard’s psychological history. My mother has provided these e-mails to us. Richard’s own account of his experience with autism is contained in the book “Talk with Me: Experiences with Autism in the LDS Community.” His chapter is titled “On the Inside Looking Out,” pp 166-172. I see several copies are available used at Amazon.com.

I look forward to reading the full text my brother sent to the FBI this past month and the damning precis that was derived from his full text.

If you would like to respond to any (or all) of the questions in this e-mail, I would greatly appreciate it. As Mr. Wright may have shared, I wrote to the US Senators for Utah and Virginia, as well as Representatives Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA). Since there are still troubling discrepancies between the understanding Mr. Wright shared with me and the eye-witness testimony of my mother and brother, I am not yet sure what update to provide those my brother and I look to for Constitutional protection.

Respectfully,

Meg Stout

It’s a relatively small group, but I’ve come to treasure these women. Reading about the women who shaped America’s separation from British rule was a wonderful thing to do in tandem with these women.

Our hostess for the evening served “tea.” Herbal tea, since we don’t drink black tea, but it was exquisitely done. I particularly liked the mint tea, a sugared instant tea made by Ricola. Alas, it is unavailable in the US (she’s purchased it in Germany). After the discussion we had apple pie. Now, book group refreshments are sacrosanct. I don’t care if I’m on a diet and have lost over 4 pounds in the last two weeks. I had my slice of apple heaven.

In separate news, I finally got around to making it possible for normal humans to make comments on my blog (the one at megstout.com). Moderation is on, but I hope any readers won’t mind too much. I submit that you don’t really want to read the spam that gets posted. At least, I assume that Baltimore Plumbing Service, rude boy lyrics rihanna, Free PSP Games, and Jewell Kitzmiller (an agent for Inernet [sic] Modeling) weren’t actually attempting to make coherent comments regarding my post of yesterday… Or perhaps their wit and sagacity were merely too erudite for me to adequately comprehend.

Compared to rude boys et al., the hours spent with my ladies, sipping imported German (herbal) tea, discussing great lives and history, were a delight.

Jan says her closest Mormon friend was Valeen Avery, co-author of the Emma Smith biography ‘Mormon Enigma.’ Jan described how Val was so upset by the chapters about Joseph and Nauvoo polygamy that she could only write a short bit. Then she’d go throw up. She’d lie down and get her composure back, then go back to write the next bit.

I’ve not yet read Mormon Enigma, but I suspect I have a different view of Nauvoo and polygamy. I absolutely believe the facts. But I’d say Mormon Enigma infers and implies different information from the facts than I do.

I believe the original revelation about polygamy probably was probably based on Emma’s request in the early 1830s, shortly after her father had bid her farewell forever and while she was sick and pregnant with her second child. Joseph was ‘translating’ the Bible, and Emma’s uncle and father had almost certainly warned her about the aberrent sexual practices of other new religions in the area (Cochranites, Noyes’ Oneida Community, etc.).

We do know that in February of 1831 Joseph reached about Genesis 18 (right in the part that has to do with Abraham and polygamy). Suddenly he halted his Old Testament translation and started translating the New Testament. He has a detailed amount to add/shift/delete until John 6, which he got to in February 1832. John 6 is parallel to the verses in 1 Peter that prompted Joseph F. Smith’s 1918 deathbed revelation on the missionary work amongst the dead.

Fanny Alger happened shortly after that. There is no particular reason to claim Emma was unaware of Fanny’s marriage to Joseph. Fanny had no children while in the Smith home as Joseph’s wife. That is odd. Fanny had no problem bearing children later, and Joseph had no problem begetting children.

Coincidentally, Emma’s children died when either Joseph or Emma could be interpreted to be in opposition to God. I’m not saying God killed their babies as punishment, but I can imagine Emma and Joseph might have noticed a correlation and inferred a causal relationship.

