Text messages reveal lax security response to threat to crash plane into Capitol before Jan. 6 riot
Laissez-faire response upset some as leadership kept in dark about terror threat until media reports.
Updated: December 27, 2022 - 7:10am1 of 3
A day before the fateful Jan. 6 riot rocked the U.S. Capitol, security officials in the House and Senate received a warning of a possible aviation terror threat to the seat of Congress but shrugged off the concerns until congressional leadership found out from news media and began pressing for answers.
"Are you making any notification regarding the intel that I'm told is going public?" then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving texted Michael Stenger, his counterpart in the Senate, about the aviation security threat early on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, according to text messages reviewed by Just the News.
"I am under the impression that it has been deemed aspirational," Stenger responded. "Agree, all good," said Irving.
The two didn't text again for six days, according to information put out by congressional investigators. But a short while after the exchange, CBS News would report that U.S. intelligence had made the warning to the Capitol, alerting congressional leaders who then peppered the Capitol security apparatus about why they had been kept in the dark and what was being done to address the threat, the messages show.
The powerful anecdote was contained in text messages released as part of a House GOP report on Capitol security last week, adding further evidence of a laissez-faire security apparatus inside Congress that would fail spectacularly on Jan. 6 when a rowdy, pro-Trump mob, some of whom used violence to overrun police lines, invaded the building.
You can read the full report here:
FINAL HouseGOPReport of Jan. 6 Investigation.pdf
Multiple investigations have determined that Capitol Police and congressional security officials had received extensive intelligence warning of violence on Jan. 6 and failed to create an adequate security plan, allowing worries from above about "optics" to take precedence over deploying National Guard ahead of the riot or better fortifying the building.
The House and Senate sergeants at arms and police chief all resigned in the aftermath of those failures, but there are concerns not enough reforms have been made to avert future security calamities inside the Capitol.
The newest report by GOP Reps. Rodney Davis, Jim Banks, Jim Jordan, Troy Nehls and Kelly Armstrong said the uninspired reaction to the aviation threat on Jan. 5 and the pre-Jan. 6 intelligence warnings exposed not only a reactive security mindset but also bureaucratic gridlock that spread security decision-making across the House and Senate sergeants at arms, the Capitol Police chief, the Capitol Architect and a supervisory Capitol Police Board.
Those layers of bureaucracy remain today, posing continued inefficiencies that threaten future security planning and responses, the lawmakers warned, noting that the board has "resisted calls for reform" on multiple occasions dating to 2001.
"The communications related to the aviation threat against the Capitol on January 5, 2021, show the ad hoc nature of the Board's response to security events," the lawmakers wrote in a report obtained by Just the News. "Even if the various stakeholders had attempted to proceed more deliberately, they
would have been stymied by a confusing web of authorities."
The lawmakers aren't the first to suggest the current security decision-making apparatus inside the Capitol is overly cumbersome….
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/capitol-reax-aviation-terror-threat-day-jan-6-riot-foretold-lax-security-texts