I recently emailed my supporters about Leonard Leo, the GOP dark money mover and Federalist Society mastermind who’s been pivotal to Opus Dei’s mission.
In case you missed it, Opus Dei is an extreme sect of Catholicism that has rooted itself in D.C. and the Republican Party in the past decade. The group’s mission is to position their members as heads of countries and establish new governments where church and state are one.
That email was inspired by recent reporting from Gareth Gore, author of the new book Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church. But I was already planning on speaking out about Opus Dei – and the FBI agent who connected the group to Russia.
In 1979, while working in the FBI’s New York City counterintelligence unit, Robert Hanssen began spying for Moscow. He wouldn’t be caught for over 20 years.
Moscow paid Hanssen $1.4 million in cash, bank funds and diamonds for THOUSANDS of documents containing "highly-classified national security information,” the FBI revealed after his arrest in 2001. The documents exposed U.S. secrets from counterintelligence efforts to nuclear war strategies.
When his wife Bonnie discovered the operation in 1980, she forced him to confess to their priest – a priest who, like Robert and Bonnie, was a member of Opus Dei.
The priest said he wouldn’t report Hanssen to the authorities if he donated the money to charity (charity, or the church?). Based on this quote from his friend James, it’s safe to assume Robert Hanssen was even more loyal to Opus Dei than to the Russians paying his bills.
"Hanssen squeezed religion into most conversations and hung a silver crucifix above his desk. Occasionally he would leave work to take part in anti-abortion rallies. He was forever trying to get me to go with him to meetings of Opus Dei.”
Hanssen’s work for Moscow resulted in the captures and killings of multiple U.S. agents.
After his arrest, friends told The Washington Post in 2002 that Robert Hanssen believed “fulfilling his commitment to Opus Dei, and making a weekly confession, put him on the path to salvation” despite his spying.
How many of the secrets shared with Moscow were also shared with Opus Dei? We may never know. But we do know more about the group’s connections to our government that should be investigated by Congress:
In the early 1990s, Bonnie Hanssen’s brother worked under William Barr and Pat Cipollone in George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department. He tried to report Robert, but instead of launching an investigation, the DOJ promoted Robert twice.
FBI Director Louis Freeh was known to attend Robert Hanssen’s Opus Dei church. After leaving the FBI, Freeh went on to represent a company used by Russia for money laundering. He even worked alongside one of the Russian attorneys at the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
After Leonard Leo joined the board of the Catholic Information Center, the Opus Dei hub in DC, Bill Barr and Pat Cipollone joined, too.
With Bill Barr as Trump’s attorney general and Pat Cipollone as White House counsel, Opus Dei likely had more influence in government during Trump’s administration than ever before. And former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is reportedly a confirmed member of Opus Dei.
Protecting our democracy depends on knowing and exposing how we got here.
Our problems didn’t start with Trump, and they won’t end with him.
Jerrad Christian
Democrat for OH-12
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