Mormons and the FBI

The Associated Press reported in the early 1980s that “The CIA does some of its most successful recruiting in predominantly LDS Utah.” According to this article, but also countless folktales and accounts in popular culture, the American national security complex has particularly recruited Mormons since the 1950s.  According to the Associated Press, security agencies had entirely pragmatic reasons for this: Mormons’ command of foreign languages usually learned while on the missionary service Mormon young men are expected to provide in their college years, made them appealing to agencies like the CIA and FBI.

But other groups interpreted the Mormon presence in national security agencies in different ways. Mormons took it as evidence that American society had embraced the Latter-day Saints and celebrated their value system as normative for American citizenship. As Gary Williams, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University said, offering his own explanation for the recruitment success national security agencies enjoyed on his campus, “Our Mormon culture has always been more supportive of the government than American culture as a whole” – a striking shift in rhetoric from nineteenth century Mormon separatism.