One might say Emma’s anger at finding Joseph and Fanny together in the barn in the late spring of 1835 is evidence that she as unaware of the marriage. But (and why do you assume you know what they were doing in that barn, anyway. Mind in the gutter…). Where was I? Fanny was at that point younger than Emma had been when she married Joseph. What if Emma had requested that Fanny and Joseph wait until some future date to consummate their marriage? Her rage could have been at finding them together, talking as husband and wife, rather than necessarily in the midst of acting on the fact of their union.

After Fanny left, there is no documented (versus inferred) action by Joseph to approach any other women about polygamy until 1840/41.

And what happens in late 1840? Joseph’s father dies. The family gathered around Joseph, Sr., and received their patriarchal blessings. The last blessing bestowed was on the head of Joseph, Jr. In that blessing Joseph Sr. tells Joseph he will live to fulfill all that has been ordained. Joseph begins to cry, saying, “Will I?” Joseph’s father dies, sealing his blessing/command with his death.

Joseph never explained which angel appeared over him with drawn sword, threatening him that he would be cut off. I like to imagine that it was his father, who knew they would be cut off from one another and the latter-day work of binding all mankind together aborted if Joseph didn’t move forward to restore the sealing power.

Why polygamy? Apologists have given various unsatisfactory answers. But from my perspective looking back, I perceive a possible reason the God of Leviticus and Abraham would have for a brief ‘experiment’ with polygamy in the 19th century.

I think we have to go back to Queen Margaret of Scotland, who ended levirate marriage amongst the Christian people of Scotland and Britain. Her effect on subsequent marriage laws is one of the five reasons she was canonized a Catholic Saint. The Pope had declared affinity (legal ‘relatedness’) as well as consanguinity as impediments to marriage just a decade prior to Margaret’s marriage to King Malcolm McDuncan III. The Pope was probably trying to break up the tight germanic clans. Queen Margaret argued that Scottish law should be changed to end the common custom of an heir marrying a widow (think the law set forth in Leviticus, think the story of Ruth and Boaz, think the story of the Queen of the Lamanites and her three husbands). Margaret’s reasons are not laid out by her biographer, but the murder of her grandfather and father over succession issues probably played a role. I suspect she was also trying to eliminate a motive that threatened her husband’s life (the concession she wrested from the Scottish Fathers was explicitly forbidding marriage of a step-son to his father’s widow – Queen Margaret’s step-son was a mature man who remained un-married until after Margaret’s death, decades later). There exists a story of King Malcolm McDuncan III confronting an assassin and winning the loyalty of the would-be traitor.

Within only a few centuries, it had become so taboo for a man to marry his relative’s wife that King Henry VIII had to get special permission from Rome to marry his brother’s widow, Catherine. Few in our modern world are actually aware of levirate marriage or how prevalent polygamy was prior to 1100.

What would have happened had Joseph restored the temple ordinances and sealing power across eternity in monogamous America without a nod to polygamy? Most stuff would have been just fine. Families where there was only ever one wife would have no conflict. But what about families where there was a second (or third or fourth) wife? To whom would these women and their children be sealed?

This is the reason I can reasonably impute to a God who might command Joseph Smith to institute temporary practice of polygamy in conjunction with the power to bind families together eternally.

Two more quick notes.

1) There was a rampant sexual deviant on the loose in the months when Emma was preaching against “polygamy.” It was John C. Bennett. You can’t make sense of Nauvoo without understanding the chaos that John Bennett left in his wake. Bennett himself didn’t understand how close his lies hit until a 1843 meeting with George Hinckle, after which we know Bennett came to Nauvoo and paid Joseph a grunch of back rent. I would love to know what they said to one another.

2) Despite concerted research, there is no evidence that any of the children born of Joseph’s plural wives ever bore children genetically related to him. His plumbing still worked – Emma was pregnant when Joseph was killed. And many of his plural wives went on to bear numerous children – often as many as primitive conditions allowed (e.g., one every 2 years). So their plumbing worked. Two sets of working plumbing, no children. Birth control was quite iffy at that time, and abortion on the scale required to eliminate all possible children (but not children of other husbands) isn’t credible, particularly not once Bennett departs the scene. Seems the only reasonable explanation is very little or no sex.

