(something a littler lighter than the CHI changes, gays kissing at BYU, etc)
When Hillary Clinton was caught up in the e-mail mess, a little known fact was reveled about the classification of some of her e-mails. Some were classified so high that the Inspector General of the Intelligent Community was not cleared to read then, and had to receive additional clearances (or “read in” to the program, in intel speak) so he could review them. They were classified at the “Special Access Program” (SAP) level. These are programs so sensitive, that they are not even acknowledged to exist. Some call these “black” programs. There are official cover stories to be used when working on them so as not to tip even your spouse why you are traveling so much to the desert in Nevada for example.
While I was reading about the special programs, the thought came to me that the church has several levels of classification for its “Secrets”. The 2nd Anointing might fall in a SAP. It is not even acknowledged to exist, and when one is “read in” to the program, they are given cover stories on why they need to travel to a temple on a Sunday morning, and they are told never to talk about it, even to family members.
But even the 2nd Anointing has hundreds if not thousands of people “read into” the program. The more people you let know your secrets, the more likely that secret will get out. What about the more sensitive aspects of the church? I’m sure the church has several former FBI and CIA agents that work in “Operational Security” (OPSEC) at church headquarters. Unlike physical security, OPSEC is the work of securing information from adversaries. Part of the way they do that is to limit the number of people that have access to the information. This is called compartmentalization. Sensitive information is restricted to only those that have a need to know. That way if there is a leak, only a little information is reveled. Only a few people know all the secrets.
So lets look at the financial program of the church. There are probably several levels of classification, or access to this information. The highest would be knowledge of every penny the church has, and where it is. This would be classified “First Pres Eyes Only” (FPEO) as we have recently learned. There are maybe only 10 people in this SAP. The three in the FP, maybe the President’s personal secretary and the Exec Sec for the FP, and then six people at Ensign Peak Advisers.
The next level might be Q15 Only. This is general information about the finances, like maybe how much tithing is brought in each year, how much it costs to subsidize the missionary program, etc. so maybe 40-50 people are in this compartment.
There is probably a “Temple” compartment in the security plan of the church. There would be a building compartment, where they would keep secret the locations of future temples (to avoid property speculation) and a temple ceremony compartment where they work on new temple films, scripts, changes to the ceremony, etc. All the Q15 would be in this compartment, plus hundreds of others.
So do you think there is a formal classification system like governments have? Does the church have a formal FPEO and Q15 stamp they put on documents? Are there any former or current Church employees reading this that has first had knowledge of the classification system the church uses?
Wheat & Tares 
I have talked to an individual who works/worked in a department in the church headquarters called “Confidential Records”, but that is literally all I know about their work.
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IMO the second anointing is kept secret for three reasons. They don’t want people asking for it, they don’t want people to feel bad that they don’t get it, and they don’t want ridicule from the outside about whether it acts as a “ticket to heaven”.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the Presiding Bishopric here. As members of the Council of Disposition of Tithes, and primary managers of the Church’s temporal assets, they will naturally be read in at the highest levels.
When my brother-in-law returned from his mission in the late 1990s, he got a part-time job at the Deseret Book flagship store near Temple Square. He was told that being a returned missionary was the primary factor that got him hired, because the job occasionally required them to personally deliver requested books to GAs in the COB nearby, and “only returned missionaries could be trusted to carry out such a sensitive duty”. It seems a bit silly that RMs automatically get some kind of entry level Church security clearance, but that’s what he said.
Rockwell: maybe the Church doesn’t want members asking for it. But according to interviews I’ve listened to, the Church wants those who have it to recommend others to receive it. Strange.
Hmmm….the second anointing sounds eerily similar to the 144,000 preached by another religion often confused with the Mormons. IMHO, any ordinance or covenenat that is kept from the general membership of the church should be classified as a ‘secret combination.’
In a church chock full of weirdness, the 2nd anointing is right around the top of the list of things that make me go „whaaaat?“ It‘s very existence twists my sacred underwear in knots. The God I believe in would not condone such a practice, and every time I am reminded of it, I struggle to believe it really exists.
Jack, you are right, I complete forgot about the Presiding Bishopric. That add at least 3 more people, plus assistants, secretaries, etc. But another question. Do you think there are any women in the FPEO SAP?
“Maybe the Church doesn’t want members asking for it. But according to interviews I’ve listened to, the Church wants those who have it to recommend others to receive it. Strange.”
No. That’s not strange at all. It’s a boys’ club within the boys’ club. In such a nepotistic status conscious organization you find that surprising? It seems completely predictable to me.
