CIA and the Church

Are members of the Church overrepresented in the CIA?

Probably, but there aren't any solid numbers available supporting this. The only direct piece of evidence supporting this is a public statement made by a CIA recruiter indicating they have had success recruiting from BYU.[1]

Does the Church have any official relationship with the CIA?

No, but foreign governments have believed that they do. For example, in Russia, the Church's perceived relationship with the CIA led to a reduction of the Church's missonary efforts.[2] In 1989, the government in Ghana accused missionaries of being CIA operatives,[3] leading to a ban on missionary work and public Church activities for almost 18 months.[4]

Is there a scriptural precedent for the use of intelligence-gathering?

Yes. In the Old Testament, when Moses[BIO] prepared to invade Canaan, he commissioned twelve spies to conduct espionage against Canaanites.[5] Similarly, in the Book of Mormon, Captain Moroni[BIO] "sent spies into the wilderness to watch their camp."[6] Captain Moroni did not view his intelligence-gathering efforts as sinful, and he did not delight in killing.[7]

Were members of the Church involved in the CIA torture program used against Al-Qaeda?

Yes. Shortly after 9/11, the CIA contracted two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell[BIO] and Bruce Jessen,[BIO] to develop "enhanced interrogation techniques" that would not technically fall under the definition of torture.[8]

Although journalists identified Mitchell as a Latter-day Saint, he later stated that he was an atheist.[9] Bruce Jessen was a Latter-day Saint bishop, but stepped down from his position in 2014.[10][11]

In August 2002, Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee,[BIO] also a Latter-day Saint, defended the legality of the government's interrogation practices.[12] Bybee, along with his deputy John Yoo,[BIO] determined that a "significant range of acts" may be "cruel, inhuman, or degrading," but not legally constitute "torture."[13]

Does the CIA recruit from the Church membership because they are conditioned to follow authoritative organizations?

Possibly. The Church teaches obedience to religious[14] and civil authority.[15] However, there are other reasons that Latter-day Saints might be attractive to the CIA. The Church's global missionary program regularly produces men and women who are fluent in other languages and familiar with other cultures.[16] Latter-day Saints are taught to avoid smoking and drinking alcohol.[17] Many members have a clear sense of personal and professional purpose.[18] These reasons may make them attractive recruits for government agencies.

