Under the Eye of Providence: Surveilling Religious Expression in the United States Kathryn A. Montalbano Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Kathryn A. Montalbano All rights reserved ABSTRACT Under the Eye of Providence: Surveilling Religious Expression in the United States Kathryn A. Montalbano This dissertation analyzes how government agencies influenced the religious expression of Mormons of the Territory of Utah in the 1870s and 1880s, Quakers of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and Muslims of Brooklyn, New York, from 2002 to 2013. I argue that nineteenth-century federal marshals and judges in the Territory of Utah, mid-twentieth century FBI agents throughout the United States, and New York Police Department officers in post-September 11 New York were prompted to monitor each religious community by their concerns about polygamy, communism, and terrorism, respectively. The government agencies did not just observe the communities, but they probed precisely what constituted religion itself. Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction: United States Government Monitoring Systems I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………..…….….…. 1 II. Three Case Studies ……………………….……………………………..…….……. 9 III. Assessing the Collection of Information ………………………………….……… 16 Chapter 2. The Mormons of the Territory of Utah: Distinguishing Between Belief and Action I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….… 29 II. Overview of the Legislative and Judicial Campaign ………………………..…….. 35 III. Spotting and Securing the Nation …………………………………………….…… 47 IV. The Path to Statehood .…………………………………………….…………….… 53 A. Belief Cannot Excuse Crime ………………………………………………. 59 B. Conversation as Evidence ………………………………………………….. 66 C. Mormon Americanness Revisited ………………………………………….. 74 D. Belief Can Obstruct Objectivity and Americanness ……………………….. 78 V. The Shift from Attacking Polygamy to Preserving Monogamy ……………………. 83 VI. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….…… 99 Chapter 3. The Quakers of the AFSC: Regulating Communism in the Cold War Era I. Introduction ..………………………………………………………………….…… 122 II. The Tension Between Secrecy and Transparency ………………………….…….. 128 III. Crafting a Public Image .…………………………………………………………. 133 IV. Unveiling the FBI Surveillance Program .…………………………………..……. 137 V. The Response of the AFSC .……………………………………………………….. 164 !i VI. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….…. 171 Chapter 4. The Muslims of Brooklyn, New York: Predicting Terrorism After September 11 I. Introduction …………………………...…………………………………………… 185 II. Radicalization …………………….……………………………………………….. 186 III. The Handschu Guidelines …….…………………………………………………. 195 IV. Raza v. City of New York A. Collection of Information …………………………………………………. 197 B. The Testimonies ……………………………………………………….….. 202 C. The Settlement ……………………………………………………….……. 221 V. Pluralism …………………………………..……………………………..…..……. 224 VI. Conclusion …………..…….………………………………….………………..… 229 Chapter 5. Conclusion: Religion, Media, and Surveillance I. Overview of the Main Contributions ………………………………………….…… 244 II. Summary of the Main Themes ……………………………………………………. 250 III. Looking Forward ………………………………………………………………… 253 Primary Sources ………………………………………………………………………………. 258 Secondary Sources ……………………………………………………………………………. 266 !ii Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to thank the faculty and students of the Columbia Communications PhD program for providing me with a home in New York. The program offered the ideal balance of rigor and support within a collaborative, intellectual environment. We are fortunate to be part of a community of scholars who seek to build bridges rather than walls. Few scholars I have encountered so far in my academic career are quite like my advisor, Richard R. John. Since I began my graduate studies, I have admired Richard for many reasons, not the least his insatiable appetite for knowledge, his unrelenting dedication to scholarship, and his keen intuition for recognizing the value in topics that might otherwise be dismissed. Richard also possesses the distinctive ability of connecting a wide range of ideas and scholarship in a way that illuminates the vast and extensive field that is communications. Beyond all of these qualities, I have always admired Richard for his commitment to the development of his students and the well-being of his family, despite the extensive time necessarily allotted to his own research. I hope to follow this model as I start my own path as a professor. Courtney Bender, whom I consider my primary mentor outside of my own field, has been invaluable in my scholarly training. She has on more than one occasion prevented me from going down a path that