In the runup to Jan. 6, 2021, the red flags were all there.
The calls to arms. The threats against U.S. lawmakers, police, and the media. The promises to defeat “ideological adversaries.” The threats from known extremist groups to shut down water systems in the nation’s capital. The blueprint was effectively published online everywhere and accompanied by unending promises across social media to unleash chaos, come hell or high water.
And yet, according to a new federal watchdog report, officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) kept that information mostly internal because the staff was poorly trained, inexperienced, and worried that overreporting of threats might trigger widespread criticism, like what the agency faced a year before when it was revealed that it had compiled intelligence reports on journalists covering the George Floyd protests in 2020.
These findings come from a DHS Office of the Inspector General report published on March 10. Over 50 pages, the assessment lays out in troubling detail how staff within the agency’s Intelligence and Analysis branch spotted threats as early as December.
OIG IA Redacted Jan. 6 Intel Report March 10 2022 by Daily Kos on Scribd
According to the inspector general, a field agent shared a tip on Dec. 21 with fellow DHS analysts in the open source division from a person who “threatened to shoot and kill protesters at the upcoming rallies related to the presidential election.”
The message noted how “he planned to kill at least 50 individuals.”
The open-source analyst agreed to review it, but had trouble locating related information. The analyst asked the field agent for help. Ten days passed before the field agent recalled the request was ever even sent.
She said it “slipped away from her.”
No report was drawn up and no one else inside the national intelligence apparatus was warned.
On Jan. 5, a field agent warned internally that a user on social media was calling for masses of people to come to D.C. to counterprotest. But because no “derogatory information” was found in a search of the person’s social media account, nothing was done.
On Jan. 6, the day of the attack, at 11:29 AM as Trump was reportedly telling Vice President Mike Pence by phone that he could go down in history “as a patriot or … as a pussy,” a field agent shared a tip internally from a social media user claiming the neofascist Proud Boys planned to shut down D.C.’s water infrastructure.
[Related: Tick-tock: A timeline of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol]
It would be 20 minutes into the rioting at the Capitol before open-source agents at DHS saw the warning and notified field officers “that this information did not meet its reporting threshold.”
Other tips from Jan. 6 that went ignored were redacted in the report.
The assessment did include, however, insight into how agents at the Office of Intelligence and Analysis felt about what they were seeing.
In one message, for example, an agent noted finding a map of all the exits and entrances to the Capitol building posted online.
“I feel like people are actually going to try and hurt politicians,” the agent wrote on Jan. 2. “Jan. 6th is gonna be crazy, not to mention the inauguration.”
The official added, “watch us get surged for that lol,” in a reference to possible overtime.
The agent who responded agreed.
“Have a feeling as well … days leading up as well. Some things were going on downtown apparently last night as well. Couple of shoving people around and Proud Boys in the area,” the message said.
Indeed, things were “going on” around town and elsewhere.
Trump ally and GOP operative Roger Stone was in Miami on Jan. 2, according to The Wall Street Journal, by members of the Proud Boys, including leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio. Stone joined the Proud Boys for a demonstration in front of Sen. Marco Rubio’s Florida home. Their goal? To pressure Rubio to overturn the election results.
[Related: Feds indict Proud Boys leader Henry Tarrio—finally]
Stone also relaunched his “Stop the Steal” website on Jan. 2 and began collecting donations for “security” needed in D.C. on Jan. 6. Notably, Jan. 2 was also just 10 days after Trump pardoned Stone for a litany of crimes.
The same official who was worried about the situation “downtown” brought up their anxiety about Jan. 6 again a few hours later.
“Like there’s these people talking about hanging Democrats from ropes like wtf,” the agent wrote.
Brushing it aside, an official responded: “They’d need a lot of rope, I think DC is pretty much all democrat haha.”
The inspector general noted that the officials chalked up the messages as puffery and didn’t think they were “true threats of incitement because they thought storming the U.S. Capitol and other threats were unlikely or not possible.”