I know the authors of this book presumed (as many do) that Eliza was pregnant by Joseph. But what if the true father were Bennett or one of his acolytes? The dates fit, barely. I think the oft-reported tale of the stairs and Emma and broom, etc., only fits one place and date – the Red Brick Store on March 17, 1843. By the way, that would explain the unemotional way Eliza writes about the day she got sealed to Joseph. It also explains her purple poem “The Bride’s Avowal.” We don’t know the date it was written, other than before August 13, 1842, when it was published in the paper. By the way, publication of that poem coincides with Eliza getting thrown out of the place where she boarded, so I suspect I’m not the only one who finds it suggestive and provocative.

Emma might have been telling the truth when she alleged in her dying testimony that Joseph never had another wife, at least in terms of consummated relationships.

So – these are my thoughts before reading Mormon Enigma (a lapse in my ‘education’ that shocked Jan Shipps). Having read Nightfall at Nauvoo, Nauvoo Polygamy, Sacred Loneliness, besides genealogy and numerous other scholarly treatments of polygamy and the Smiths, I doubt I will find much that surprises me when I read it later this month. But we shall see when I report back.

After 2:00 PM on Wednesday, April 21, I returned to my home in Provo driving a red Toyota truck belonging to my oldest son, D———-. As I turned onto [my street] I noticed at least three armed men wearing vests going through the neighbors yards proceeding in the direction of my house. They were armed with rifles and I felt concern that I might be proceeding into danger. I slowed and they urgently gestured me to drive on. Moments later I approached my home and noticed a man on my front porch, which is shielded from the street by an American flag that concealed the presence of another man. My first thought was fear that the man on my porch might be the object of the hunt. I momentarily reconsidered my intent to park as usual by turning into the driveway of my neighbor across the street and reversing into my driveway, then I saw that there were two men on my porch and they were dressed in uniforms. I parked and one of the men approached me and asked if Richard lived in the house.

I said yes and [they said] they represented the FBI and wanted to talk to him. I let them into the house by unlocking the back door that lets onto the carport. They waited in the dining area while I went into his bedroom and woke him up. I told him the FBI wanted to talk to him and he said ‘Oh Crap’. At least one of the men had followed me into the hallway of the bedroom and peered into the room where a rifle sat on one of the book cases within easy grasp. Richard made no attempt to grab a weapon or resist or flee. He got up and followed me into the living room where there were now at least five men including one who represented himself as a representative of the FBI. I asked him why they were there as they surrounded Richard. He stood apart talking to me as Richard stood with the other men. He said Richard had sent a message to the FBI that said if an army of FBI agents came for him he would resist with his private militia and kill them and eat their souls.

Seeing that Richard seemed to be okay, I went out to the truck for a period less than a minute to retrieve my groceries. When I returned I saw Richard standing in the midst of the men with his head bent down and his hands secured behind his back in hand cuffs. I went up to him and put my arms around him and tried to comfort him. Then I turned to the men and asked them if they planned to take me and others into custody for ideas that they found unpleasant. The man who represented himself as the authority on the scene said that they didn’t pay attention to blogs or e-mails but only to direct threats against the FBI.

They said an ambulance was on the way but it wouldn’t be needed. I said I wouldn’t pay for it and the man in charge assured me that the government would take care of any cost. Richard collapsed to the floor and I assumed he must be experiencing cataplexy, a state of loss of muscle tone caused by extreme emotional states, or possibly just being passive resistant. One of the policeman asked me why he fell and I said he might be passive resistant. He said “What’s that?”. Which I found extraordinary. Passive resistance is a common reaction to police action used by demonstrators and I was surprised that a trained policeman would not know what it was.

The police said he needed shoes so I went in search of some and brought them into the front room. I couldn’t get them on his feet because his feet were rigid. They decided to hustle him out to a police car and grabbed him any which way. It was then I saw the officer who had been standing behind him rolling up the wires of a tazer device and suspected he had fallen as a result of being tazered. I was never actually shown a badge or any form of ID and with so many guns displayed, I wasn’t asking questions.

