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So what happened?
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Or didn't happen fast enough...

quote:
President Trump initially rebuffed and resisted requests to mobilize the National Guard to quell violent protests at the Capitol, according to a person with knowledge of the events.

In the end, it was Vice President Mike Pence, defense and administration officials said, who approved the order to deploy. It was unclear why Mr. Trump, who is still technically the commander in chief, did not give the order. The mobilization was initiated with the help of Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, among other officials, according to the person with knowledge of the events.

Kash Patel, the chief of staff to Chris Miller, the acting defense secretary, responded: “The acting secretary and the president have spoken multiple times this week about the request for National Guard personnel in D.C. During these conversations, the president conveyed to the acting secretary that he should take any necessary steps to support civilian law enforcement requests in securing the Capitol and federal buildings.”


https://www.nytimes.com/live/2...ce-gave-the-go-ahead


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

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Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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He still thinks they were "good people" out there...


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Posts: 7540 | Location: chicagoland | Registered: 21 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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This is what happened.

https://apnews.com/article/don...b60a48828a07e4d03380


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Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by wtg:
This is what happened.

https://apnews.com/article/don...b60a48828a07e4d03380

quote:
“This was a failure of imagination, a failure of leadership,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo....
Reports are coming out that it’s much deeper than that. A month ago, I-1 sacked a bunch of appointees at the Pentagon and replaced them with uber-loyalists. Now, it is being reported that the Pentagon blocked DC National Guard from access to equipment on Wednesday.

Mrs pj read this on the twidders. Looking for a reliable source for this. WTG may beat me to it.


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Posts: 30027 | Registered: 27 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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pj, does this sound like it?

quote:

The Pentagon placed tight limits on the D.C. National Guard ahead of pro-Trump protests this week, trying to ensure the use of military force remained constrained, as the Guard carried out a narrow, unarmed mission requested by the city’s mayor to help handle traffic ahead of planned protests.

In memos issued Monday and Tuesday in response to a request from the D.C. mayor, the Pentagon prohibited the District’s guardsmen from receiving ammunition or riot gear, interacting with protesters unless necessary for self-defense, sharing equipment with local law enforcement, or using Guard surveillance and air assets without the defense secretary’s explicit sign-off, according to officials familiar with the orders. The limits were established because the Guard hadn’t been asked to assist with crowd or riot control.

The D.C. Guard was also told it would be allowed to deploy a quick-reaction force only as a measure of last resort, the officials said.

Then the mission abruptly changed — and the Pentagon is now facing criticism from governors and local officials who say it moved too slowly to send National Guard troops to respond, a charge that its leaders denied Thursday.

The Capitol Police, the law enforcement force that reports to Congress and protects the House and Senate, hadn’t requested help from the Guard ahead of Wednesday’s events. But early Wednesday afternoon, its chief made an urgent plea for backup from 200 troops during a call with top Pentagon and city officials, according to officials familiar with the call.

On the call, Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund was asked whether he wanted help from the National Guard. “There was a pause,” one of the D.C. officials said. And Sund said yes. “Then there was another pause, and an official from the [office of the] secretary of the Army said that wasn’t going to be possible.”


The Army official — who was speaking on behalf of the secretary of the Army, who was de facto commanding the D.C. Guard but was not on the call — said the “optics” of soldiers inside the Capitol building was not something they wanted, the two District officials said.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) confirmed that account in an interview with The Washington Post, saying Capitol Police “made it perfectly clear that they needed extraordinary help, including the National Guard. There was some concern from the Army of what it would look like to have armed military personnel on the grounds of the Capitol.” One concern was whether the Army had been invited by Congress.

A U.S. defense official said the Army general on the call didn’t formally deny the request but rather reinforced the negative optics of having uniformed personnel inside the Capitol, a point on which Bowser had agreed, and later checked with the chain of command. The defense official said Bowser agreed that if further support was necessary, D.C. police would provide it inside the Capitol, and the Guard would backfill D.C. police positions away from the building.

