The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts news release…
An inquiry by the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used an undercover agent in the production of an infamous memo targeting traditional Catholics.
The January 23rd memo, issued by the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia office, was titled Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.
It was leaked on February 8th by former FBI agent turned whistleblower Kyle Seraphin.
The memo recommended that traditional Catholic groups be subject to “assessment” (surveillance), “threat mitigation” (countermeasures), and “source recruitment” (acquisition of confidential informants).
Now, in an April 10th letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), disclosed “… we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith.”
Jordan went on to say that “In this document, the FBI purported to categorize Catholic Americans based on theological distinctions and relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center to suggest that certain kinds of Catholic Americans may be domestic terrorists,” adding that “…we know that the FBI, relying on information derived from at least one undercover employee, sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development’.”
Jordan also divulged that the FBI wanted to reach out to the leadership of the Society of Saint Pius X “to sensitize these congregations to the warning signs of radicalization and to enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.”
Not content to spy only on Catholics who attend the Latin Mass, the Bureau, according to Jordan, also intends to contact “mainline Catholic parishes” and “diocesan leadership” and encourage them “to report on suspicious activity.”
The Catholic Action League called the revelations evidence of “creeping totalitarianism, an appalling Third World style abuse of power, and a demented misdirection of FBI resources that can only be explained by the politicizing of federal law enforcement.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “This chilling assault on the First Amendment suggests that some of the most dangerous extremists in the country are on the payroll of the FBI.”
“Spying upon, infiltrating and procuring informants in churches was a practice common to the Sipo (State Security Police) and the Gestapo (State Secret Police) in Nazi Germany. This is not only anti-Catholic, but unlawful, un-American and unconstitutional. It is unknown in the history of the United States.”
“These disturbing disclosures inform us that some of the leadership of the FBI has subordinated itself to the political and ideological agenda of the Biden Administration. That administration—and its allies on the Left—want Americans to believe that, in the era of ANTIFA domestic terrorism and destructive BLM riots, the real threat to this country is from the phantom of an allegedly violent ‘Christian nationalism.'”
“Congressman Jordan is to be commended for his revelatory letter and for the vitally important work of the House Judiciary Committee.”