The following day I called the Provo City Police and inquired where my son was being kept. The detective in charge of the abduction told me he was in the Utah Valley Regional Health Center in the ‘Behavioral Medicine’ unit. That evening during visiting hours I accompanied my son D——– and my son-in-law, J———— to the unit where they were able to witness the six wounds that proved Richard’s assertion that he had been tazered three times.

Since then I have called at almost every opportunity and until leaving on a scheduled trip to accompany my daughter, N——–, a psychiatrist, to New York City where she will continue her work in the field of psycho pharmacology. Richard’s questions about effects of the suggested medication were not answered by the personnel at the hospital but by his sister. She has worked in a hospital in New York where she gained special insight into the problems of using psychiatric wards to warehouse those whom the police do not have the legal means to handle.

I provided information on Richard’s childhood, youth and adult mental health history at the request of someone who called himself Royce Hull and who represented himself as someone associated with the hospital where Richard is being held.

Since I talked to the FBI, I’ve now had a chance to talk to both my mother and brother (the eyewitnesses to what transpired). If you’re coming in late, my brother, Richard Chiu, submitted a sarcastic letter to the FBI via their website. Subsequently a group of flak-jacketed law enforcement personnel with rifles showed up at my brother’s home, were allowed into the home by my mother where they tasered my brother three times and handcuffed him. My brother was then taken to the hospital where he was involuntarily committed to the adult psychiatric ward. He has been there over a week and will remain until at least Tuesday. These are the facts that no one disputes. Below are a handful of points where the understanding and claims of the FBI don’t jibe with the eyewitness testimony of my mother and brother.

Point #1 – The FBI claims that they had no involvement in the actual incident. Per Mr. John Wright, the FBI merely passed the letter to the local police. Mr. Wright did acknowledge a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) official was involved, basically a sheriff that is deputized to work JTTF.

My mother claims the spokesman of the group identified himself as FBI. Richard claims that an individual at the hospital identified himself as FBI. It is not possible to determine if the same individual identified himself as FBI in both locations.

Point #2 – The FBI claims that there was additional e-mail traffic from family members expressing concern about Richard. When pressed, Mr. Wright couldn’t be sure that the tasering incident was based on anything more than the letter.

My mother affirms that she was asked to provide medical background on my brother after he’d been admitted to the hospital, presumably to substantiate her assertion that he is autistic. She provided descriptions, e.g., head banging when he was a child. My brother was already an adult by the time the modern definition of autism was promulgated in the DSM-IV, therefore he was never diagnosed with or treated for autism, indeed could not have been, in childhood. My mother has the full e-mail history and can substantiate that this correspondence was requested by the authorities and took place after Richard had been involuntarily committted.

Point #3 – The FBI claims my brother was disappointed that he hadn’t induced the FBI to pay attention to his case.

My mother believed the FBI was at the door. She woke my brother up, telling him the FBI was there to talk with him. Then she went out to get her groceries from the car. My brother came out of his room and said, “So you’re the FBI?” They told him they weren’t the FBI. He casually responded, “That’s too bad.” I could wish he’d said, “Oh,” and asked for names and badge numbers. Then again, I could wish my mother hadn’t allowed them into the house.

Point #4 – The FBI claims they had nothing to do with the operation or the decision to have my brother committed.

As already mentioned, someone at the home and later at the emergency room said or strongly implied they were FBI. Everyone from the police officers to the mental health professionals at the hospital acted as though they were doing so at the behest of the FBI. I can believe that this was a misunderstanding.

Comments

Although the FBI disavows any responsibility for the actual injury to my brother, I submit it is incumbent upon a federal agency to make clear when they are not directing action be taken. For example, as a federal acquisition professional I constantly have a responsibility to clarify the limits of my authority with respect to contracting and contract modifications. In the case of federal acquisition, misunderstandings about what has actually been authorized can obligate the government to pay millions of dollars they never intentionally authorized. In this case with the FBI, I submit the tasering and involuntary institutionalization would not have happened without the inferred direction from the FBI.