was destined for a dead end. In her brilliance, perceptiveness, and precision, she has never ceased to stun me with her sharp intellect and thorough comprehensiveness in both her feedback and in her own scholarship. I am lucky to have found an academic role model such as Courtney. I would like to thank the three other main faculty members of our program: Andie Tucher, for her tireless devotion to our program, her beautiful gift of prose, and her constructive !iii comments on the visual component of surveillance; Todd Gitlin, whose ability to make interdisciplinary connections among seemingly disparate ideas guides his broad vision as the chair of our program; and Michael Schudson, whose comments and feedback are among the most thoughtful and deliberate among any of the faculty at Columbia. Thank you also to David Stark and Elizabeth Blackmar of my dissertation committee for offering their unique sociological and historical perspectives. Conversations with each of them early on in the dissertation process were exceedingly beneficial to shaping and forming my research agenda. Many intellectuals and scholars not yet mentioned have influenced my journey through academia. This list includes Randall Balmer, Casey Blake, Euan Cameron, James Carey, Samuel Cruz, E. Valentin Daniel, Sheila Greeve Davaney, Gary Dorrien, Stewart Hoover, Juraj Kittler, Brian Larkin, Lawrence Lessig, Kathryn Lofton, Frank Moretti, Brigitte Nacos, Ann Neumann, John Durham Peters, Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., Neslihan "enocak, Jack Snyder, Jacob Soll, Paul Starr, Charles Taylor, Stefaan G. Verhulst, and Jonathan Zittrain, to name a few. Doctoral candidates would encounter a far more formidable task were it not for the critical guidance of librarians and archivists. I would first like to thank Donald Davis, Archivist at the American Friends Service Committee, for his genuine eagerness to assist with my research and his overall warm welcome, including a gift of the most delicious blood orange from Reading Terminal Market. I would also like to thank two members of the library staff at Swarthmore College: Wendy Chmielewski, Curator of the Swarthmore Peace Collection, and Christopher Densmore, Curator of the Friends Historical Society, for helping me to narrow down my research and hone in on the AFSC. I would additionally like to thank Jim Babcock, Library Specialist at Columbia University; Carl Hallberg, Reference Archivist at the Wyoming State Archives; Mark !iv Shelstad, Deputy State Archivist at the Wyoming State Archives; and Cody White, Archivist of the National Archives at Denver, for their assistance with my Mormon research. Thank you to the law librarians at Columbia Law School for their assistance with my Muslim research. And finally, thank you to John Tofanelli, Research Collections and Services Librarian at Columbia University; Mary Cargill, reference librarian at Columbia University; and Starr Hoffman, librarian at the Columbia Journalism School, for their indispensable assistance with the very early stages of this research. Doctoral candidates would not exist without the professors who initially inspired them to pursue graduate school. I owe my deepest gratitude to the brilliant professors of the English department at Haverford College, in particular: Rajeswari Mohan, whose upper-level class which I ambitiously attempted as a sophomore, “Textual Politics: Marxism, Feminism, and the Deconstruction,” jolted me into a world in which not only texts, but the world around me, was no longer easily comprehensible; Laura McGrane, whose gift of facilitating discussions and insightfully directing students to their better writerly selves was unmatched; Kimberly Benston, whose oral brilliance shone in diverse courses on Shakespeare and the intersection of human and animal nature, and whose mastery of writing was so evident that his students saved his email correspondence; Maud McInerney, whose passion for medieval literature helped me to push my own communications scholarship backward in time; Gustavus Stadler, whose seminar on American literature provided me with early insight into the significant impact of pragmatism on communication studies; and Debora Sherman, whose guidance of my senior research on modern Irish literature sparked my venture into communications as I sought to explore the impact of mass media on reconciliation in post-conflict Northern Ireland. I would also like to thank John !v Muse, whose scholarship pushed me to think beyond interdisciplinary boundaries. I extend a special thanks to Mark Gould of the sociology department, with whom I clashed during the first week of freshman year, but who quickly became one of my most valuable advisors. Mark ultimately encouraged