US intelligence ignored warnings of violence ahead of Capitol attack
A new report detailing intelligence failures leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol said government agencies responsible for anticipating trouble downplayed the threat even as the building was being stormed, in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
The 105-page report, issued by Democrats on the Senate homeland security committee, said intelligence personnel at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies ignored warnings of violence in December 2020.
Such officials then blamed each other for failing to prevent the attack that ensued, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.
The US government has won hundreds of convictions against the rioters, with some getting long prison sentences.
“These agencies failed to sound the alarm and share critical intelligence information that could have helped law enforcement better prepare for the events” of January 6, said Gary Peters of Michigan, the Democratic chair of the committee issuing the report, titled Planned in Plain Sight, A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of 6 January 2021.
Republicans on the committee did not respond to requests for comment.
Last summer, a House of Representatives select committee held hearings, following a long investigation, that concluded the then president, Donald Trump, repeatedly ignored top aides’ findings that there was no significant fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost.
Trump continues to falsely insist he won that contest and was the victim of election fraud. Hours before the riot, Trump delivered a fiery speech to supporters, urging them to march to the Capitol as the House and Senate met to certify Biden’s win.
Trump is now the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination. He and some Republican rivals have pledged to grant or consider granting pardons to rioters.
The Senate committee found that in December 2020, the FBI received information that the far-right Proud Boys extremist group planned to be in Washington “to literally kill people”.
On 3-4 January 2021, the report says, intelligence agencies knew of multiple postings on social media calling for armed violence and storming the Capitol. Yet “as late as 8.57am on January 6 a senior watch officer at the DHS National Operations Center wrote “there is no indication of civil disobedience”.
By 2.58pm, the report noted, with a riot declared and the Capitol in formal lockdown, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis noted online “chatter” calling for more violence but said “at this time no credible information to pass on has been established”.
In summer 2020, demonstrations were staged in several US cities after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer. The Senate report notes that the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis was criticized then for “over-col
lecting intelligence on American citizens”, resulting “in a ‘pendulum swing’ after which analysts were hesitant to report open-source intelligence they were seeing in the lead-up to January 6”.
The report concluded there was a “clear need … for a re-evaluation of the federal government’s domestic intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination processes”.