During last week’s hearings, the former Capitol Police chief, as well as the former House and Senate arms sergeant, all resigned after the riot, accused law enforcement agencies of proving bad intelligence and blamed the Department of Defense for not responding quickly enough to their requests for help.
But military leaders say there was no delay and that it took a long time to clarify and organize a response to what they say is a vague but urgent request for help from city officials and the Capitol Police.
In talks over the past few weeks, defense officials reiterated that the National Guard is not a first-response unit capable of sending armed troops into a hostile situation with minimal planning. There is also a sense of frustration and annoyance among some former officers that the Capitol Police and others in Washington, DC, expected guards to appear instantly.
Pentagon officials repeatedly offered more national guards before January 6 and were refused, including the day before the riot. Meanwhile, some Defense Department officials wonder why the Secret Service and Park Police did not sound the alarm early in the day of the rebellion, when they witnessed a large crowd gathering and walking towards the Capitol.
McCarthy is not expected to testify at the Senate hearing on Wednesday. Instead, General William Walker, commander of the DC National Guard, and Robert Salesses, a civilian officer who serves as assistant secretary of defense for internal defense and global security, are expected to testify.
Confusion about the chain of command
At a joint hearing last Tuesday, the former Senate arms sergeant, the ex-chamber arms sergeant and Sund said they needed help from the National Guard. But the three, although united in blaming the Pentagon for delaying aid, disagreed when they knew they needed that help and seemed unaware of the process or chain of command to request and activate the National Guard.
Sund said he first signaled the need for more help on January 4, two days before the riot. But former House Sergeant Paul Irving said he did not interpret Sund’s call as a request, and that Sund, Irving and former Senate Arms Sergeant Michael Stenger agreed that intelligence does not support calling for more troops. .
The final decision was to mobilize 340 DC National Guard soldiers, along with a 40-person rapid-response force and a team of hazardous biological chemicals. The guards had a specific task, agreed between the Pentagon, Washington officials and others, to assist in traffic control.
A crucial phone call
Sund said at the hearing last week that he had 125 National Guards ready for Walker, the DC National Guard commander.
“If we needed an answer, a quick answer, [Walker] he could, what he called, reformulate them and take them to the arsenal, “Sund said,” at that point we could get someone there to swear them and try to deliver them to us as soon as possible. “
But Walker had no authority to change the National Guard’s mission, nor could he activate more guards on his own.
Sund was apparently unaware of the DC National Guard activation process, which works through the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army. Since DC is not a state, the process does not go through the mayor’s office or the DC National Guard.
During his testimony last week, Sund said he contacted Walker at the DC Guard at 1:49 PM, only to learn that Walker could not activate the Guard on his own.
“I was very surprised at the amount of time and resistance I received when I made an urgent request for their systems,” said Sund.
It is not a first response unit
In the weeks after the riot, defense officials returned to the Guard’s purpose: it is not a first aid organization designed to go quickly to the streets armed with full shock equipment, but a last resort in an emergency and that requires close coordination and tasks specific to deploy. Transferring the guards from traffic control to security support required the redistribution of tasks, part of a bureaucratic process that took time.
Echoing their DC colleagues, defense officials also pointed to a failure of intelligence before the riot.
DC employees have already started working to improve the flow and sharing of information. Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman, who replaced Sund after his resignation, said at the hearing on Thursday that the Capitol Police now have “routine intelligence calls” with the FBI and the Region’s Threat Intelligence Consortium of the National Capital. These intelligence updates are shared with Congress.
Pittman insisted that the Capitol Police had succeeded in its mission to protect leaders and members of Congress. It was a point reached by Sund as well, insisting that the failure to secure the building at the heart of American democracy was elsewhere.
Ellie Kaufman of CNN contributed to this report.