On Tuesday, Feb. 23, four witnesses who provided security on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, including the former Capitol Hill Police Chief, testified before Congress for the first Time about the Capitol Hill riot they experienced. They said it was a pre-planned violent incident and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had received intelligence on Jan. 5, but the police were not notified of the information.
The four witnesses were former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund, acting Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Cantee, former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul D. Irving and former Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael C. Stenger. Sander, Irving and Stenger have all resigned for their inadequate response to the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill.
The four witnesses also said that because of their experience with previous rallies held by Trump supporters, they believed Trump supporters were nonviolent and therefore did not have a high threat assessment of the protests that day and were not prepared to go to the trouble of asking for the deployment of the National Guard. However, they did not expect that a group of protesters would come prepared. The FBI had not seen the memo that someone was “going to start a war on Capitol Hill,” so they were clearly unprepared and caught off guard when the “uprising” occurred.
Sander said that Capitol Hill was hit by a direct lack of accurate and complete intelligence exchange between several federal agencies, not by the lack of preparedness of Capitol Hill police.
Facing peaceful protesters, security levels were not high on Jan. 6
Although there was much discussion of the matter online and media coverage of the matter before Trump supporters prepared to go to Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, all four witnesses said that because Trump protesters’ protests had been peaceful, they did not perceive the Jan. 6 protest as posing a significant threat, and therefore they initially thought they were prepared.
Owen said at the hearing that the memo he received from the federal agency did not contain intelligence that there would be violent clashes on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, but rather a record of Trump supporters peacefully rallying to protest election theft last November.
There was no mention in the intelligence that there would be a planned attack on Capitol Hill,” he said. Nor was there any mention of that in any of the interagency discussions I participated in prior to the attack. We all thought our scenario was adequate to deal with the threat and that we were prepared and clued up.”
Stenger said it was because of the assessment done in advance that they did not request no mobilization of the National Guard on Jan. 6. He said, “We all agreed that the intelligence we received at the time was not sufficient to mobilize the military in support and unanimously decided that we did not need to ask for reinforcements.” And at the time they also thought they had a very solid protection plan in place to protect the MPs.
Jan. 6 riot was planned
All four witnesses said they found out when Capitol Hill was stormed on Jan. 6 that some of the rioters had come prepared.
In his testimony, Sander said, “These people were prepared, they brought equipment for climbing, explosives and chemical sprays.” He believes the mob planted one bomb each in front of the Democratic and Republican national committees to distract the Capitol Hill police force.
Robert Contee (D-N.Y.) also believes the attacks were planned in advance. He said, “The insurgents were signaling to each other and several were communicating with each other by radio. This leads me to believe that the riot was coordinated.”
Sander said, “The fact that these people stormed our western front gate twenty minutes before the end of the lecture on the Oval Lawn, they were planning to launch the attack before we were all ready. “
So when police confronted thousands of protesters on Capitol Hill, then hundreds broke through a cordon pulled by police and stormed the Hill. The frightened congressmen’s scurrying flight was televised live and shocked the entire United States. Security personnel on Capitol Hill were largely unprepared and were caught off guard.
Analysts at the Washington Times believe that the information provided by their testimony – that the protest was planned in advance – contradicts the allegation by Democratic lawmakers that the mob was incited to launch a violent protest by President Trump’s speech.
The FBI had received information about the Jan. 6 incident on Jan. 5, but none of the officers in charge of security that day saw it.
Sander said the FBI’s Norfolk office had issued an alert on Jan. 5 about an impending clash on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 and said a mob would wage “war” on Capitol Hill, but he did not see the report before the incident and was not warned of the violence on Capitol Hill. The report was not seen before the incident, and there was no warning of violence on Capitol Hill.
Conti said he also did not see the memo before the riots, although he knew of its existence from an email.
He said, “If the FBI had gotten reliable information that there was going to be a violent uprising on Capitol Hill, they would have given us a call or something to inform us about it.”
Owen and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael C. Stenger (D-Mich.) also said they had not seen the FBI memo.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary C. Peters (D-Mich.) expressed shock that the FBI had been informed in advance that there would be an uprising on Capitol Hill. How, he asked, could he not have received such important information as well?
National Guard support delayed
Conti and Sander said they had asked the Army to send National Guard troops to support them after the mob stormed Capitol Hill, but the military was reluctant to send troops to Capitol Hill.
Sander said military officials were still concerned that the presence of National Guard troops on Capitol Hill would affect the image of the United States after riots had already occurred on Capitol Hill. As a result, the military initially refused to send troops and asked that he would deploy police forces from elsewhere in the Capitol Hill Police Department to support the Capitol.
Sander also said that he had talked to Owen and Stenger about deploying National Guard troops two days before the riot, but at that time Owen opposed the proposal due to concerns about the image of Capitol Hill.
Owen said that his assessment of Jan. 6 was not enough to deploy the National Guard, and that it was not solely due to image concerns.
On Jan. 6, after the riot, the Pentagon did not allow more National Guard troops to be sent in to disperse the mob until nearly an hour after the riot broke out. The National Guard personnel arrived on Capitol Hill at 5:40 p.m. on the 6th, more than four hours after Sander and his men initially sent their request for additional troops.
Conti said he was surprised and even shocked by the Pentagon’s tardiness in responding.
And on the day the riots broke out, only nearly 300 unarmed National Guardsmen were deployed on Capitol Hill, and they were only providing services such as evacuating traffic.
All four witnesses agreed that their failure to successfully contain the chaos on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 was caused by poor intelligence exchange between the services and a lack of follow-up support from the military.
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