The New York Times
Impaired intelligence response to confused Capitol riot
WASHINGTON – On January 4, the U.S. Capitol Police intelligence division issued a report listing all groups known to be invading the city and planning a demonstration by former President Donald Trump two days later, as Prime Time Patriots , MAGA Marchers and Stop the Steal. The dispatch, a kind of threat matrix, gave little chance that either group would break the law or incite violence, labeling the chances as “unlikely”, “highly unlikely” or “remote”. But the document, which was not released earlier, never addressed the odds of something else happening: that the groups could come together in a combustible mixture, leading to an explosion of violence. But only a day earlier, the same office had presented a slightly more sinister picture. The Capitol Police intelligence division, which is based on information from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, warned of despair over “the last chance to overturn the results of the presidential election” and the potential for significant danger to the police and the public. Subscribe to the New York Times newsletter The Morning. The documents show how the police and federal law enforcement agencies produced inconsistent and sometimes conflicting assessments of the threat of American citizens marching on Capitol Hill while Trump tried to retain power. This lack of clarity, in turn, helps to explain why the government has not added urgency to security preparations for the worst case. But the decision in the face of confused intelligence to take only limited steps to enforce security and prepare backups highlights another issue: whether, as some critics have long said, agencies that have spent two decades and billions of dollars reacting aggressively to intelligence about the potential because Islamic terrorism is similarly concentrated across the full range of threats from the local far right. “Since 9/11, law enforcement has followed a ‘stone on stone’ policy when there is even a trace of evidence that a Muslim supports terrorism and routinely regards social movements as terrorists,” said Faiza Patel, director from the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice of the New York University School of Law. “But he refused to take seriously the threat of violent right-wing actors.” Steven Sund, who resigned as Capitol Police chief after Jan. 6, said in an undisclosed letter sent Monday to Congressional leaders that “the entire intelligence community appears to have missed” the warning signs. In the case of the Capitol riot, Sund made a request several days earlier for National Guard troops, although he was denied at the time by his chiefs, the House and Senate arms sergeants. The request by the Capitol Police at the time was motivated mainly by the need to expand the security perimeter around the building because of the size of the early demonstration and its possible duration – and not by any intelligence warning that there could be an armed attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with Capitol Police decision-making. There was never any discussion that the threat was enough to keep then Vice President Mike Pence away from the Capitol on January 6, current and former officials said. More generally, the FBI has a considerable history of persecuting violent white supremacists, which the bureau still considers the most dangerous threat of domestic terrorism. Last year, agents thwarted a far-right militia plan to kidnap Michigan’s governor. The bureau also decided last year to raise the threat posed by militias and other anti-government extremists, such as anarchists, said several former police officers. But while there has been widespread support for an often cumbersome approach to investigating possible Islamic terrorist conspiracies, efforts to crack down on far-right groups and movements have been more challenging politically. Trump repeatedly portrayed the left-wing anti-fascist movement known as antifa as the real danger to the United States and publicly criticized Christopher Wray, the FBI director, for emphasizing the threat from right-wing groups. In the weeks leading up to January 6, several agencies predicted that white supremacists and members of the armed militia could meet in Washington. But at a Jan. 5 inauguration meeting, no federal agency or law enforcement agency raised any specific threat of violence for the next day, according to people who attended the meeting. Even at 1 pm on January 6, when a pro-Trump crowd began breaking through the external barricades around the Capitol, an FBI domestic terrorist unit agent told a Justice Department official that the FBI still had no information. about any specific threat. More than an hour later, the FBI finally deployed a tactical team that the agency had positioned near the Capitol, one of three that ended up responding that day. When Sund asked the National Guard for help after the barricades broke, the Pentagon initially was reluctant to approve the request, further delaying implementation. The result was to leave Congress remarkably vulnerable to a crowd that poses a far greater threat than intelligence and law enforcement agencies expected. “A perfect retrospective does not change the fact that nothing in our collective experience or intelligence – including information provided by the FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the DC Metropolitan Police (MPD) – has indicated that a well-functioning system coordinated and armed assault on the Capitol may take place on January 6, ”Sund