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US Intel Officials Admit They Were in the Dark About Looming Capitol Breach

Masood Farivar

   The top intelligence officials of the FBI and Department of Homeland
   Security made a troubling acknowledgement in congressional testimony
   Wednesday: Neither agency had garnered intelligence indicating that
   supporters of former President Donald Trump would storm the U.S.
   Capitol on January 6 in an effort to overturn the November election
   results.

   The comments by Jill Sanborn, an FBI assistant director for
   intelligence, and Melissa Smislova, an acting undersecretary of DHS,
   represented the first public acknowledgement by top intelligence
   officials that neither agency saw the devastating attack coming.

   Testifying during a Senate hearing about the attack, Sanborn said that
   while the FBI had intelligence indicating that Trump supporters were
   traveling to Washington on January 6 and could be armed, "none of us
   had any intelligence suggesting that individuals were going to storm
   and breach the Capitol."
   Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI's Counterterrorism
   Division, speaks during a Senate joint committee hearing, March 3,
   2021, examining the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

   "That was the intelligence that we lacked," Sanborn told members of the
   Senate Rules and Homeland Security committees.

   The testimony came amid a growing controversy over whether the FBI and
   other agencies missed warning signs in the lead-up to the Capitol
   attack and then failed to adequately warn officials responsible for
   securing the government complex.

   January 5 FBI report

   At the center of the brouhaha is a January 5 FBI intelligence report
   that cited online chatter by Washington-bound Trump supporters about
   how "Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in."

   The report was quickly shared with law enforcement agencies but did not
   reach the top officials at the U.S. Capitol Police or Washington's
   Metropolitan Police Department.

   While the report turned out eerily prescient, neither the FBI nor the
   DHS had any advance information pointing to an impending attack on the
   Capitol, officials said.

   As a result, neither agency issued a public bulletin on the eve of
   January 6.
   Department of Homeland Security acting intelligence chief Melissa
   Smislova speaks during a Senate joint committee hearing March 3, 2021,
   examining the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

   "We may have been better off if we considered sending out some kind of
   terrorism bulletin, but we did not do that before January 6th,"
   Smislova said.

   While lawmakers investigate the circumstances of the January 6 attack,
   Capitol Police said they were aware of intelligence claims of a
   possible militia group plot to attack the Capitol again on Thursday.
   That is the date when some right-wing conspiracy groups believed Trump
   would be sworn in as president.

   Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and
   a member of the Rules Committee, said he spoke with senior FBI
   officials on several occasions on January 5 and January 6 and was
   reassured that "we've got this pretty well under control."

   "That was not the case, and we now have the Capitol of the United
   States desecrated," Warner said.

   Wray's defense

   FBI Director Christopher Wray, during a Senate Judiciary Committee
   hearing on Tuesday, defended his agency's handling of the January 5
   intelligence report and its warnings about the growing threat of
   domestic terrorism.

   Last year, the FBI put out a number of intelligence reports warning
   about the threat of domestic terrorism around the November presidential
   election and the January inauguration, he said.

   For its part, the DHS produced 15 unclassified reports in 2020 that
   highlighted the potential for "domestic violent extremists to mobilize
   quickly and attack large gatherings and government buildings," Smislova
   said.

   In making threat assessments, a major challenge for the FBI and DHS is
   separating rhetoric that is "aspirational" from "intentional," the
   officials said, promising to do better in the future.

   Security and intelligence analysts say the Capitol breach was the
   result not of an intelligence breakdown but of a collective failure
   involving multiple entities in law enforcement and government. Still,
   some lawmakers are pinning it largely on intelligence agencies.
   FILE - Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington,
   June 25, 2020.

   Saying the January 6 attack was caused by a "massive and historic
   intelligence failure," Democratic Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the
   Homeland Security Committee, asked both Sanborn and Smislova if they
   agreed that the "intelligence community failed" to detect the plot to
   attack the Capitol.

   "I wouldn't necessarily characterize it that way, sir," Sanborn said.