I am wondering this because I get the impression Mormons in these professions find a lot of comfort in being a Mormon int he same way many in law enforcement gte comfort from being a Freemason.

I saw a story through quora.com about a Mormon who was a Catholic and converted to being a Mormon.He was an LA cop for many years.

"I saw a story through quora.com about a Mormon who was a Catholic and converted to being a Mormon."

So was he a mormon that became a Catholic and then converted back to being a mormon?

Or was he a Catholic who converted to being a mormon?

I gots ta know......

"I gots ta know......"

Nice Dirty Harry reference!

  
  
  

IKR?

After all your work, to have your phrase attributed to a mere actor. . .

Lot’s of Mormons in the CIA and FBI. My mom’s side of the family is full of law enforcement officers both federal and local. My dad’s side of the family is full of spooks. All Mormon.

I would say growing up Mormon and serving a mission helps with some of the skill sets needed to work in intelligence and law enforcement.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would say growing up Mormon and serving a
> mission helps with some of the skill sets needed
> to work in intelligence ...

Many may beg to differ. :P

HW Bush loved to recruit Mormons into the CIA because they are organizational loyal.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lot’s of Mormons in the CIA and FBI. My mom’s
> side of the family is full of law enforcement
> officers both federal and local. My dad’s side
> of the family is full of spooks. All Mormon.
>
> I would say growing up Mormon and serving a
> mission helps with some of the skill sets needed
> to work in intelligence and law enforcement.


It does help having a second language. Generally, outside the Mountain West, Mormons are seen as hard working, honest people.

More importantly Mormons are conditioned to be organizational loyal and follow orders without question. The church has trained them well. Also Mormons have a work ethic.

Rubicon Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------
> Mormons have a work ethic.

As do countless nevermos. Just saying.

Retired NSA here, 21 years serving NSA while in the Air Force, 22 additional years as NSA Civil Service employee. I also worked overseas for over half that time, often working with CIA. That's my intro.

As for CIA hiring lots of Mormons, that's well in the past now. It used to be that being gay made one ineligible, and having experimented with any drug likewise made one ineligible. And even military people can be in a same-sex marriage now. When they were still issues, CIA and possibly NSA recruited liberally at BYU, since there would have been few who had experimented with drugs or were gay. The result was lots of Mormons in CIA and/or NSA. For a couple of decades, at least, CIA no longer has to spend so much time recruiting among Mormons, but are free to hire the ones once marginalized.

CIA (and also NSA) have a keen record of promoting gays, sometimes even ignoring their own promotion rules to say, See? We accept and love gays! CIA is very liberal with promotions, anyway, and they want to keep promoting until a person's retirement, with a goal of retiring employees as at least a GS-15, the highest normal rank before the executive pay grades. NSA, on the other hand, does no such favors to the employees. But CIA does it kind of out of fear, because the hope is that, if you be reeeeal nice to an employee, he or she won't spy for another country, which was always a bit of a problem.

NSA loves to recruit people who know a language, so in the Cold War days, they needed a lot of German speakers due to East Germany For Spanish language, think Cuba, but also remember that NSA had huge numbers of native speakers to choose from. Today, there is still communications intelligence against pretty much all entities (their motto: In God We Trust; All Others We Monitor), but former missionaries have never had a good record of speaking any of their mission languages comparatively well. In fact, for some, it appeared that they had wasted their time as missionaries.

I was happy to eventually see fewer and fewer Mormons over time.

cludgie Wrote:
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> . . . CIA and possibly NSA
> recruited liberally at BYU. . .

I just wanted to highlight that clause, which is ironic in at least two different ways.

So, you watched the History Channel, but where exactly do Freemasons fall in this category?

Freemasons tend to look after each other. There is a brotherhood thing. Much of it is typical networking. It’s human nature. Now as far as the conspiracy stuff goes who the hell knows.

I could see powerful people expecting recruits to compromise themselves so they can be controlled. I could see the benefit of dark initiations done inside some kind of fraternal order.

Being squeaky clean with no criminal record makes it easier to get a security clearance.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-mormons-make-great-fbi-recruits

But there’s at least one place in American society where Mormons have found an unusual degree of acceptance—in agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the CIA, which see Mormons as particularly desirable recruits and have a reputation for hiring a disproportionate number of people who belong to the church.

But, in reality, Mormons end up in these agencies for perfectly logical reasons. The disproportionate number of Mormons is usually chalked up to three factors: Mormon people often have strong foreign language skills, from missions overseas; a relatively easy time getting security clearances, given their abstention from drugs and alcohol; and a willingness to serve.

That too. Also in the higher security clearances you are subject to random polygraph tests. Fun stuff.

One of the biggest weapons in spook world is sex. Honeytraps are definitely used. So you want people who keep it in their pants. You also want people who avoid debt and won’t take a bribe out of desperation.

One common fun trick in spook world is the reverse honey trap. So yeah they want good folk like good Mormons and they also want Whores for sex operatives. They want both sides of the coin.

My old Ricks College buddy was a US Marines officer then did a career in the FBI as a special agent. He's a TBM so there ya go.

In Seattle circles there was an established ‘rumor’ that a member name Peter Gunn was an FBI SAIC;

I briefly was a sworn officer with the Idaho SP, but it wasn’t a good fit.

3 of my acquaintances were SPD officers, one became a Bp in Marysville, one moved to Vashion & started an airport van service, the other was a plain clothes vice detective, I lost track of him.

What the heck is an “established rumor”?

...probably translates to 'popular rumor'... or 'rumor accepted as being true, but no one ever got around to documenting its validity.'

His editor would have made the change without even consulting him...


edited to add: probably no one under 30 has any idea who Peter Gunn is/was...

Here's a 1:38 clip of the opening of a 1959 TV episode with James Hong, whom we all love in everything we've ever seen him in, especially "Big Trouble in Little China".  Peter Gunn is the White Boy ...      Dang!  I'm old!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7bBancQnFw&list=PLizXSZvaFfpf7_ppCWf63LAL_zJO7rBJj&index=1



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2023 12:54AM by elderolddog.

I might be laughing, but let’s call it an unestablished rumor.

I never met P. Gunn, so I didn’t know first-hand, but a few of my acquaintances did.

I guess any unvaried info could be called a rumor;

also, LE types sometimes or often prefer to operate on the DL.

Peter Gunn, the tv series? Are we talking about a real person, or is LE so far on the DL that they’re using tv character aliases?

I am VERY confused.

The info I had from friends was that his real name was Peter Gunn & that he was the FBI SAIC here.

I know a few who are in LE. One is in and one is out of the church. Here's my interesting observation when both were attending my ward.

If you are a workaholic, then this was a perfect career to be a quasi-member. First, they seem to attend once a month or even once every two months. Both would dress in their LE uniform, this was good because the sister hated wearing dresses/skirts with hosiery. Another good reason is that both officers would/could feign an emergency call to leave when church was dragging (remember those 3 hour blocks of mindless boringness?).

I'll admit that I was envious of them. They never were asked to help move, get a pass on home/visiting teaching, no major callings and not nagged to go to the temple. I thought it was a pretty good gig to have if you really no longer believed or wanted to be dragged down with church duties, yet be respected for being an "unofficial church ambassador" to the community.