1-8-21 Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP: And so when there have been protests in the past, for example, when the Black Lives Matter protests were taking place, all of those barriers stayed in place. Now, of course, there are points where people try to push through, but generally, the police hold the line there. And what was different about this situation was the police, for whatever reason, did not hold the line on at least a major part of that barrier area. Some video shows them possibly letting people in, it’s not really clear, we don’t have the full picture of that. Obviously, that will come up with the investigation into what happened but the fact that they were able to get up the steps that quickly is really remarkable. At other times when the Capitol is open during “regular times,” you’re right, you can get as close as the the lower steps and walk around that area, kind of a courtyard area on the east side that is in between the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and the Capitol on the east side. But this was certainly something unprecedented. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/2021/01/reporting-during-the-storming-of-the-capitol/
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1-8-21 Saul Loeb of AFP states: I got to the Capitol around 9 a.m. on Wednesday. It was pretty quiet there and the streets were mostly deserted. Walking in that morning, the security postures were the same as any typical day on Capitol Hill — which was a little surprising, given how many people were in town for the Trump rally, and knowing that they were going to come to the Hill. But at the time I didn’t really think anything of it. It didn’t strike me as strange, because that was the usual situation. But clearly something somewhere went pretty wrong….
We were on the third floor, and heard a commotion down on the second floor. We went down there, and right outside the door to the Senate chamber, saw about 12 or 15 protesters being confronted by about an equal number of Capitol police officers.
What was their interaction like?
The protesters were dressed in what were almost like costumes. Some of them had on face paint or body paint. There was one guy that wasn’t wearing a shirt and had what looked like a Viking helmet on. There were multiple people waving Trump flags, and a lot wearing MAGA hats. And there’s one protester that was waving around a giant Confederate flag.
And what were the police doing about these intruders?
The police were basically trying to defuse the situation. They were engaged with the protesters and trying to figure out what they wanted, where they were going, or where they wanted to go. And also how to calm the situation down and get them out of the building. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vCYIN4U8q9IJ:https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/saul-loeb-maga-insurrection-riot-richard-barnett-photographs-1111717/+&cd=45&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
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1-8-21 The Federal Bureau of Investigation and an intelligence unit inside the Department of Homeland Security didn’t issue a threat assessment of the Jan. 6 pro-Trump protests that devolved into violence inside the Capitol, people briefed on the matter said. At the DHS unit, called Intelligence and Analysis, management didn’t view the demonstrations as posing a significant threat, some of the people said.
They failed to do this because they purposefully decided they did not need to do it. This, despite it being incredibly clear to even a casual peruser of pro-Trump social media that violence was not just being planned, but also called for and incited. All of it was done out in the open, including by President Trump. The Guardian via MSN has provided a complete timeline of President Trump’s incitement, as well as that by elected Republican officials, going back to Dec. 19, 2020. What we saw yesterday, what the whole world saw, was a failure by the Capitol Police, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. It was a failure of strategic, critical, creative, and historical thinking that led to not having sufficient personnel on site, let alone an effective strategy and plan, to handle what was clearly a possibility: an attempt to violently breach the Capitol to overthrow the election results. We know that the Capitol Police are able to do proper threat assessments, forecasting, and then over-responding to just peaceful protests….At the DHS unit, called Intelligence and Analysis, management didn’t view the demonstrations as posing a significant threat, some of the people said. They failed to do this, because they purposefully decided they did not need to do it. This, despite it being incredibly clear to even a casual peruser of pro-Trump social media that violence was not just being planned, but also called for and incited. All of it was done out in the open, including by President Trump. The Guardian via MSN has provided a complete timeline of President Trump’s incitement, as well as that by elected Republican officials, going back to Dec. 19, 2020. What we saw yesterday, what the whole world saw was a failure by the Capitol Police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. It was a failure of strategic, critical, creative, and historical thinking that led to not having sufficient personnel on site, let alone an effective strategy and plan, to handle what was clearly a possibility: an attempt to violently breach the Capitol to overthrow the election results. We know that the Capitol Police are able to do proper threat assessments, forecasting, and then over-responding to just peaceful protests. https://arkvalleyvoice.com/thinking-security-the-failure-of-the-capitol-police-federal-law-enforcement-and-dhs-does-appears-to-be-intentional/
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