Leaders are often blamed for the actions of their followers or constituents, even when the leader can’t be proven to have ordered those actions:

- Early Utah leader, Brigham Young, is commonly presumed to have ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre despite lack of positive evidence.
- During the Vietnam War, Lt. William L. Calley tried to blame his role in the My Lai massacre on orders from his commanding officer, CAPT Medina.

There is hope. Government entities have been known to apologize for past behavior. Since these events occurred in Utah, I’ll use two examples that might resonate with Mormons.

1) Missouri finally rescinded Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the Extermination Order, though it took almost 138 years for them to decide it wasn’t cool to have a law stating Mormons could be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace.

2) Illinois adopted a resolution expressing regret for the 1840′s violence against Mormons, including the events leading to the death of church founder, Joseph Smith. They even came to Utah and apologized in person, albeit 160 years after Smith’s death. A full reading of the Illinois resolution (HR0793) is instructive. “The biases and prejudices of a less enlightened age… caused unmeasurable hardship and trauma… by the distrust, violence, and inhospitable actions of a dark time in our past… we acknowledge the disparity of those past actions and suspicions, regretting the expulsion of a people of faith and hard work.”

The collected set of authorities has managed to separate my brother from his liberty, home, and the arms of a large, extended family that unilaterally loves him and treasures him. One can hope that the government’s distrust, violence, and inhospitable actions towards my brother will end sometime sooner than 100 years from now.

According to him, the FBI’s involvement was merely to forward the letter they got to the local authorities. All the law enforcement, then, was performed by the Provo PD with one Joint Terrorism Task Force person (a sheriff’s deputy whose been deputized for the JTTF). This JTTF person was either at the scene or at the hospital.

Per Mr. Wright, the sequence was:
- Letter received at the FBI website. Contained phrases of concern (going to kill…take me seriously…eating souls) but deemed a matter for local authorities. Forwarded.
- Provo PD consulted with Wasatch Mental Health. Mr. Wright at first stated there were other indications of concern (e.g., simultaneous e-mail correspondence from family members), though ultimately he was not sure there was anything more than the letter sent to the FBI.
- Provo PD went to home.
- Provo PD transported Richard to the hospital.

For the facts upon which these actions were taken, Mr. Wright suggested we file a request under the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA). Sounds like we would submit the GRAMA to the Provo PD.

I’m aware of a few times when the FBI has relied on HUMINT.

The first instance involved a friend who found himself living next to a GRU agent, back during the Cold War. Said friend volunteered to act as a counter-espionage agent. Eventually enough data was accumulated to declare the GRU agent persona non grata and get him evicted from the country. My friend received some monetary compensation for his troubles – enough to buy carpets for his 1 bedroom apartment.

The second instance involved my son-in-law (SIL) when he was still single. A fellow student was jealous and reported SIL to the FBI. The FBI showed up at the door. I don’t recall if the FBI had a warrant or seached SIL’s apartment, but no force was used. The hapless fellow student was not in good graces with the FBI after that, although I am unaware of any retribution.

The third instance involves an eccentric brother (autistic, long-haired). He was sceptical about reports of a FBI website that allows folks to report suspicious neighbors. As a test, he submitted a hypothetical report about himself. I haven’t read the report, so I don’t know if he actually reported himself, or if he used subjunctive statements (e.g., If I thought so and so might be dangerous…).

In this third instance the FBI showed up at my brother’s home in force. When he asked if they had a warrant, the FBI agents tasered him three times. Other injuries appear to have occurred after my brother lost consciousness prior to being resuscitated in the hospital (wrenched arms, stomach stepped on, arrested breathing). Brother is now spending the week in the local psych ward courtesy of US taxpayers, his sanity questioned by the government for submitting a report that brought the full force of the local FBI down on his own head.

Across this vast data set of three examples, we have one true case of HUMINT against an agent intending harm to the United States and two false alarms alleging someone intended harm against the United States. In my field, these false alarms are known as clutter, noise, things that distract the authorities from true instances of problematic behavior.

Reduce HUMINT clutter. Don’t frivolusly report folks to the FBI or other law enforcement entities. And, for crying out loud, don’t report yourself just to test the system.