said in his letter. However, the failures came even after thousands of social media postings in the days before the attack, which documented how protesters viewed the Capitol – and the lawmakers who certified the election results – as a specific target. “Every corrupt member of Congress locked in a room and surrounded by real Americans is an opportunity that will never present itself again,” said a January 5 post. Yogananda Pittman, acting chief of the Capitol Police, told Congress last week that his force knew that militias and white supremacists would attend the rallies on January 6 and that some participants would be armed. She confirmed that Sund called for support from the National Guard, but was denied by members of the Capitol Police Council. “We knew that there was great potential for violence and that Congress was the target,” said Pittman. The department strengthened its defenses, she said, “but we haven’t done enough”. The existence of an assessment on January 3 was first reported by The Washington Post. The full document presents a mixed picture of the level of threat the police had predicted for the rallies. The top of the document says “Bottom Line Up Front” and refers to the threat from white supremacists and potentially armed protesters, but does not cite Capitol as a target. His analysis of possible violence appears at the end of the 15-page document. The January 3 and 4 intelligence assessments were provided to the Capitol Police leadership, according to a person familiar with their distribution. One factor in the confusing nature of intelligence assessments was the difficulty of knowing how seriously to take the extensive social media conversation seriously about efforts to block the ratification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. The FBI was aware of violent online publications prior to the demonstration, with the bureau’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, issuing a report that flagged an anonymous topic that warned of an impending Capitol war. The FBI added that it set up 24-hour command posts at the local Washington office and at its headquarters, not far from Capitol Hill. The agency also put tactical teams on hold, which it had not done in the two previous marches of Trump supporters – on November 14 and December 12 – protesting the election results. “Before January 6, the FBI and our federal, state and local partners collected and shared the available intelligence in preparation for the various planned events,” the agency said in a statement. “As indicated earlier, these leads discouraged some from participating in the January 6 protest.” Still, the crowd that invaded the Capitol was full of members of groups that the FBI identified as threats of domestic terrorism, such as militias, white supremacists and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy. After the siege, the FBI arrested some of those same people, including accusing three members of the Oath Keepers of conspiracy when evidence emerged that they planned to attack the Capitol. The FBI also arrested members of the Proud Boys, a far-right nationalist group. Intelligence about terrorist threats – foreign or domestic – can be irritatingly vague, and officials are quick to point out that their job is to analyze the likelihood of possible outcomes based on the information available, not predict the future. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI has been quick to step up intelligence-based operations on conspiracies by al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, sending bulletins to local authorities and dispatching agents to interrogate informants. In 2016, for example, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning about a terrorist threat based on a thin line of intelligence about potential Qaida agents living in the United States, one of whom may have been watching Times Square, ex – counterterrorism officers said. The FBI and intelligence agencies had been tracking the possible conspiracy for years, but they had little information to prove it, the former officials said. It is unclear how much information the FBI or the joint terrorism task force in the Washington area has provided to the Capitol Police. Authorities said the information from the Norfolk field office was posted on what is known as LEEP, or the corporate law enforcement portal. In addition, a Capitol Police officer is assigned to the task force and has extensive access to information about the FBI’s intelligence. In his letter, Sund said the intelligence analysis indicated that the January 6 rallies would be similar to the two pro-Trump demonstrations in Washington in November and December. Some officials used an abbreviation for the rallies – MAGA 1 and MAGA 2 – referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan, which has become a rallying cry for their supporters. Many officials were preparing for possible clashes between Trump supporters and Biden supporters, not the possibility that pro-Trump groups could attack the Capitol building en masse. The lack of a specific alert about the attack has led to accusations among some law enforcement agencies. Kenneth Cuccinelli II, deputy secretary of homeland security during the Trump administration, said in an interview last month that the Capitol Police had access to a channel that disseminated information found on social media platforms like Parler, Telegram, Twitter and thedonald. win. “It was very clear that Capitol was the focus of this,” said Cuccinelli. This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company