WASHINGTON – Pentagon officials imposed “unusual” restrictions on the DC National Guard before the Capitol rebellion, its commander told senators on Wednesday, saying military leaders’ fears of a repeat of aggressive tactics used during racial justice protests last year they delayed decision-making and wasted time as violence by a pro-Trump crowd escalated.
Military and federal security officials detailed in a joint Senate committee hearing the additional security breaches that led to the failure to contain the January 6 crowd attack. Major General William J. Walker, commander of the DC National Guard, said he did not receive approval to mobilize troops until more than three hours after the request.
The delay he described was longer than previously known and surfaced at the last hearing of lawmakers investigating the attack.
Days before the riot, the Pentagon had removed General Walker’s authority to quickly deploy his troops, he testified. He said he was unable to move troops, even from one transit point to another, without permission from Ryan D. McCarthy, the secretary of the Army. As soon as General Walker obtained approval for deployment, the Guard arrived at the Capitol a few minutes later, at 17:20, and helped to re-establish the security perimeter on the east side of the building.
General Walker said he could have sent 150 soldiers to the compound hours earlier. The violence that unfolded over almost five hours caused injuries to about 140 police officers and left five people dead.
“That number may have made a difference,” said General Walker of the possibility of sending his troops earlier.
“Seconds matter,” he added. “Minutes matter.”
In response to questions from senators, General Walker said he believed there was a double standard in military decision-making, pointing out differences between the quick and aggressive tactics he was allowed to use during the protests last spring and the summer of homicides of men blacks by the police and the slower response to the violence of Trump supporters. He said military officials had expressed concern about the prospect of sending troops to the Capitol to subdue the Americans.
“Senior Army leaders did not think it looked good” and did not think “it would be a good look,” said General Walker. “The word I always heard was the ‘optics’ of that.”
When asked whether a similar debate took place last year, General Walker said no.
“It was never discussed in the week of June,” he said. “This was never discussed on the 4th of July, when we were supporting the city. This was never discussed on August 28, when we supported the city. “
“Did you think this was unusual?” asked Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the Democratic chief of the Homeland Security Committee.
“I did,” said General Walker.
The restrictions were put in place because of the Guard’s widely criticized crackdown on mostly peaceful demonstrators in Washington in June, said Robert G. Salesses, a senior Defense Department official who testified at the hearing.
He said McCarthy and other military officials, including Christopher C. Miller, the interim defense secretary, delayed the decision to send forces on Jan. 6 because they wanted to know more about what the troops were doing. They assumed the DC National Guard’s deployment authority to avoid a repeat of last year, Salesses said.
“Secretary Miller wanted to make decisions about how the National Guard would be deployed that day,” testified Salesses.
General Walker recounted how the day went on as Trump supporters protested the congressional certification of election results turning into violence. He said he received a “frantic call” at 1:49 pm from Steven A. Sund, then head of the Capitol Police, about half an hour before protesters broke into the Capitol.
“Chief Sund, his voice choked with emotion, indicated that there was a terrible emergency at the Capitol,” testified General Walker. “He asked for the immediate help of as many national guards available as I could muster.”
He said he immediately alerted Army leaders and even put troops on buses “ready to move to the Capitol.” But Miller did not approve the request until 3:04 pm, after military officials expressed concerns about the optics. General Walker received no word that Pentagon officials had authorized his request until 5:08 pm – three hours and 19 minutes after receiving Chief Sund’s call.
“I keep thinking about the hours that have passed, the injured people and the officers whose lives have changed forever,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee. “We need to find out why, that same day, the Department of Defense took so long to deploy the Guard.”
After hearing General Walker’s testimony, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the committee’s top Republican, told reporters he wanted to hear from senior military officials.
“We will certainly have questions for Secretary McCarthy and acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller,” said Blunt. “There will definitely be an opportunity to ask questions about your view of your perspective on why this decision-making process went so terribly wrong.”
The testimony came at the last bipartisan investigative hearing of the Homeland Security and Rules Committees. At a hearing last week, Chief Robert J. Contee III of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department testified that he was “surprised” by the slow deployment of the National Guard on January 6, noting that even with the escalation of violence, the Army expressed reluctance to send troops.
At that hearing, the first joint oversight meeting of the two committees, three former Capitol security officials shifted responsibility for failures that contributed to the riot, blaming the other agencies, each other and, at one point, even a subordinate for the breakdowns that allowed hundreds of Trump supporters to invade the Capitol.
Officers testified that the FBI and the intelligence community did not provide adequate warnings that the protesters planned to take over the Capitol and that the Pentagon was too slow to authorize Guard troops to assist overburdened police forces after the attack began.
In addition to General Walker and Salesses, the authorities who testified on Wednesday were Melissa Smislova, a senior official in the Intelligence and Analysis Department of the Department of Homeland Security, and Jill Sanborn, the FBI’s assistant director in her counterterrorism division.
After the attack, police officers have focused on protesters who are members of militias and extremist groups as part of their investigation. Ms. Sanborn testified that few of the 257 protesters arrested so far were being investigated by the FBI before the attack.
“I can only remember one of the individuals who was under investigation before,” she said.
The testimony came when the Capitol Police said it was increasing security this week at the Capitol, warning of “potential threats to members of Congress or the Capitol complex”.
Witnessing at a House hearing, Yogananda D. Pittman, the capitol police chief, told lawmakers that his agency had received “worrying” information about potential threats against the Capitol on Thursday. But she said the information was confidential to law enforcement and would only share it in a closed meeting. She assured the committee members that the police would be ready.
Chief Pittman noted that threats against lawmakers “skyrocketed”, increasing by almost 94 percent in the first two months of this year in 2020.
After January 6, the Capitol Police leadership is asking for almost $ 620 million in total expenditures, an increase of almost 21 percent from current levels to pay for new equipment, training and another 212 officers for tasks like a permanent reserve force. Chief Pittman also told lawmakers that she would be working with the Capitol architect to design more “physical hardening” of the building after it was invaded by the rioters.
Carl Hulse contributed reports.