<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Justice has called an FBI memo that sparked backlash for labeling \u201cradical-traditionalist Catholic ideology\u201d a national security threat a \u201cgrave failure,\u201d as a new report shows an FBI field office kept working on the document even after it was ordered removed.\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s Weaponization Working Group released a\u00a0report\u00a0Thursday on the events surrounding the 2023 circulation of a\u00a0memo\u00a0from the FBI\u2019s Richmond Field Office that warned about the threat posed by \u201cradical-traditionalist Catholic ideology\u201d and drew widespread outrage.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is entrusted with the solemn responsibility of protecting the First Amendment rights of all Americans. History will rightly judge the Richmond Catholic Memo as a grave failure of the FBI Richmond Field Office to uphold that responsibility,\u201d the report stated.\n<\/p>\n
The document alleged that \u201cthe increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) in radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development.\u201d The memo drew criticism for citing the far-left advocacy organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when listing examples of \u201cradical-traditionalist Catholic groups in the U.S.\u201d The SPLC is known for branding organizations that oppose same-sex marriage as hate groups.\n<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]he individuals who developed the Richmond Domain Perspective are no longer with the Department, and our Working Group\u2019s efforts to investigate weaponization under the previous Administration will continue,\u201d U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said.\n<\/p>\n
FBI Director Kash Patel said that \u201creleasing information to the public about what occurred under the prior regime\u201d is crucial for holding those responsible accountable.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank the Weaponization Working Group for their partnership as well as Attorney General Todd Blanche for his leadership addressing these abuses and making sure they never happen again,\u201d Patel said.\n<\/p>\n
The report details what led to the FBI\u2019s investigation of \u201cradical-traditionalist Catholic ideology,\u201d and what followed the leak of the memo and the agency\u2019s insistence that the document did not \u201cmeet the exacting standards of the FBI.\u201d The FBI assured the public it quickly removed the document from FBI systems and conducted a \u201creview of the basis for the document.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
However, the document remained available to FBI employees for 15 days after it was ordered deleted, and that one of its drafters kept working on it, the report explains. More than a month after it was ordered removed, an FBI Richmond staffer sent an email admitting to \u201ctinkering\u201d with the document and outlining a \u201cfew areas where we could tinker further.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The FBI\u2019s Inspection Division concluded that those responsible for the memo did not compile it with \u201cmalicious intent or an improper purpose,\u201d but determined that they showed a lack of \u201cprofessional judgment and failed to adhere to FBI standards.\u201d It called for the drafters to \u201cbe admonished,\u201d with the admonishment reflected in their performance ratings.\n<\/p>\n
The Richmond Field Office disagreed with the Inspection Division\u2019s findings, noting that the memo\u2019s drafters received favorable performance reviews ranging from \u201cexemplary\u201d to \u201cconsistent.\u201d The reviews explicitly mentioned the employees\u2019 work on the memo, praising one of them for overseeing \u201can extremely difficult threat during the review period, which became increasingly so following the leak of one of the products related to the threat [the employee] resided over.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The memo stemmed from a probe into an individual referred to as \u201cTarget 1,\u201d who spent several months in prison after slashing the tires of cars in his neighborhood that were \u201cdisplaying political symbols he opposed\u201d and assaulting law enforcement officers who tried to intervene. According to the report, the \u201cviolent and racially-motivated ideology\u201d of \u201cTarget 1,\u201d made clear in his social media posts, caught the FBI\u2019s attention.\n<\/p>\n
While in prison, \u201cTarget 1\u201d wrote a letter to a relative expressing his belief that \u201cgovernment is evil\u201d and that \u201call that needs to be done is for us to truly unite in Christ Jesus and make total war against the Satanic occultists Government.\u201d He expressed specific concern about \u201cJews, Liberals, communists, degenerates, Zionists, progressives, capitalists, globalists, and green-party PETA-type environmentalists.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
After his release from prison, \u201cTarget 1\u201d sought to compile firearms, ammunition and Molotov cocktails, and expressed a desire to carry out a mass shooting at a school for children with special needs. Before he was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison for possession of destructive devices, the FBI learned of his attendance at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel.\n<\/p>\n
As the report explains, Our Lady of Fatima Chapel is affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X, which was established based on \u201copposition to changes in the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council\u201d and has since been declared in schism with the Roman Catholic Church. After discovering the attendance of \u201cTarget 1\u201d at Our Lady of Fatima in 2022, the FBI interviewed the priest there and conducted surveillance on another priest affiliated with \u201cPriest 1.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The Inspection Division\u2019s report concluded that the memo \u201cerroneously equated the ideology of domestic terrorism (DT) subjects who self-identified as \u2018Radical Traditional Catholic\u2019 (\u2018RTC\u2019) with [RMVE] ideology, without sufficient support\u201d and \u201c\u2018erroneously conflated\u2019 Target 1\u2019s interest in religion with violent extremism activities and implied that RMVEs and \u2018RTC\u2019 ideology align without offering supporting evidence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
This article was originally published at The Christian Post. Photo Credit: Noah Wulf \u2013 Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=100040778.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. Department of Justice has called an FBI memo that sparked backlash for labeling \u201cradical-traditionalist Catholic ideology\u201d a national security threat a \u201cgrave failure,\u201d as a new report shows an FBI field office kept working on the document even after it was ordered removed. Let the IFA community know how to pray for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1730,2149,2552,4432,10617,4298,4502],"class_list":["post-31843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-prayer","tag-catholic","tag-doj","tag-exposes","tag-failure","tag-fbis","tag-grave","tag-memo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}