{"id":11720,"date":"2021-02-24T05:33:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T13:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=11720"},"modified":"2021-02-24T05:33:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T13:33:46","slug":"fbi-alert-about-possible-war-against-congress-reached-d-c-and-capitol-police-on-eve-of-attack-deepening-security-questions-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=11720","title":{"rendered":"“FBI alert about possible \u2018war\u2019 against Congress reached D.C. and Capitol Police on eve of attack, deepening security questions”, The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beth Reinhard<\/span> and\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Matt Zapotosky, Feb. 23, 2021<\/p>\n

Around 7 p.m. on Jan. 5, less than 24 hours before an angry mob overran the U.S. Capitol, an FBI bulletin warning that extremists were calling for violent attacks on Congress landed in an email inbox used by the D.C. police department. That same evening, a member of the Capitol Police received the same memo.<\/p>\n

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Supporters of President Donald Trump surround the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (Evelyn Hockstein\/For The Washington Post)<\/p>\n

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But the alert was not flagged for top officials at either agency, according to congressional testimony Tuesday \u2014 deepening questions about the breakdowns that contributed to massive security failures on Jan. 6.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Both acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III and former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund said the intelligence community at large failed to detect key information about the intentions of the attackers and adequately communicate what was known in the run-up to the Capitol riot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection at the Capitol would warrant a phone call or something,\u201d Contee told lawmakers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sund cast the Capitol Police as a \u201cconsumer\u201d of intelligence from 18 federal agencies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf they were finding efforts that this was a coordinated attack, that had been coordinated among numerous states for some time in advance of this, that\u2019s the information that would have been extremely helpful to us,\u201d Sund said, adding, \u201cThat type of information could have given us sufficient, advance warning to prep, plan for an attack such as what we saw.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Tuesday\u2019s joint hearing by two Senate committees also spotlighted the stark warnings that were issued before Congress met in a joint session to formalize President Biden\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One came in the form of the Capitol Police\u2019s own intelligence report three days before the attack, as The Washington Post first reported<\/a>. In a 12-page memo, the agency\u2019s intelligence unit warned that \u201cCongress itself\u201d could be targeted by angry Trump supporters who saw the electoral college vote certification as \u201cthe last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Capitol Police intelligence report warned three days before attack that \u2018Congress itself\u2019 could be targeted<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Feb. 23, senators probed security officials on their experiences during the Jan. 6 insurrection of the Capitol. (Blair Guild\/The Washington Post)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Two days later, the FBI alert issued by its field office in Norfolk described <\/a>how \u201can online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating \u2018Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

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BLM is a common reference to the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice. Pantifa is a derogatory term for antifa, a far-left anti-fascist movement whose adherents sometimes engage in violent clashes with right-wing extremists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cGet violent,\u201d the online thread continued, according to the bulletin. \u201cStop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Separately, dozens of people on a terrorist watch list were in D.C. on the day of the riot, including many suspected white supremacists, as The Post hasreported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere were clearly intelligence issues with information that was out there that didn\u2019t get to the right people, actions that weren\u2019t taken,\u201d Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chairwoman of the Rules and Administration Committee, told reporters during a break in the hearing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The FBI said in a statement Tuesday that the Norfolk report was shared with the Washington Field Office\u2019s joint terrorism task force within 40 minutes and discussed inside a command post there. It was also posted on the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, which is available to law enforcement officers nationwide, the bureau said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The FBI said the information was raw and could not immediately be traced to a specific person. \u201cThe information obtained by our Norfolk office was on a message board thread and could not be attributed to a specific individual,\u201d the bureau said. \u201cThe language was aspirational in nature with no specific and credible details.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The deluge of incendiary threats online, law enforcement officials have said, has made it difficult to distinguish aspirational boasts from actual public safety concerns.<\/p>\n

