FBI spying on traditionalist Catholics was wider than first suspected

The FBI’s targeting of some Catholics as “extremists” was not the work of a single rogue field office, as previously claimed, but involved multiple offices, according to an internal FBI document released by a Congressional committee on Wednesday.

Last February a whistleblower leaked a heavily redacted report from the FBI’s Richmond office: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”

The document defined “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as those who attend the Latin Mass and who allegedly frequently adhere to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Judiciary Committee in July that the report was “a single product by a single field office,” and he was aghast when he discovered it and ordered it withdrawn.

However, a less-redacted version of that Richmond document indicated that multiple field offices were involved, including Los Angeles and Portland.

The House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan, now wants more information from the FBI on how broad this investigation really was.