The FBI has not fired anyone involved in drafting the memo that labeled “traditional Catholics” as potential domestic terrorists because their overstep was not “intentional,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told Congress.
He said, however, that some employees of the field office in Richmond, Virginia, where the memo originated, have been “admonished” and had notes placed in their personnel records. He said that could affect their future compensation.
Although he was “aghast” after seeing the memo, he said, it didn’t signal any deep anti-Catholic bias within the bureau’s ranks.
“A number of the individuals involved in writing that product in the Richmond office were themselves Catholic,” Mr. Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Wray also revealed that his bureau has been slammed with cases involving attacks on pro-life centers in the months since the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.
“We’ve seen a huge uptick in violence against pro-life facilities,” he testified.
That seemed to surprise Sen. Laphonza R. Butler, a California Democrat and ardent pro-choice politician who used to run EMILY’s List and who prodded Mr. Wray to opine on threats to abortion clinics.
“Let me move to a different topic,” she said.
Mr. Wray was testifying to senators in an oversight hearing on his bureau. He faced tough questions on matters such as politicization at the bureau, the handling of data collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and whether terrorists are exploiting the southern border.
Republicans said the FBI risks losing the trust of Americans because of its behavior in recent years, including entwining itself in presidential politics with unsubstantiated investigations, encouraging social media censorship of some politics-related posts and repeated abuses of the FBI’s access to FISA data.
The Richmond memo on traditional Catholics has become a focal point for Republicans.
A report this week by the House Judiciary Committee revealed that the FBI interviewed a priest and a choir director as part of its investigative efforts.
SEE ALSO: Wray says claim of multiple field offices involved in Catholic probe is ‘garble’
The report said the FBI used an undercover agent to develop its assessment of traditional Catholics and proposed developing more sources “among the Catholic clergy” to try to spot extremist threats.
Mr. Wray said the memo was disavowed but an internal review found no “intentional” effort to target religious adherents.
He said the interviews of the priest and choir director involved a separate matter altogether stemming from a specific investigation into one person who “was amassing Molotov cocktails and posting about killing people.”
“We don’t investigate people for the exercise of their constitutionally protected religious expression,” he said.
Mr. Wray didn’t directly address the Judiciary Committee’s allegations about attempts to use an undercover operative.
The Judiciary Committee report says the operative sought to use religious organizations for “tripwire and source development.”
FBI employees in the Richmond field office could not define the meaning of radical traditionalist Catholic, but “this single investigation became the basis for an FBI-wide memorandum warning about the dangers of ‘radical’ Catholics,” House lawmakers said in their report.
The report disputed Mr. Wray’s assertions that the memo was the product only of the Richmond office and that the inappropriate targeting of Catholics was limited to that office. According to the Judiciary Committee, two other offices were consulted on the production of the memo.
On Tuesday, Mr. Wray said that was not true. He said Richmond was checking to make sure it was describing activities in those other offices but wasn’t collaborating on the now-discredited memo.
“I think that this notion that other field offices were involved is a garble,” he said. “The only involvement of the two other field offices was the Richmond authors of the product included two sentences or something that they’re about referencing each of these other offices’ cases.”
Mr. Wray fended off severe criticism over the bureau’s use of Section 702 of FISA, the government’s chief tool for collecting communications of America’s adversaries overseas.
He said losing Section 702, which will expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts, would leave his agency blinded to a host of dangers, including potential terrorist attacks inside the U.S., fentanyl smuggling and cyberattacks on U.S. entities.
Some senators seemed inclined to support a renewal. Others said the FBI has exhausted its leeway after years of documented abuses of the program, including searches on members of Congress and political protesters.
“We have absolutely no reason to trust you. Because you haven’t behaved in a manner that’s trustworthy,” said Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican. “You can’t even tell me that people who intentionally knowingly and deliberately violated the civil rights of American citizens, that they were fired or that they had their security clearance stripped.”
Mr. Wray said the abuses are all in the past and he has established rules to rein in FBI employees’ activities.
“Those were non-compliant queries. And again, they all predate the reforms that we’ve put in place,” Mr. Wray said.
Mr. Lee said he wished he could verify those assurances, but Mr. Wray wouldn’t detail the changes.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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