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But Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the mayhem that engulfed the Capitol on Jan. 6 made clear that law enforcement cannot become inured to threatening chatter on social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe federal government must start taking these online threats seriously to ensure they don\u2019t cross into the real-world violence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Timeline: How law enforcement and government officials failed to head off the U.S. Capitol attack<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The internal Capitol Police memo concluded that Jan. 6 was shaping up to be a perfect storm of dangerous elements \u2014 the large size of the expected crowds, the likelihood of demonstrators bringing deadly weapons and the proximity of the protests to Capitol grounds. Promoting all of this chaos and violence: \u201cPresident Trump himself,\u201d the memo noted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSupporters of the current president see January 6, 2021, as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election,\u201d said the memo, portions of which were obtained by The Post.<\/a> \u201cThis sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent. Unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe intelligence was not that there would be a coordinated assault on the Capitol, nor was that contemplated in any of the inter-agency discussions that I attended in the days before the attack,\u201d former House sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving said in a written statement<\/a> to the committees, adding that the Capitol Police assessed the potential for civil disobedience and arrests as \u201cremote\u201d or \u201cimprobable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The FBI report pointed to organized plans that were underway, including individuals sharing a map of the Capitol complex\u2019s tunnels and designating places in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and South Carolina where extremists could gather before heading to Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAs of 5 January 2021, FBI Norfolk received information indicating calls for violence in response to \u2018unlawful lockdowns\u2019 to begin on 6 January 2021 in Washington, D.C.,\u201d the document said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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FBI report warned of \u2018war\u2019 at Capitol, contradicting claims there was no indication of looming violence<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Jan. 5 warning was shared with the field office in D.C., and within an hour, officials in a command post there were briefed, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D\u2019Antuono has said. He also has said the document was shared through a joint terrorism task force that includes representatives from the Capitol Police, D.C. police and other law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

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During Tuesday\u2019s hearing, Contee said the FBI bulletin went to an email account that \u201cis not something that is a moderated list, 24 hours a day that would generate an immediate response.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI assure you that my phone is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I\u2019m available for any phone call from any agency that has information with respect to something of this magnitude happening in our city,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Contee also stressed that the FBI warning was \u201craw information\u201d that was not \u201cwholly vetted.\u201d D.C. police were preparing for a \u201clarge violent demonstration\u201d similar to previous pro-Trump rallies, Contee said, adding that \u201cthe intelligence did not make it where it needed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For his part, Sund said that in the previous 24 hours, he had learned for the first time that the Capitol Police had also received the FBI bulletin. It went to an official assigned to the joint terrorism task force, who \u201creviewed it and then forwarded over to an official at the intelligence division over at U.S. Capitol Police headquarters,\u201d he said. Sund said he never saw the report himself, nor did the top security officials in the Capitol, the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms.<\/p>\n

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Two people familiar with the memo, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe security preparations, said the report was conveyed to all Capitol Police command staff by the intelligence unit\u2019s director, Jack Donohue. The report said organizers were urging Trump supporters to come with guns and specialized combat gear, including gas masks and military-style bulletproof vests called \u201cplate carriers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Tuesday, former Capitol security officials said the intelligence did not point with enough specificity to the potential for an attack on the complex.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen also were not briefed on the Norfolk document because it was considered raw intelligence and investigators had not identified those behind the online posts. Internally, some officials have wondered whether the threats were not taken more seriously because the rallygoers were White conservatives loyal to Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Others have said widespread criticism of law enforcement\u2019s heavy-handed approach to racial justice protests over the summer caused them to tamp down their response to the warnings about potential unrest on Jan. 6. On the eve of the rally, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) sent a letter to Rosen, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller, asserting that unless federal law enforcement was coordinating with D.C. police, she \u201cdiscourages\u201d them from patrolling city streets the next day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Correction: A previous version of this report misstated Sen. Gary Peters\u2019s party affiliation.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Aaron C. Davis, Peter Hermann and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

Beth Reinhard<\/a><\/p>\n

Beth Reinhard is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. She was a member of the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award and Toner Prize in 2018. She previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, National Journal, the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post.<\/p>\n

Matt Zapotosky<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt Zapotosky covers the Justice Department for The Washington Post’s national security team. He has previously worked covering the federal courthouse in Alexandria and local law enforcement in Prince George’s County and Southern Maryland.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beth Reinhard and\u00a0Matt Zapotosky, Feb. 23, 2021 Around 7 p.m. on Jan. 5, less than 24 hours before an angry mob overran the U.S. Capitol, an FBI bulletin warning that extremists were calling for violent attacks on Congress landed in an email inbox used by the D.C. police department. That same evening, a member of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11721,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720\/revisions\/11721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}