There will always be information that is not shared with everyone in a group. In his famous Diet Coke conference address, Dieter Uchtdorf referred to seeking help from Church tech support, as he worked on First Presidency assignments from his home computer. The exact wording escapes me, but I remember receiving the impression that this information was “privileged,” that it was for the FP only.
When the Ensign Peak investment portfolio flap broke in December 2019, one of the comments made in the Bloggernacle (not supported by any source citing) was that had BKP requested for information about this portfolio, as the Pres. Of the Q12, but was denied access. I am reluctant to accept this at face value, but if there is any substance to the claim, it illustrates this question of limiting information.
Can anyone shed light on the claim of BKP?
There is almost certainly classified information for different groups of church administrators. In addition to that the OP listed there may be a classification of historical documentation or artifacts that only the Q15 and say the church historian and staff know about. Maybe that’s been done away with in the past few years but in the days of JFS that was probably more guarded than almost anything.
“IMO the second anointing is kept secret for three reasons. They don’t want people asking for it, they don’t want people to feel bad that they don’t get it, and they don’t want ridicule from the outside about whether it acts as a “ticket to heaven”.”
I can think of a fourth.
If too many people received the second anointing then they’d have to come up with a third anointing in order to feel special.
Toad– Yes! The fabled First Presidency Vault, with seer stones, the Urim and Thummin, and probably Laban sword, sitting there on top of membership rosters of the Danites, the Council of Fifty minutes, and who knows what else. The Granite Mountain vaults are Level 2 security, which is surprising, because they connect to a tunnel that goes all the way to Temple Square. (It was dug by the Gadiantons in BoM times.) Another tunnel goes to Area 51, and a third goes all the way to Jackson County.
The Holy of Holies in the SLC temple is another top-level OPSEC location. According to legend, only the president of the church and the janitor have access, although the janitor may not count, as he is rumored to be one of the Three Nephites.
In all seriousness, I’ve worked with literally hundreds of organizations over the past two decades as the editor of several construction magazines. None has been as tight-lipped or difficult to work with as the LDS Church. For one example, every single contractor that worked on the City Creek Mall and the Tabernacle refit was forced to sign a non-disclosure prohibiting them from sharing any photos taken at the jobsite. I’ve never found that level of security anywhere else, including Facebook and other Fortune 500 companies I’ve worked with
One of the things I tried to do with family history was to obtain the “first” date for an ancestor’s temple work. In one interesting case I had a two records for two sealings of the same progenitors about 20-25 years apart. The thing is the wife (a fourth great-grandmother) did the sealing herself with one son (my third great-grandfather) as proxy for my fourth great-grandfather and a couple of decades later she did the sealing again with another son as proxy for her husband. It seemed strange that she would be involved in both sealings as a living individual so I decided to examine the records. Turns out there is a room in the church history library where one can check the actual temple records – but it requires a temple recommend to access. It reminded me of my time in the Air Force, having a special clearance to access information in a restricted room. The discussion above about different levels of access reminded me of this story.
So yes there exists a tiered “formal classification system like governments have” when one considers the temple recommend and family history records. Non-members are restricted from seeing temple ordnance data in Family Search. Members are restricted from accessing temple records without a temple recommend.
Whether there is a formal system of tiered access to other church information, I do not know, but I also recall an account by Levi Edgar Young, who as the senior president of the First Council of the Seventy, asked Joseph Fielding Smith, then in the Quorum of the Twelve and church historian, access to see what we now know as the 1832 account of Joseph Smith’s Vision. As related by notes from amateur Mormon historian LaMar Petersen who interviewed Young, Young “Asked to see them. told to get higher permission. Obtained that permission. Examined documents.”
By the way, I did check the records on my ancestor’s sealings (the restricted room contained microfiche copies of the Salt Lake Endowment house records and Logan Temple records) and indeed my 4th great grandmother did seal herself to her husband twice. All I can surmise is her first son, who stood in proxy for his father, had died by the time of the second sealing and the other son wanted to be sure the sealing actually happened, and perhaps his mother couldn’t remember by then, so he had it done again (this was all done in the 19th century, before computers allowed easy confirmation).
Dave C.– The first volume of the Church Handbook of Instructions is another example of “tiered access to church information.” Or was. In secular language, it was recently “declassified.” Also declassified recently: The exact wording of the temple recommend questions, and maybe–according to Elder Bednar’s GenConf address–perhaps much of the Temple Endowment as well.