In one internal conversation in the wee hours of Jan. 3, a DHS official wrote: “I mean, people are talking about storming Congress, bringing guns, willing to die for the cause, hanging politicians with rope [redacted].”
Three days later, pro-Trump rioters erected gallows on the lawn of the Capitol as cries of “Hang Mike Pence” rang out.
On Jan. 4, one open-source analyst noted that a group of people already in D.C. were posting messages online “like they are going to battle.”
This made the agents “nervous” about the prospects for Jan. 6.
“Yet, these collectors did not draft any intelligence products reflecting possible safety concerns in the area,” the inspector general found.
The omissions were partially the result of having far too many agents with entry-level experience or no experience at all in the federal government or intelligence operations, the watchdog said.
Sixteen of the 21 collectors on duty ahead of Jan. 6, for example, had less than one year on the job. Many of those individuals had also complained about inadequate training for threat assessments.
“[The Open Source Collections Office] rapidly hired inexperienced open-source collectors in the months leading up to January 6, 2021. When OSCO switched to a 24 hours per day schedule in the summer of 2019, with shift changes at 5 a.m., 1 p.m., and 9 p.m., many collectors left,” the inspector general pointed out.
There was also a culture of fear that permeated the agents' thinking following the department’s handling of racial justice protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.
When protests were exploding in Portland, Oregon, agents were told to report “almost anything.”
In the months that followed, the department’s decision to send Border Patrol teams to Portland to police demonstrations and later, a decision to compile extensive intelligence reports on journalists covering protests were met with significant pushback from the public and Congress.
“One collector said people were afraid to do their jobs because of the fear of being reprimanded by [Intelligence and Analysis’] leadership and concerns about congressional scrutiny,” the report notes. “Another explained there was a chilling effect on their approach to reporting following the summer of 2020.”
During the protests in Portland, DHS sent out a “probable indicator” of threats report and disseminated it to the entire Homeland Security intelligence network.
No such report was published for the network in advance of Jan. 6.
“Despite identifying more indicators of possible violence than the product about threats in Portland, the Counterterrorism Mission Center did not similarly disseminate its analysis about Jan. 6 threats,” the report states.
A chart from the DHS Office of the Inspector General noting how “probable indicators” of violence on Jan. 6 outpaced probable threats of violence that emerged in Portland during racial justice protests there in 2020. Despite a greater number of threats, less was done by agents than what was done in Portland.
The department’s acting deputy undersecretary said the warnings about Jan. 6 were not deployed like the warnings for Portland because “there was not enough time.”
But chatter about disrupting the official count of electoral votes in Congress on Jan. 6 had been running on social media since mid-November. The pro-Trump “election fraud” movement had even picked up so much steam that the district played host to a Dec. 12 march by pro-Trump Proud Boys.
Their demonstrations ended in late-night brawls, stabbings, and a police force stretched incredibly thin as small groups splintered off from larger ones to roam the city and wreak havoc.
Notably, in the wake of public reporting that DHS was collecting information on journalists covering Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, a whistleblower complaint was filed by Brian Murphy, the head of intelligence and analysis.
Brian Murphy Whistleblower Complaint 2020 by Daily Kos on Scribd
Murphy claimed DHS leadership distorted critical information it received and often issued unethical orders.
In his whistleblower complaint, Murphy said DHS officials under Trump told him to modify domestic terror threat assessments so that the white supremacist element was toned down and information about left-wing activist groups was toned up.
This way, Murphy claimed, their findings “matched up with the public comments made by Trump.”
In the 14 months since the Capitol attack, the inspector general said the agency has made improvements to its intelligence analysis and sharing and overall preparedness. A representative for the Jan. 6 committee did not immediately return request for comment.
Now running the intelligence and analysis wing of DHS is Kenneth Wainstein, an appointee of President Joe Biden and onetime chief of staff to Robert Mueller when Mueller oversaw the FBI. Wainstein also served as an adviser to former President George W. Bush.
