The FBI faced a dilemma and had to take “extraordinary” actions when it realized in 2017 that the former director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee appeared compromised in his role safeguarding information and had a clandestine relationship with a national security journalist.

Had James Wolfe been an executive branch employee, the FBI would have notified intelligence agencies if a Top Secret clearance holder was compromised so they could protect national security, federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday.

But because of Wolfe’s role and the potential disruption to the congressional oversight process, the FBI determined it first would conduct an additional investigation and monitoring of Wolfe’s activities.

And FBI executive leadership took “the extraordinary mitigating step” of limiting its initial notification to committee Chairman Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., and ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va.

“Had this delicate balance not been achieved,” prosecutors wrote, it could have disrupted information flow from the intelligence community to the committee and caused “an untenable degradation of national security oversight.”