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54 Primary Sources

Footnotes

BIOMoses (Bible)
Moses was a prophet, lawgiver, and leader of the Israelites. Born to Hebrew parents in Egypt during a time of oppression, he was raised in Pharaoh's household after being rescued from the Nile as an infant (Exodus 2:1–10). As an adult, Moses fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, later encountering God in the burning bush, where he was called to deliver the Israelites from bondage (Exodus 3). Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 14: 19–20). Over 40 years, he guided the Israelites through the wilderness, interceding with God on their behalf and delivering the laws. Moses died before entering the Promised Land, with his burial place remaining unknown (Deuteronomy 34:1–7).
BIOCaptain Moroni
A chief captain of the Nephite armies in the Book of Mormon. His military career is detailed in the book of Alma (Alma 43–63). He is described in the text as an especially righteous and courageous military leader (Alma 48:11–18).
BIOJames Elmer Mitchell
James Elmer Mitchell (1952-present) is a psychologist who, along with Bruce Jessen, contracted with the Central Intelligence Agency to develop "enhanced interrogation techniques" that would not qualify as "torture." He received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of South Florida with an emphasis on bio-psychology and served as the chief of psychology at the Fairchild Airforce Base in Spokane, Washington. He, along with Dr. Bruce Jessen (a Latter-day Saint), formed a consulting firm (Mitchell, Jessen and Associates) to contract with the government for intelligence-gathering services. Various journalists identified Mitchell as a Latter-day Saint in 2007; however, he has made public statements in 2014 that he is not a member of the Church and that he is an atheist.
BIOBruce Jessen
Bruce Jessen (1949-present) is a psychologist who, along with James Elmer Mitchell, contracted with the Central Intelligence Agency to develop "enhanced interrogation techniques" that would not legally qualify as "torture." He received a Ph.D. from Utah State University, with an emphasis on "scientific psychology." He, along with James Elmer Mitchell, formed a consulting firm (Mitchell, Jessen and Associates) to contract with the government for intelligence-gathering services.
BIOJay Bybee
Jay Bybee (1953-present) was born in Utah and attended Brigham Young University for both his undergraduate and law degrees. He worked for the Department of Justice and, later, as Associate General Counsel for President George W. Bush. In 2002, Bybee authorized the "Bybee memo" which laid the legal groundwork for the use of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" crafted by Mitchell and Jessen. The following year, President Bush appointed Bybee to serve on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
BIOJohn Yoo
John Yoo (1967-present) is a legal scholar responsible for providing the legal framework that allowed "enhanced interrogation techniques" of militants. He attended Harvard University for his B.A. in history and then Yale Law School. From 2001 to 2003, he worked in the Office of Legal Counsel for the Department of Justice where he provided key legal advice and assistance to Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee in establishing the legal rationale in the "Bybee memo" to justify lowered standards of treatment of war captives during the George W. Bush administration's Global War on Terror.
BIONeal A. Maxwell
Neal A. Maxwell (1926-2004) grew up in Salt Lake City. He received a Master's degree in political science from the University of Utah and became involved in Utah politics. In 1970, he became Commissioner of Church Education and then, in 1974, became a general authority when called as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He died in 2004.
[1]↩︎
One CIA recruiter, Michael Mau, observed:
The agency recruits BYU students because of their historic success here, but also because BYU is one of the best schools academically. The students seem a bit more mature here. It is probably because they have had two years of experience on their missions.
- Karen Gutke reports on CIA's recruitment at BYU.
[2]↩︎
In 2012, a Russian politician, Yekaterina Steniakina, maintained that the Latter-day Saints were a CIA apparatus "to fool and covert" unwitting Russians and pushed for legislation to ban all "non-traditional" religions.
In 2016, Russia passed a law limiting proselytizing activities. The Church said that missionaries would remain in Russia, but "work within the requirements of these changes."
- Yekaterina Steniakina in Russia thinks Mormons are CIA.
- KUTV article on the Church's response to Russia's 2016 law restricting missionary work.
[3]↩︎
According to Daniel K. Judd, a former mission president in Accra, the Ghanaian government "made the decision that the LDS missionaries were CIA operatives" in 1989.
At the time of the ban, the Ghanian government said that the Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses had "continued to conduct themselves in a manner which not only undermines the sovereignty of Ghana, but is also no conducive to public order."
- Former Ghana mission president Daniel K Judd says Ghanaian government determined LDS Church was CIA infiltrated.
- Salt Lake Tribune article on Ghana banning the Church in June 1989.
[4]↩︎
On June 14, 1989, the government of Ghana announced the ban of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses, accusing the groups of undermining the country's sovereignty and disturbing public order. Missionaries were ordered to leave the country.
On November 30, 1990, the Church said the ban was lifted and activity could resume.
- Salt Lake Tribune article on Ghana banning the Church in June 1989.
- Daily Herald article on Ghana removing ban on the Church in 1990.
[5]↩︎
For instance, in Numbers 13:1-2, 17-20, the Lord directed Moses in his intelligence-gathering efforts in sending spies of Israel into the land of Canaan:
1. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 2. Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel: of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them. . . . 17. And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan. . .
[6]↩︎
In Alma 43:23, Captain Moroni used espionage along with prophetic direction:
But it came to pass, as soon as they had departed into the wilderness Moroni sent spies into the wilderness to watch their camp; and Moroni, also, knowing of the prophecies of Alma, sent certain men unto him, desiring him that he should inquire of the Lord whither the armies of the Nephites should go to defend themselves against the Lamanites.
