Mormons in intelligence is John Kiriakou’s observation that Mormons are heavily overrepresented in the CIA and FBI, and to a slightly lesser extent the NSA. The first reason, he says, is the polygraph: they “don’t swear, don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t gamble” — having “never done anything,” they pass easily.[1] More importantly, their missionary years at Brigham Young leave many fluent in “funky languages that nobody else speaks” — Uzbek, Tajik, Pashto and various African languages — so they arrive already able to be sent operationally overseas.[2]
Kiriakou has made the same case elsewhere in more institutional terms: the intelligence community respects Mormons because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sends most members on a one- or two-year mission around age 18 or 19, and is “very, very good about sending them to intensive language training” beforehand — sometimes training as long as, or longer than, the mission itself. Combined with a lifestyle free of smoking, drinking, gambling, and drugs, that record lets them “easily pass a polygraph and a background investigation” and step straight into an operational role.[3] As an example, he recalls working with a Mormon U.S. Information Service officer from the State Department in Bahrain who had, unusually, done his own mission in Monte Carlo.[4]