The defense official said the military wanted to be the force of last resort, and that military officials had urged Bowser to request more support from federal law enforcement but that she didn’t do so until Wednesday.

Higher-up leaders at the Pentagon then evaluated the request and activated the full D.C. Guard, in addition to later calling the governors of other states to send their Guard forces as reinforcements. The officials also lifted limits on the Guard for the new mission, arming guardsmen with riot gear, but not guns, before they headed to create a perimeter around the Capitol.

In the roughly three hours it took the Pentagon to make the shift from traffic policing to full-fledged riot response, the Capitol Police found themselves overwhelmed and rioters stormed the building, forcing lawmakers to take cover and barricade themselves in their offices. The Pentagon left it to federal law enforcement to clear the Capitol of the rioters, amid the hesitancy about sending Guard units into the building itself. By the evening, Guard units helped the Capitol Police and federal and city law enforcement reestablish a perimeter around the building.

By Thursday, National Guard forces from across the Mid-Atlantic region were moving into the Washington area.

On Thursday afternoon, 24 hours after the Capitol breach, acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller called the violence “reprehensible and contrary to the tenets of the United States Constitution.”

“I, and the people I lead in the Department of Defense, continue to perform our duties in accordance with our oath of office, and will execute the time-honored peaceful transition of power to President-elect Biden on January 20,” he said in a statement.

Images of rioters overpowering a light law enforcement force and smashing their way into the Capitol building prompted immediate questions about how such a dramatic security breakdown could occur, especially given that rioters had openly voiced their intent to use violence on social media.

One contributing factor: As the seriousness of the threat became clear, the jumble of jurisdictions and command structures made it more difficult to respond with speed. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who functions as de facto commander of the D.C. National Guard on behalf of the president, because the District is not a state, said 6,200 troops would be positioned in and around the city by the weekend, including Guard forces from Pennsylvania, New York and other nearby states.

Speaking alongside Bowser on Thursday, McCarthy said the military acted as quickly as it could once it received local authorities’ request for additional support and said officials had not been anticipating such a violent event, despite prolific calls on online platforms for violent action to overturn the Nov. 3 election.

McCarthy said officials didn’t in their “wildest imagination” envision rioters breaching Capitol grounds. City leadership had asked the Guard to carry out only a narrow mission, defense officials noted.

The chaotic and violent outcome of the events, which claimed four lives Wednesday, including a rioter who was shot by Capitol Police, came shortly after Trump egged on supporters in an address outside the White House, falsely insisting the election was fraudulent and urging the crowd to fight to keep him in office.

The turmoil follows a divisive year leading up to the election, amid the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest after the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in May.

The protests triggered by Floyd’s death and race-related violence appeared to have prompted both city and Pentagon officials to opt for a muted response that kept military personnel far from protesters and let local and Capitol police take the lead. The Pentagon came under severe criticism in June, after National Guard forces were on hand when unarmed protesters were forcibly cleared from an area near the White House and front-line troops were positioned outside of Washington.

On Thursday, some local officials complained about a delay in granting their request for additional National Guard help as rioters swarmed the Capitol.

But Guard units arrived less than three hours after local authorities made the emergency request for more help, defense officials said.

The Defense Department controls the D.C. Guard because the military force answers to the president rather than the mayor. The president’s power over the D.C. Guard is delegated to the defense secretary, then the Army secretary, who makes command decisions. It is therefore up to the Pentagon leadership to call state governors if the D.C. Guard needs reinforcement.

Security preparations ahead of Wednesday’s events came after Trump ordered a mass military response to racial justice protests in the nation’s capital this summer, prompting a public outcry when military helicopters flew low over protesters, surveillance assets hovered above the city and residents were left with a sense that the District was being occupied or was under siege.

