The FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 911 by Sylvester A. Johnson & Steven Weitzman

Author:Sylvester A. Johnson & Steven Weitzman [Johnson, Sylvester A. & Weitzman, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Religion, Religion; Politics & State
ISBN: 9780520287273
Google: -UKADQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01N6C7WNI
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

11

A Vast Infiltration

Mormonism and the FBI

MATTHEW BOWMAN

On September 29, 1984, Richard Bretzing, the director of the FBI field office in Los Angeles, summoned an agent named Richard Miller to his office. Miller had just failed a polygraph test. This seemed damning evidence that he was guilty of a crime Bretzing had suspected him of for weeks: selling documents to the Soviet Union. Bretzing asked Miller if his suspicions were true, and when the agent demurred, Bretzing made what he called an “appeal to his moral and religious teachings.” Bretzing urged Miller to consider the “spiritual ramifications” of the crime and exhorted him to “repent.”

This was not standard FBI practice, as Bretzing later acknowledged at Miller’s trial, but it drew on the fact that he and Miller shared a particular religious background. Earlier that year, Miller had been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for adultery—with, it turned out, the Soviet agent to whom he had passed information. He appeared to be penitent and racked with guilt, and Bretzing, as a fellow Mormon—in fact, as a bishop who served as the lay head of a local congregation—was in a unique position of spiritual authority to remind Miller “of his sense of right and wrong” and to urge a confession.1 Time was of the essence because Miller was involved in a number of critical operations, and Bretzing was desperate to determine what he might have stolen. The appeal worked; Miller broke down in tears and confessed, was arrested October 2, and went to prison.

Bretzing, who had just finished coordinating security for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and, two years later, would retire to take a position as head of security for his church, was in many respects the perfectly cast FBI agent. Six foot, four and 220 pounds with silver hair, he certainly looked every bit the part of the government G-man, and he seemed to have the right character as well; his supporters in the agency called him courageous and dignified, with a firm moral compass derived from his faith. On the face of it Bretzing embodied the ideal agent that Hoover and his FBI had worked so hard to cultivate: diligent, noble, and possessed of a faith that imbued him with a strong sense of what a Bretzing supporter called “right and wrong.”2

And yet the testimony of another agent in the FBI field office gave a very different impression of Bretzing’s directorship and of the role of Mormonism in shaping his performance. Bernardo “Matt” Perez served as Bretzing’s assistant from 1982 to 1984, until he was replaced by Bryce Christensen, a Mormon like Bretzing. During Miller’s trial, Perez testified that Bretzing ignored his recommendation years before that Miller be disciplined or fired, even though Miller, whom Perez called a “bumbler,” routinely reported to work grossly overweight. “I believe that happened because they are both Mormons,” Perez said. “I saw it happen with other Mormons and only Mormons.”3 Instead of facing discipline, Miller was assigned to report to Christensen, for reasons that also smacked of religious favoritism.

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