Mission circular reports rumor that missionaries in El Salvador are CIA operatives.
"Mission circular," Edmund Carbine Papers, Box 1, Folder 13, Church History Library
The missionaries laboring in Guatemala City were both startled and amused to find an "expose" of Mormonism in one of the local Sunday papers. The June 11th Sunday edition of the Guatemalan newspaper, EL IMPACTO, carried the following story under blaring headlines saying: "ESPIONAGE--AGENTS DISGUISED AS MORMONS." "We have been informed that the sect of the Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormons, is a body of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. This organization has been bitterly criticized by alleged anti-communist circles for being responsible for the killing of Cubans in the Bahia de Cochinos because of the inability of the chief of the organization, the septogenarian, Allan Dulles. "For several months now, the pairs of brash, young Mormon ministers, wearing their traditional and ridiculous hats, have made us observe that there are more ministers of this sect in Guatemala City than there are Catholic priests. The men of Allan Dulles, whose activities alternate with Bible-teachings, have infiltrated among these ministers. We have also been informed that during the last of the past year and at the beginning of the present, there were many of these Mormon ministers in Retalhuleus and other western zones of the country (where troops are trained to participate in the Cuban revolution); out now they are found concentrated in the capital."