A U.S. defense official, who like other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations, said the military always issues memos outlining the parameters of any mission. The limits added ahead of Wednesday’s events made sense, the official said, given that D.C. officials requested the deployment of only a small contingent of some 340 guardsmen, primarily to control traffic and monitor Metro stations.

“All commanders have left and right limits,” the official said. “There is no such thing as carte blanche.”

The official said that when the mission changed Wednesday afternoon, the Pentagon provided more forces than were requested, bringing in Guard units from outside states and loosening the restrictions, and moved quickly.

The scope of the initial mission request by D.C. and the unique command structure of the D.C. Guard may have made it more difficult for authorities to quickly send guardsmen to aid at the Capitol. Defense leaders defended the timing of the Guard response, citing “confusion” in scoping out a revised mission among multiple agencies and jurisdictions.

Speaking to reporters by phone Thursday, McCarthy said that after violence erupted around 2 p.m. Wednesday, he spoke with Bowser and the request was relayed for about 200 additional soldiers.

“It was at that time we were trying to get to figure out the situation up on the Capitol Hill between our two entities and phone calls from members of Congress and others,” he said.

McCarthy then briefed Miller, who authorized the deployment of all available D.C. Guard troops, some 1,100 soldiers, with the goal of getting them to the D.C. Armory within four hours.

At the same time, McCarthy said, they began trying to pull the approximately 250 Guard troops who were already deployed in D.C., return them to the Armory to don riot gear and redirect them to the Capitol. By early evening, D.C. Guard troops were in place around the Capitol, allowing police and FBI to search the building and clear it for lawmakers’ return.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said he received a call from House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who said he was in a secure location with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer.

“I was actually on the phone with Leader Hoyer, who was pleading with us to send the guard,” Hogan said. “He was yelling across the room to Schumer and they were back and forth saying we do have the authorization, and I’m saying, ‘I’m telling you we do not have the authorization.’ ”

Hogan said Maj. Gen. Timothy Gowen, the adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard, was repeatedly rebuffed by the Pentagon. “The general . . . kept running it up the flagpole, and we don’t have authorization,” he said.

Ninety minutes later, Hogan said, he received a call “out of the blue, not from the secretary of defense, not through what would be normal channels,” but from McCarthy, who asked if the Maryland guardsmen could “come as soon as possible.”

“It was like, yeah, we’re waiting, we’re ready,” said Hogan, who had already sent 200 State Police troopers at Bowser’s request.

Virginia sent in its Guard after Gov. Ralph Northam (D) received a call from Pelosi asking for help.

Clark Mercer, Northam’s chief of staff, said he received a call from his counterpart in Bowser’s office, who suggested the Defense Department wasn’t moving fast enough and asked for Virginia to send in its own state Guard.

Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said the governor called up the Guard immediately after talking with Bowser, knowing it would take some time for guardsmen to prepare. The Northam administration worked with the Defense Department only after the fact, but was able to reach the necessary agreements before guardsmen crossed state lines, she said. The governor’s office publicly announced that he had called up the Guard at 3:29 p.m.

Once the Pentagon signed off, the Guard mounted a vast response.

“Going through that mission analysis process, we were able to do an analysis and provide more than what they asked for,” the defense official said. “No one asked us to activate the entire Guard. Those are decisions we made on our own by taking a pause and conducting another analysis.



https://www.washingtonpost.com...9e73d9da2_story.html


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Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Yeah.

We will probably never know if there was anything nefarious going on, whether the Capitol Police refused help or even to coordinate with DC Police or National Guard as a political move, in sympathy with the rioters, or if it really was a case of underestimating the threat and poor coordination among agencies.

They'd known for weeks that this was coming. I-1 told his supporters to come and it would be "wild".

Another report said that of the 2000-strong Capitol Police force, only 500 were on duty and those didn't have essential equipment like gas masks (so that when the Capitol Police started firing tear gas, the police themselves were incapacitated.

