Senate Jan. 6 Report says FBI, DHS Downplayed Warnings Ahead of Attack Transcript

A new report accuses the FBI and Department of Homeland Security of downplaying warning signs ahead of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol.

The investigation was led by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The 105 page report also made comparisons between failures ahead of the Capitol, on, the attack on the Capitol, to those made before September 11th. Homeland Security and justice reporter, Nicole Sganga joins us now. So Nicole, this is not the first congressional report issued in the wake of January 6th. Why did lawmakers put this forward and what are you taking away from it?

Yeah, Lillia, it’s not the first report. Here it is, by the way, in all of it’s 105 page glory. Most of our viewers will remember the House Select Committees hearings on January 6th and that report, but this report makes the point that the Select Committee largely focused on President Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and only briefly touched on the failure to share intelligence ahead of the Capitol attack. We should note that the Senate Democrats mined those published transcripts of interviews conducted by the House Select Committee to help write this report, which accuses the FBI of downplaying the risks and warnings ahead of the January 6th attack.

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Chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security Panel, Senator Peters calling this an attack essentially planned in plain sight on social media. Ahead of January 6th we learned that federal agents for tracking violent threats about the storming of the US Capitol, but failed to share that information with law enforcement. The FBI only issued two intelligence warnings with other messages communicated informally. An excerpt of a Washington DC based FBI officials email from January 5th reads, “This has huge potential to be a hot mess. An intelligence and analysis. The office within the Department of Homeland Security that is tasked with alerting police about threats did not issue a single intelligence report.”

Nicole, the report also highlights the blame game following the attacks with many intelligence agencies faulting each other and ultimately Capitol police. What more can you tell us about this?

Yeah, Meg, the Congressional investigation found a lot of finger pointing, particularly after events unfolded with some intelligence officials squarely blaming US Capitol police. Now, Capitol police are also quoted in this report as casting blame on intelligence officials for failing to properly warn them. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testifying, quote, “Although it appears that there were numerous participants from multiple states planning the attack, the entire intelligence community seems to have missed it.”

Nicole, it seems that the FBI has been receiving the finger pointing from both sides. What’s been the reaction so far, at least to this report?

Yeah.

From them and Homeland Security.

Among the intelligence community Lillia, DHS has noted that this report didn’t include more recent changes to address some of the gaps in intelligence sharing. And a spoke spokesperson told me that since the January 6th attack, DHS has strengthened its own intelligence analysis, information sharing, some of its preparedness, issuing more than 130 intelligence products related specifically to domestic violent extremism. The FBI saying that the Bureau has centralized the flow of information sharing moving forward to ensure that threat notifications reach all of the field offices, not just headquarters. But this report’s findings really diverge from FBI Director, Chris Wray’s June 2021, congressional testimony, which did not acknowledge some of the communication failures we clearly see here.

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Now, both DHS and FBI have yet to issue their internal reviews of what went wrong ahead of January 6th, two and a half years later, and this report now urging them to hurry up and finish that evaluation, then share it publicly. The Senate panel here also pushing for the federal government to designate presidential elections as what’s called a National Special Security Event moving forward. That would put the US Secret Service and other federal law enforcement squarely in charge of security coordination and boost funding, safeguarding what is now a very high profile security event, the presidential election. Now that 2024 election might seem far away, but many NSSEs, as they’re called, are planned well over a year in advance.

All right, Nicole Sganga, such thorough reporting as always. Thank you.

Thank you.