Last month, the former head of DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis was added to the staff of the select committee tasked with investigating the failure of law enforcement agencies to contain the Jan. 6 insurrectionist wannabes. Sure, let’s appoint foxes to guard henhouses:
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the intelligence office, under Mr. Maher, scaled back its combing of social media and its issuing of reports on domestic extremists.
The office cut the number of analysts on the night shift—a prime time for online chatter—from 10 to two, officials told the Journal at the time. Rules for what could be culled from social media were tightened, prohibiting the reporting of veiled or indirect threats, one official said at the time. For example, if an analyst saw a posted image of an M16 machine gun with the caption “join me” for the Jan. 6 rally, reporting on it wouldn’t be allowed, the official said.
A bipartisan Senate report issued earlier this year found that the office shared no intelligence specific to Jan. 6, hindering law enforcement.
The lack of reporting culminated in a now-infamous memo that the intelligence office sent the day before the Capitol attack. “Nothing significant to report,” read a Jan. 5 national summary sent to law enforcement across the country.
Whose bright idea was it to add a subject of the investigation to the investigatory team? Liz Cheney recommended him, but committee chair Bennie Thompson concurred, saying “Mr. Maher has distinguished himself across his career as a public servant.”
CNN expands on how Maher played a role in not advising law enforcement agencies of the insurrectionist threat:
Joseph Maher, who changed the protocols around disseminating open-source information as head of DHS' intelligence arm, is now on the staff of the House Select Committee on January 6.
That committee has a broad mandate that includes examining why authorities were caught so off-guard by the violence that unfolded at the Capitol -- especially considering law enforcement was aware but ultimately chose not to act on a significant number of warning signs on social media and elsewhere in the public sphere.
In a memo dated October 30, 2020, Maher informed DHS officials that all open-source intelligence reports on election-related threats must be approved by DHS leadership and legal counsel prior to release, according to the documents, which were provided to CNN by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
[…] In March, Maher's successor, DHS acting intelligence chief Melissa Smislova acknowledged that "more should have been done" to understand the threat of violence ahead of the US Capitol attack, pointing to "concerning information" that was evaluated in the weeks prior.
Yeah, a lot more should have been done to assess the scope and danger of the attempted coup. And Joseph Maher was the person who should have sided with public safety rather than would-be insurrectionists.