Mike McPheters

Samuel Michael "Mike" McPheters was a United States FBI Agent and a bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who wrote a memoir entitled Agent Bishop (Springville, Utah: CFI, 2009).

McPheters was raised in Ketchum, Idaho. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Uruguay and Paraguay and then studied at Brigham Young University. After a short time teaching GED courses at the Treasure Valley Community College McPheters joined the FBI.

McPheters second assignment was in Miami, Florida where he used his skills in Spanish to bust the Cesar Enrique Acosta and the Pillo Gang networks of car thieves. He was involved with the formation of the Miami SWAT team and the investigation of the D. B. Cooper hijacking as well as one of the many ultimately futile investigations of the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance.

McPheters later covered the Ute Reservation in northern Utah. He was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union in the case of Valdez v. McPheters, in which he was accused of embarrassing Ute residents of the reservation and violating the Fourth Amendment. McPheters' actions were exonerated in the case on the basis that he and BIA agent Littlewhiteman had acted on a valid arrest warrant, had valid reasons to believe that the home in question was Valdez's primary residence and that an arrest warrant gives the right to search a home to find a suspect without a specific search warrant if the home is the residence of the suspect and there is reasonable cause to believe he is there.

McPheters was also among those who argued that the accusations against H. Paul Rico were baseless.

After retiring from the FBI McPheters taught at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Washington. McPheters has written two novels as well Cartels and Combinations (2010) and Lit Fuse (2011), a political thriller.

McPheters and his wife Judy are the parents of five children.