Capitol defenders blame bad intelligence for breach
WASHINGTON— Faulty intelligence was to blame for the outmanned Capitol defenders' failure to anticipate the violent mob that invaded the i conic building and halted certification of the presidential election on Jan. 6, the officials who were in charge of security declared Tuesday in their first public testimony on the insurrection.
The officials, including the former chief of the Capitol Police, pointed their finger sat various federal agencies—and each other — for their failure to defend the building as supporters of thenPresident Donald Trump overwhelmed security barriers, broke windows and doors and sent lawmakers fleeing from the House and Senate chambers. Five people died as a result of the riot, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman who was shot as she tried to enter the House chamber with lawmakers still inside.
Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned under pressure after the attack, and the other officials said they had expected the protests to be similar to two proTrump events in late 2020 that were far less violent.
He said he hadn't seen an FBI field office report that warned of potential violence citing online posts about a “war.” And he and a House official disputed each other' s versions of decisions that January day and in advance about calling for the National Guard.
Sund described a scene as the mob arrived at the perimeter that was “like nothing” he had seen in his 30 years of policing and argued that the insurrection was not the result of poor planning by Capitol Police but of failures across the board.
The hearing was the first of many examinations of what happened that day, coming almost seven weeks after the attack and over a week after the Senate voted to ac quit Trump of in citing the insurrection by telling his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat. Fencing and National Guard troops still surround the Capitol in a wide perimeter, cutting off streets and sidewalks that are normally full of cars, pedestrian sand tourists.
Sun dins is ted the invasion was no this or his agency's fault.
“No single civilian law enforcement agency – and certainly not the USCP – is trained and equipped to repel, without significant military or other law enforcement assistance, an insurrection of thousands of armed, violent, and coordinated individuals focused on breaching a building at all costs,” he testified.
The joint hearing, part of an investigation by two Senate committees, was the first time the officials testified publicly about the events of Jan. 6. In addition to Sund, former Senate Sergeantat-Arms Michael Stenger, former House Sergeantat-Arms Paul Irving and Robert Contee, the acting chief of police for the Metropolitan Police Department, testified.
Like Sund, Irving and Stenger resigned under pressure after the deadly attack. They were Sund's supervisors and in charge of security for the House and Senate.
“We must have the facts, and the answers are in this room,” Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy K lo bu char said at the beginning of the hearing. The Rules panel is conducting the joint probe with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Much remains unknown about what happened before and during the assault. How much did l aw enforcement agencies know about plans for violence that day, many of which were public? How did the agencies share that information with each other? And how could the Capitol Police have been so ill-prepared for a violent insurrection that was organized online?
Sund told the lawmakers that he learned only after the attack that his officers had received a report from the FBI's field office in Norfolk, Virginia, that forecast, in detail, the chances that extremists could bring “war” to Washington the following day. The head of the FBI's office in Washington has said that once he received the Jan .5 warning, the information was quickly shared with other law enforcement agencies through a joint terrorism task force.
Sund said Tuesday that an officer on the task force had received that memo and forwarded it to a sergeant working on intelligence for the Capitol Police but that the information was not sent on to other supervisors.
“How could you not get that vital intelligence?” asked Senate Homeland Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mi ch ., who said the failure of the report to reach the chief was clearly a major problem.
“That information would have been helpful,” Sund acknowledged.
Even without the intelligence, there were clear signs that violence was a possibility on J an. 6. Far-right social media users openly hinted for weeks that chaos would erupt at the U.S. Capitol while Congress convened to certify the election results.
Sunds aid he did see an intelligence report created within his own department warning that Congress could be targeted on Jan .6. But he said that report assessed the probability of civil disobedience or arrests, based on the information they had, as“remote” to“imp robable” for the groups expected to demonstrate.