Report: Intelligence agencies ignored vast amount of information warning of attack on Capitol

2023-06-28 22:25:06, Kosova & Bota CNA

Report: Intelligence agencies ignored vast amount of information warning of

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as the US Department of Homeland Security, ignored or disregarded "a large amount of intelligence information" before the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is stated in a report by to the Senate Committee on National Security and Governmental Affairs, which was released on Tuesday. The report speaks of a failure of intelligence agencies before the attack.

The report details how agencies failed to acknowledge and warn of the potential for violence, while some of then-President Donald Trump's supporters openly planned the attack, posting messages on online forums.

The report states that among the large amount of intelligence that was overlooked was a December 2020 tip to the FBI that members of the far-right group 'Proud Boys' were planning to be in Washington on of certifying Joe Biden's victory, and that "their plan" was to "kill people" as they put it, literally.

The commission said the agencies were also aware of many social media posts talking about violence. Some called on Mr Trump's supporters to "go armed" (to Washington), attack the Capitol, kill lawmakers and "burn it (the Capitol) down".

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, the committee's chairman, said the attack was "largely a failure to see the threat to the Capitol as something credible," echoing the 9/11 commission's findings on the failure of intelligence agencies, before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The report, approved by a majority of committee members, said the intelligence community is not fully geared to focus on the threats posed by domestic terrorism. Intelligence leaders failed to sound the alarm "in part because they failed to anticipate that protesters would flood inside the Capitol building."

However, Senator Peters said, the reasons for not considering what he called a large amount of intelligence information is not something that can be easily explained.

At a time when other reports have also reflected the failures of the intelligence community regarding what happened on January 6, among them a 2021 bipartisan Senate report, a report last year by the so-called January 6 commission, House of Representatives, or several internal assessments conducted by the Capitol Police and other government agencies, the latest report is the first for Congress to focus solely on the actions of the FBI and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. National.

Mr Peters said the commission interviewed officials from both agencies and found they were constantly "pointing the finger at each other".

" Everyone must be held accountable because everyone failed ," said Senator Peters.

Using emails and interviews collected not only by the Senate committee but also by the House committee that investigated the events of January 6, the report details the intelligence agencies had in the weeks leading up to the attack.

The report states that there was not a failure to secure evidence, but that the agencies "failed to fully and accurately assess the seriousness of the threat identified, thanks to intelligence information, and to formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners". VOA