No warning, Capitol officials say
Ex-security leaders blame bad intelligence for their disastrous response to the attack.
WASHINGTON — Former security officials told Congress on Tuesday that faulty intelligence was to blame for their failure to properly prepare for last month’s bloody insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, testifying in dramatic detail about their shock at confronting a violent insurrection and not the manageable protest they had been expecting.
“The events I witnessed on Jan. 6 [were] the worst attack on law enforcement and our democracy that I’ve seen in my entire career,” former
Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned in the days after the attack, testified before a joint hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Rules committees.
“None of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred,” he said. “We properly planned for mass demonstrations, with possible violence. What we got was a military-style coordinated assault on my officers and a violent takeover of the Capitol.”
Two former Capitol security officials and acting Washington Police Chief Robert Contee III joined Sund at the hearing, the first to examine the Jan. 6 insurrection by a marauding mob of President Trump’s supporters that left five people, including a police officer, dead. The hearing came just
10 days after the Senate voted to acquit the former president at his second impeachment trial of allegations that he had incited his supporters to storm Congress to stop it from counting electoral college votes that would cement his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
All four security officials testified that federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies had not provided them with specific warnings that the Capitol might come under attack. They had planned, they testified, to confront a protest similar to earlier mostly peaceful demonstrations by die-hard Trump supporters upset about the results of the November election.
Lawmakers have expressed dismay that Capitol police and federal agencies were caught so off guard, especially because media reports had indicated Trump supporters might try to prevent Congress from counting the electoral votes.
Senators said they would continue holding hearings, including one next week featuring testimony from federal law enforcement and military officials.
“We are here today to better understand what was known in advance, what steps were taken to secure the Capitol and what occurred that day, because we want to ensure nothing like this happens again,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DMinn.), chair of the Rules Committee.
In addition to several congressional inquiries, the Justice Department has launched a wide-ranging investigation into the assault and has charged more than 250 people on allegations of storming the building, destroying property and threatening the lives of those there, including lawmakers, staff members, the public, members of the media and police. The Justice Department has said that over 130 law enforcement officers were injured in the insurrection.
While Sund and Contee had previously spoken publicly about the attack, Tuesday was the first time the public has heard from two key Capitol security officials: former Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger and former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, who both served as Sund’s bosses and resigned in the aftermath of the attack. They testified that they’d had no indication there would be an insurrection.
“The intelligence was not that there would be a coordinated assault on the Capitol, nor was that contemplated in any of the interagency discussions that I attended in the days before the attack,” Irving testified.
Sen. Gary Peters (DMich.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, quizzed Sund about intelligence reports generated by the FBI and Sund’s own department that indicated potential danger. Sund testified that his agency received a report on Jan. 5 from the FBI’s Norfolk, Va., office warning that Trump supporters were calling for violence. But the Capitol police officer who received the warning didn’t share it with him or commanders. Sund said he saw it for the first time on Monday.
Even if they had read it before Jan. 6, Sund said, it’s unclear whether the warning would have changed his agency’s security posture. “It would have been helpful to have been aware of,” he said, though “it is strictly raw data — it’s raw intelligence.”
Contee testified that the FBI report came in a run-ofthe-mill email and was not flagged as a high-priority alert. “I would think that something of that nature would rise to the level of more than just an email,” he said.
Lawmakers spent considerable time questioning the security officials about delays in getting help from the National Guard. Contee testified that he was on a phone call with Army leaders during the insurrection and was frustrated that they didn’t sense the urgency.
He said he had listened as Sund pleaded with the Army brass to send troops, and concluded that military officials seemed to be going through a “check the boxes” exercise while they expressed concerns it might look bad to have troops on the Capitol grounds.
“I was just stunned because I have officers out there fighting for their lives,” Contee said.
Three hours after the Capitol police chief pleaded with Army officials to send the National Guard, the first Guard troops mustered on Capitol grounds, Sund testified.
The hearing started dramatically when Capitol Police Capt. Carneysha C. Mendoza testified that she’d engaged in four hours of hand-to-hand fighting with rioters in the Capitol. She said that insurrectionists nearly broke her arm, and that her face was still healing from chemical burns from tear gas deployed by the mob.
Mendoza said she spent the day after the attack at a hospital, comforting the family of Officer Brian Sicknick as he died of injuries sustained in the assault.
“We could have had 10 times the amount of people working with us, and I still believe the battle would have been just as devastating,” she testified. “As an American and Army veteran, it’s sad to see us attacked by our fellow citizens. I’m sad to see the unnecessary loss of life.”