Nephites also use spies in Alma 2:21, Alma 43:28, 30, Alma 56:22, and Alma 57:30.
[7]↩︎
Alma 43:30:
And [Moroni] also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands, and their liberty, and their church, therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem; therefore, he found by his spies which course the Lamanites were to take.
According to Alma 48:11, Captain Moroni "did not delight in bloodshed," but was "a man whose soul did joy in the liberty and the freedom of his country, and his brethren from bondage and slavery;"
[8]↩︎
Because of their involvement, in the mainstream press (e.g., Vanity Fair), Mitchell and Jessen were frequently described as the "Mormon mafia." Mitchell and Jessen received approximately 80 million dollars in compensation through their CIA contracts.
- Katherine Eban highlights Bruce Jessen and James Elmer Mitchell as "Mormon mafia" CIA contractors.
- Washington Post website hosts contracts for John Bruce Jessen and James Elmer Mitchell.
[9]↩︎
In 2014, James Elmer Mitchell told The Guardian that "ninety percent of the stuff written about me is untrue. . . They say I’m a Mormon. I’m actually an atheist."
- James Elmer Mitchell claims that he is not a Mormon.
[10]↩︎
Church spokesperson Eric Hawkins said that Jessen's resignation was "due to concerns expressed about his past work related to interrogation techniques."
After resigning, Bruce Jessen told Reuters, "I just felt it would be unfair for me to bring that controversy to a lot of other people, so I decided to step down." Jessen remained part of the congregation.
- Bruce Jessen steps down from position as bishop following CIA involvement.
[11]↩︎
Mitchell and Jessen were only known by the pseudonyms of "Drs. Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar" until 2007.
- LH reports that James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen are testifying in Guantanamo Case.
[12]↩︎
In an August 2002 memo, Jay Bybee defined "torture" as only covering "extreme acts," like severe physical pain that leads to death or organ failure, and mental pain that leaves lasting psychological harm. He stated that the government's interrogation practices had not fallen under U.S. Code 2340A's restriction on torture.
Bybee's memo built upon a memo signed by George W. Bush on February 7, 2002, which concluded that all captives taken during the Al Qaeda conflict were not eligible for protections typically provided to prisoners of war, as the detainees were "unlawful combatants." This allowed for more flexibility in the treatment of captives.
In 2003, Bybee told Meridian Magazine, "I take very seriously the fact that I have people's economic interests, liberty, and very lives in my hands."
[13]↩︎
Jay Bybee's memo held:
We conclude below that Section 2340A proscribes acts inflicting, and that are specifically intended to inflict, severe pain or suffering, whether mental or physical. Those acts must be of an extreme nature to rise to the level of torture within the meaning of Section 2340A and the [Geneva] Convention. We further conclude that certain acts may be cruel, inhuman, or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within Section 2340A's proscription against torture.
. . .
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that torture as defined in and proscribed by Sections 2340-2340A, covers only extreme acts. Severe pain is generally of the kind difficult for the victim to endure. Where the pain is physical, it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure. Severe mental pain requires suffering not just at the moment of infliction but it also requires lasting psychological harm, such as seen in mental disorders like posttraumatic stress disorder. Additionally, such severe mental pain can arise only from the predicate acts listed in Section 2340. Because the acts inflicting torture are extreme, there is significant range of acts that though they might constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment fail to rise to the level of torture.
- Jay Bybee's memo providing legal groundwork for "enhanced interrogation techniques."
[14]↩︎
The Church has a hierarchical leadership structure.
Some of the Church's Temple Recommend Interview Questions are:
4. Do you sustain the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the prophet, seer, and revelator and as the only person on the earth authorized to exercise all priesthood keys? Do you sustain the members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators? Do you sustain the other General Authorities and local leaders of the Church?
6. Do you follow the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ in your private and public behavior with members of your family and others?
7. Do you support or promote any teachings, practices, or doctrine contrary to those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
- Short description of Church leadership on the Church website.
[15]↩︎
The Church's twelfth Article of Faith states:
We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.
Doctrine and Covenants 134:1, 5:
We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society.
We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments; and that sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly; and that all governments have a right to enact such laws as in their own judgments are best calculated to secure the public interest; at the same time, however, holding sacred the freedom of conscience.
[16]↩︎
As of October 2025, missionaries "serve in more than 150 countries and teach in more than 60 languages."
In 1976, Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley spoke of how the new Language Training Center would aid in the ongoing success of missionaries learning languages and cultures:
This facility should make for an improvement of an already outstanding program which makes it possible for our missionaries to arrive in the field ready to go to work immediately, able to converse in the languages of the people and with some acquaintance of their cultures. President Kimball told us the other day of sitting next to the American ambassador in Finland. The ambassador, speaking of the Finnish language, said, “There are only two groups of people who can learn this difficult language—babies and Mormon missionaries.”
Molly Worthen of Foreign Policy observed:
