posted
Preferred hires by US military and CIA, according to the report. It's easy for them to get through the background check for necessary clearances.
Their only regret was that Mormons weren't working in some of the countries where we need people to infiltrate various cells.
Really! Like LDS missionaries come home and become spies?
They interviewed someone from the LDS church in Utah who said that the church doesn't go into that many Muslim countries because the governments there do not allow Christian proselytizing.
They mentioned specifically going to work for the military and the CIA.
Presumably as translators first and foremost. But then there was the weird little "regret" that the US government guy had about not being able to use them to infiltrate in places like Iraq.
posted
I'm still disappointed that I was never recruited. I mean come on -- I spoke both German and Romanian.
---- LDS may make okay analysts, but I doubt they make very good operatives because they don't drink alcohol and coffee.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I listened to that this morning. They first mentioned that the military needed more linguists, and that they had found a great source. I knew they were going to talk about returned missionaries before they said it.
The only problem I had with that story is that they focused on the Missionary Training Center as the place where the missionaries learn their languages. True, but even after 9 weeks there you're still not ready to carry on a conversation with a native speaker. I wish they'd talked more about the experience of living for two years in the country and spending every day with the people. In addition to eventually becoming fluent in the language (and various dialects), missionaries really do get a good feel for the people. That would be a big plus in an intelligence operative, I think, much bigger than 9 weeks in the MTC.
I love how they talked about why recruiters love Mormons. I always thought that that was a bit of a "Mormon legend." But I guess they really do like how honest and loyal we are. Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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BYU is one of the big recruiters for the CIA according to some anecdotal evidence someone once told me which might be true but might not so what was my point I don't really know.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I'm not sure I'd want this sort of thing "spread around" if I was responsible for sending missionaries into potentially unfriendly situations. I mean, they shoot spies...
quote:Really! Like LDS missionaries come home and become spies?
Become spies? Pfft. What do you think we're doing out there for two years?
Really, though, I think about many of the skills I learned on my mission, and they could come in really handy--foreign language, familiarity with a wide range of social classes, the ability to wear a trenchcoat well, combat driving skills, dogged persistence, working as part of a team, distributing literature, working to undermine a prevalent social order (in my case, Catholicism), living under a strict set of rules, gaining the confidence and friendship of locals, and, of course, dodging projectiles.
Posts: 1068 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
My BYU friend told me that the NSA was doing a lot of recruiting in Utah. They said they'd pay for two years of college if you would go to learn a foreign language (the choices were Chinese, Arabic, Urdu and Farsi) and all you had to do was work for them for a year, for which they'd pay you $40,000. I was all gung ho to sign up and then I was like, "Dude - I'm not working for the NSA! Especially not if they're going to make me be a spy."
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Female operatives get the lousy assignments. I have friends who were "recruited" and they were told they might end up doing desk work or, to put it bluntly, sleeping with fat Russian diplomats.
quote: I have friends who were "recruited" and they were told they might end up doing desk work or, to put it bluntly, sleeping with fat Russian diplomats.
Ack! I don't know why they're recruiting in Utah, then...
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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