Pope Leo To Spies: Do Not Compromise Journalists Or Politicians

But, but that's what spies do. You don't think J. Edgar Hoover stayed atop the FBI for 48 years (including 11 years at the predecessor BOI)  because he looked cute in a dress do you?* (Or not?)**

Our introduction to November 2024's "60 Years Ago, Congress Warned Us About the Surveillance State. What Happened?"

It's time for another Church Committee. 

And probably the break-up of the CIA and FBI. The agencies have become little more than extortion rackets, gathering their bits and bytes of information not for the greater good of the country but to exert pressure and control on the people who pay their salaries and on the people's elected representatives.

Extortion, blackmail and coercion are what they do.They knew all about the Biden family corruption and used that information, not to warn the country but to feather their own nests and expand their power base. And that's just one example among dozens. It's a nasty business. As Senate [then]-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Washington insider since 1980, said in January 2017:

“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

Or more colorfully, John le Carré description:

“What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists, and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs?”

— Alec Leamas, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, 1963

They lie for a living. They're professional liars, the very nature of their business is lies and trafficking in lies.
[note: le Carré worked for both MI5 and MI6, he knew these people]

From The Times, December 12:

The Quiet American and his Vatican spies 
Pope Leo invites Italian intelligence agents to an audience for protecting the country and pays tribute to those who ‘lost their lives on delicate missions’ 

Pope Leo switched his attention from helping the world’s poor and downtrodden to giving advice to secret agents — a profession not often known for its Christian ethics.

 

In an unusual audience at the Vatican on Friday, the American pope welcomed Italy’s top secret agents and spy chiefs, bringing together the worlds of evangelism and espionage.

 

“You have the grave responsibility of constantly monitoring the dangers that can affect the life of a nation,” Leo said before recalling the anonymous spies who had “lost their lives on delicate missions”.

 

Leo, 70, thanked the large group which included the head of Aisi, Italy’s domestic spy service — the equivalent of Britain’s MI5 — as well as the chief of the foreign intelligence service Aise, Italy’s version of MI6.

 

Making a discreet entrance to the Vatican alongside them was the head of the agency overseeing Aisi and Aise as well as “all the top managers of the intelligence community and a broad representative group of employees”, the Italian government said in a statement.

  

Also showing up to be greeted by the pope were Italian MPs who sit on parliament’s intelligence committee.

 

Leading the cloak and dagger contingent was Alfredo Mantovano, the government cabinet undersecretary with oversight on Italy’s intelligence world.

 

Leo urged the spies not to violate human rights as they protect the nation and warned them that secret, compromising information should never be used to “intimidate, manipulate, blackmail or discredit” politicians or journalists.

 

He said the Catholic Church had been the victim of this kind of treatment by intelligence agencies in the world, but thanked Italian spy bosses for having the Vatican’s back.

 

Gianluca Di Feo, deputy editor of the Italian daily La Repubblica, said one example of that support was in Venezuela.

 

“When Venezuela’s intelligence agency was trying to discredit bishops around 2005, Italian spies stepped in to put a stop to the operation,” he said....

....MUCH MORE

The article goes on to look at some of the Vatican's intelligence, and later, counterintelligence, history. 

The Pope is from Chicago. I think he was warning the Italian spooks: "Nice little intelligence operation you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it." 

Previously in our Papal paparazzi postings:

"Media That Focus on Scandals and Spread Fake News to Smear Politicians Risk Becoming Like People Who Have a Morbid Fascination with Excrement"-- Pope Francis

And J. Edgar?

*Vanity Fair, March 1993:

 

**History News Network, July 2002

Did J. Edgar Hoover Really Wear Dresses?