The FBI and Department of Homeland Security failed to believe intelligence that painted a clear warning that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was being planned, a new Senate committee report released Tuesday reveals.
“Planned in Plain Sight,” a report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, highlights red flags missed in the days and hours before the 2021 insurrection.
It says the FBI and DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis “failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence, and formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners with sufficient urgency and alarm to enable those partners to prepare for the violence that ultimately occurred on January 6th,” the Washington Post reported.
The warnings came from sources including nongovernmental organizations tracking online extremism, from members of the public and from the FBI’s own field offices.
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One of the warnings, revealed for the first time in the report, came from the FBI’s office in New Orleans and describes a Quick Reaction Force that was being formed in Northern Virginia, with calls for people to “bring mace, flashlights, body armor and head protection,” the Post reported.
The report went on, “They planned to establish an armed presence outside the city to respond to ‘calls for help.’”
The report criticizes the lack of urgency from the FBI. “Federal officials simply didn’t believe what they were being told,” the Post reported.
The report states they “were biased toward discounting the possibility of such an unprecedented event.”
“The failure was largely a failure of imagination, to see threats that the Capitol could be breached as credible, despite the fact that the threats were shared publicly and in such high volume and in a variety of ways,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the chairman of the committee.
“These agencies repeatedly downplayed the threat and failed to sound the alarm.”
