Your memory only fails you in that you were TOLD by a certain someone that they had a letter when in fact they had no such thing. (You ought to be talking to the people that I talked to at the time.)
I think the people running this event may have jumped the gun by announcing she WOULD be there, that was a mistake. But, I do believe they were working feverishly on getting her right up to the week of the event. It could have been the same with Sauls.
Again, this was part of the DELIBERATE misleading of those who wanted to attend the event but only if Sauls and/or Harris were going to be there.
And the information that neither would be there ONLY came out and was verified several short days before the "event" .... far too late to cancel and recover monies paid for hotel, airfare, etc..
Now, when chapters are doing an event and ask for the FRN's advice, we strongly urge them not to indicate a confirmation on attendance until they have the confirmation letter in their hands.
Frankly, I think it's a mistake for FRN or FR itself to be "recommending" anything to people/organizations that they simply don't know, have no way of validating (other than "they're a freeper, they're one of us!") As I said to JimRob at the time, I think it's a huge mistake to put the FR name on anything other than FR itself. Face it Bob, you nor I don't have any way of knowing people half-way across the country, their motivation for participating, or any underlying agenda's they may have. For this reason, and this reason alone, the FR name shouldn't be "loaned out" (via "endorsements" or anything else) to anyone, period.
As a side, I believe there was some antifreeper activity concerning this event in SC. If I am not misteken, they mentioned a campaign of writing letters to Sauls and Harris urging them not to attend.
While it is true that this was happening, I simply reject that as an argument. The event's organizers threw out the names of Harris & Sauls at the very beginning of hyping the event, for purposes of promotion and driving up attendance. It was only at the very last minute they finally acknowledged that neither would attend. To me, this smacks of fraud.
The rest of their actions have already been documented. I for one would be more than happy to talk to S.C. law enforcement officials, since I still have copies of everything I've received --- including a freepmail just two days before leaving for S.C. myself that both Sauls and Harris would be there --- when I already knew --- and had it confirmed by a S.C. chapter member, that this would not be the case.
Sorry Bob, it's fraud ... plain and simple. It was deliberate, and FR was duped into being used as a promotional vehicle for the event. I knew it then, I know it now.
It took 14 months for the truth to come out, but it always does in the end, and I've been vindicated.
Funny, those who trashed me then are still missing from this thread. I wonder what that says about them?
1. If this person knew of all this for 14 months, why didn't they crash the forum before this?
2. If this person's motives were on the up and up, why didn't they just provide the data to the authorities?
3. If this person was a friend of Jim's why did they do this just before a large event?
4. If this person was on the up and up, wouldn't you thing they'd make suggestions instead of trying to prove everyone was wrong and they were right?
5. If this person knew something truly damning, wouldn't you think they would use it rather than play silly games?
I'll tell ya, if I were Jim I'd simply delete this idiot's posts. This kind of activity is better remedied in court.