Security officials blame bad intelligence, contradict each other about Jan. 6 Capitol breach

Faulty intelligence was to blame for the outmanned Capitol defenders' failure to anticipate the violent mob that invaded the iconic building and halted certification of the presidential election on Jan. 6, the officials who were in charge of security declared Tuesday in their first public testimony on the insurrection.

The officials, including the former chief of the Capitol Police, are blaming other federal agencies and each other for their failure to defend the building as supporters of then-president Donald Trump overwhelmed security barriers breaking windows and doors and sending lawmakers fleeing from the House and Senate chambers.

Five people died as a result of the riot, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman who was shot as she tried to enter the House chamber with lawmakers still inside.

Former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund, who resigned under pressure immediately after the attack, and the other officials said they had expected the protests to be similar to two pro-Trump events in late 2020 that were far less violent.

Sund said he hadn't seen an FBI field office report that warned of potential violence citing online posts about a "war." And he and a House official disputed each other's versions of decisions that January day and in advance about calling for the National Guard.

Not the result of poor planning, says Sund

Sund described a scene that was "like nothing" he had seen in his 30 years of policingand argued that the insurrection was not the result of poor planning by Capitol Police but of failures across the board.

Trump had rallied the invaders to protest his election loss at the Capitol, and the House later impeached him on a charge of "incitement of insurrection." But he noted that he had asked the crowd to protest "peacefully," and the Senate acquitted him.

Sund insisted the invasion was not his or his agency's fault.

"No single civilian law enforcement agency and certainly not the USCP is trained and equipped to repel, without significant military or other law enforcement assistance, an insurrection of thousands of armed, violentand co-ordinated individuals focused on breaching a building at all costs," he testified.

Resignations after attack

The joint hearing, part of an investigation by two Senate committees, was the first time the officials testified publicly about the events of Jan. 6. In addition to Sund, former Senate sergeant-at-arms Michael Stenger, former House sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving and Robert Contee, the acting chief of police for the Metropolitan Police Department, testified.

Like Sund, Irving and Stenger resigned under pressure after the deadly attack. They were Sund's supervisors and in charge of security for the House and Senate.

"We must have the factsand the answers are in this room," Senate rules committee chairpersonAmy Klobuchar said at the beginning of the hearing.

Much remains unknown about what happened before and during the assault:How much did law enforcement agencies know about plans for violence that day, many of which were public? How did the agencies share that information with each other? And how could the Capitol Police have been so ill-prepared for a violent insurrection that was organized online?

After smashing through the barriers at the perimeter, the invaders engaged in hand-to-hand combat with police officers, injuring dozens of them, and broke through multiple windows and doors, sending lawmakers fleeing from the House and Senate chambers and interrupting the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Sund said Tuesday that an officer on the task force had received that memo and forwarded it to a sergeant working on intelligence for the Capitol Police but that the information was not sent on to other supervisors.

"How could you not get that vital intelligence?" asked Sen. Gary Peters, chair of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee, a Democratwho said the failure of the report to reach the chief was clearly a major problem.

"That information would have been helpful," Sund acknowledged.

Sund said he did see an intelligence report created within his own department warning that Congress could be targeted on Jan. 6. But he said that report assessed the probability of civil disobedience or arrests, based on the information they had, as "remote" to "improbable" for the groups expected to demonstrate.

Contee, the acting city police chief, also suggested that no one had flagged the FBI information from Norfolk, Va., which he said came in the form of an email. He said he would have expected that kind of intelligence "would warrant a phone call or something. "

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Disagreement on when National Guard was called

Two officials disagreed on when the National Guard was called and on requests for troopsbeforehand. Sund said he spoke to both Stenger and Irving about requesting the National Guard in the days before the riotand that Irving said he was concerned about the "optics" of having them present.

Irving denied that, saying Sund's account was "categorically false." Safety, not optics, determined the security posture, he said, and the top question was whether intelligence supported the decision.

"We all agreed the intelligence did not support the troops and collectively decided to let it go," Stenger said. He added that they were satisfied at the time that there was a "robust" plan to protect Congress.

Thousands of National Guard troops still surround the Capitol in a wide perimeter, cutting off streets and sidewalks that are normally full of cars, pedestrians and tourists.

Congress is also considering a bipartisan, independent commission to review the missteps, and multiple congressional committees have said they will look at different aspects of the siege.

Federal law enforcement hasarrested more than 230 people who were accused of being involved in the attack, and President Joe Biden's nominee for attorney general, Judge Merrick Garland, said in his confirmation hearing on Monday that investigating the riots would be a top priority.

'Stunned' over delayed response

Once the violence had begun, Sund and Irving also disagreed on when the National Guard was requested Sund said he requested it at 1:09 p.m., but Irving said he didn't receive a request until after 2 p.m., justas rioters breached the Capitol's West side.

Contee said he was "stunned" over the delayed response. He said Sund was pleading with Army officials to deploy National Guard troops as the rioting rapidly escalated. Police officers "were out there literally fighting for their lives," but the officials on the call appeared to be going through a "check the boxes" exercise, he said.

Pentagon officials have said it took time to put the troops in position, and there was not enough contingency planning in advance. They said they offered the assistance beforehand but were turned down.

Klobuchar said Tuesday's hearing is the first of at least two public examinations of what went wrong that day as the Senate panels undertake a joint investigation into the security failures.

A second hearing, expected to be held in the next few weeks, will examine the response of the Defence Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.