Missions demand a paradoxical combination of ideological commitment and pragmatic flexibility. The two years (or, in the case of female missionaries, 18 months) that young Mormons are urged to devote to full-time mission work often send them overseas and leave them not only fluent in new languages and charged with a saintly esprit de corps, but sensitive to the challenges of communicating in a culture different from their own.
[17]↩︎
The Church's doctrine of the Word of Wisdom teaches against the use of alcohol, tea, coffee, or tobacco. Church leaders have also taught members not to use drugs, vape, smoke marijuana, or consume any other "substances that impair judgment or are harmful or highly addictive, whether legal or illegal." Healthy living is emphasized.
- Church teachings on the Word of Wisdom.
[18]↩︎
According to a survey conducted among BYU students, these students placed marriage, family, and professional success at a high priority for their personal life goals.
- BAC offers summary of dating and marriage at BYU (increased familial stability makes for better CIA recruits).
[19]↩︎
For instance, regarding World War I, President Joseph F. Smith said of Utah's soldiers:
Let the soldiers that go out from Utah be and remain men of honor, and when they are called obey the call, and manfully meet the duty, the dangers, or the labor, that may be required of them, or that they may be set to do; but do it with an eye single to the accomplishment of the good that is aimed to be accomplished, and not with the blood-thirsty desire to kill and to destroy.
In 1942, during World War II, the First Presidency echoed this view, urging male Church members to obey the civic call to arms. They also added that taking a life when “harkening to that [constitutional law] call and obeying those in command over them” will not make those fighting into murderers.
- Joseph F. Smith speaks of Church duty to support government in war.
- First Presidency statement on mobilization for war during WWII.
[20]↩︎
Referencing a story from the Book of Mormon (Alma 60), the First Presidency's said in a 1942 General Conference message:
But 'behold,' as Moroni said, the righteous of them who serve and are slain 'do enter into the rest of the Lord their God,' and of them the Lord has said "those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them." (D. & C. 42:46) Their salvation and exaltation in the world to come will be secure. That in their work of destruction they will be striking at their brethren will not be held against them. That sin, as Moroni of old said, is to the condemnation of those who 'sit in their places of power in a state of thoughtless stupor,' those rulers in the world who in a frenzy of hate and lust for unrighteous power and dominion over their fellow men, have put into motion external forces they do not comprehend and cannot control. God, in His own due time, will pass sentence upon them.
- First Presidency statement on mobilization for war during WWII.
[21]↩︎
In 1942, the First Presidency declared:
When, therefore, constitutional law, obedient to these principles, calls the manhood of the Church into the armed service of any country to which they owe allegiance, their highest civic duty requires that they meet that call. If, harkening to that call and obeying those in command over them, they shall take the lives of those who fight against them, that will not make of them murderers, nor subject them to the penalty that God has prescribed for those who kill, beyond the principle to be mentioned shortly. For it would be a cruel God that would punish His children as moral sinners for acts done by them as the innocent instrumentalities of a sovereign whom He had told them to obey and whose will they were powerless to resist.
The whole world is in the midst of a war that seems the worst of all time. This Church is a worldwide Church. Its devoted members are in both camps. They are the innocent war instrumentalities of their warring sovereignties. On each side they believe they are fighting for home, and country, and freedom. On each side, our brethren pray to the same God, in the same name, for victory. Both sides cannot be wholly right; perhaps neither is without wrong. God will work out in His own due time and in His own sovereign way the justice and right of the conflict, but He will not hold the innocent instrumentalities of the war, our brethren in arms, responsible for the conflict. This is a major crisis in the world-life of man. God is at the helm.
- First Presidency statement on mobilization for war during WWII.
[22]↩︎
In their 1942 message, the First Presidency quoted from Doctrine and Covenants 98:4–7, which says:
4. And now, verily I say unto you concerning the laws of the land, it is my will that my people should observe to do all things whatsoever I command them.
5. And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.
6. Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land;
7. And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil.
- First Presidency statement on mobilization for war during WWII.
[23]↩︎
The First Presidency was not saying that service in the military is a license to take any action. They also said:
To our young men who go into service, no matter whom they serve or where, we say live clean, keep the commandments of the Lord, pray to Him constantly to preserve you in truth and righteousness . . .
In 1946, for instance, President J. Reuben Clark condemned the use of the atomic bomb against Japan during World War II:
Then as the crowning savagery of war, we as Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan, few if any of the ordinary civilians being any more responsible for the war than were we, and perhaps no more aiding Japan in the war than we were aiding America. Military men are now saying that the atom bomb was a mistake. It was more than that: it was a world tragedy. . . . And the worst of the atomic bomb tragedy is not that not only did the people of the United States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did it not shock us to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women and children, and cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large approval of this fiendish butchery. . . . Thus we in America are now deliberately seeking out and developing the most savage, murderous means of exterminating peoples that Satan can plant in our minds. We do it not only shamelessly, but with a boast. God will not forgive us for this.
- First Presidency statement on mobilization for war during WWII.
- J. Reuban Clark condemns use of excessive armament in war.
[24]↩︎
Maxwell eventually became frustrated with his work as an analyst at the CIA, finding it "bland."
- BH comments on NAM's lessons learned during his CIA service.