Incompetence and collusion look pretty much the same from the sidelines.


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pj, citizen-poster, unless specifically noted otherwise.

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Posts: 30027 | Registered: 27 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
The FBI and the New York City Police Department passed information to the Capitol Police about the possibility of violence during the Jan. 6 protests against the counting of the Electoral College vote, and the FBI even visited more than a dozen extremists already under investigation to urge them not to travel to Washington, senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.

Those previously unreported details undercut the assertion by a top FBI official this week that officials had no indication violence was a possibility, and add to questions of what intelligence authorities had reviewed prior to the Capitol riot that led to the death of an officer and four others, including a rioter who was shot and killed by police.


quote:
As NBC News has reported, a digital flyer made public on Instagram and Facebook in December referred to what would happen as: "Operation Occupy the Capitol."

On the fringe message board 8kun, which is popular with QAnon followers, users talked for weeks about a siege of the Capitol.

"You can go to Washington on Jan 6 and help storm the Capitol," said one 8kun user a day before the siege. "As many Patriots as can be. We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents, and demand a recount."

"In regard to the protests planned for Jan. 6, the violent rhetoric we're seeing online is at a new level," Daniel J. Jones, president of Advance Democracy Inc., a global research organization that studies disinformation and extremism, told NBC News in a story published the day before the riot. "There are endorsements of violence across all of the platforms."

How could the FBI and other agencies have missed all that? It turns out they didn't, officials told NBC News.

"Prior to this event, the FBI obtained credible and actionable information about individuals who were planning on traveling to the protests who expressed a desire to engage in violence," the senior FBI official told NBC News. "The FBI was able to discourage those individuals from traveling to D.C."

The official added that "the FBI and our federal, state and local partners collected and shared available intelligence in preparation for the various planned events. The FBI was prepared to adapt as needed to fluid events on the ground, including having rapid response teams in reserve. Throughout most of the day the crowd was peaceful and non-confrontational."

"However, when it became clear that some individuals were surging onto the Capitol grounds and entering the buildings, the U.S. Capitol Police requested assistance. Within 50 minutes of that request, three FBI tactical teams were on-scene to gain control of the area and offer protection to congressional members and staff. Over the course of the evening, the FBI presence ultimately grew to over 150 agents and other personnel."

The official was not in a position to explain why D'Antuono, the head of the Washington field office, said there were no indications of violence.


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/c...riot-senior-n1253646


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

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Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado spoke with the Secretary of the Army about what happened last week.

Good article in military.com:

https://www.military.com/daily...rror-sympathies.html

quote:
Crow asked McCarthy that military members involved in the riot -- some military veterans have already been identified as participants -- receive fast-tracked investigation and courts-martial. He also made an unusual request: that the Army's Criminal Investigation Command review National Guard troops who are deployed for the inauguration "to ensure that deployed members are not sympathetic to domestic terrorists."

"Secretary McCarthy agreed to take additional measures," the readout states


Readout of their conversation:

https://twitter.com/RepJasonCr...040370282501/photo/1

quote:
Sec’y Ryan McCarthy told Crow and Gallego U.S. Capitol Police did not request support from the Department of Defense before the protests on Wednesday. McCarthy says 340 D.C. National Guard personnel were deployed for traffic control at the request of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

In addition, law enforcement agencies say they were only expecting a few thousand people to gather.

It wasn’t until between 1:34 p.m. and 1:49 p.m. on the day of the riots when Bowser and the chief of U.S. Capitol Police called the DOD for emergency support.

However, they were “unable to articulate what resources are needed and in what locations due to chaos,” as stated in the call summary provided by Crow.

“Due to a lack of coordination and preparation, there was not a functioning operations center in the Pentagon to manage the Guard presence and direct additional resources, leaving senior DOD officials to manage the situation by tracking down previously unknown contacts of local law enforcement and making ad hoc calls in an office environment,” the summary stated.


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

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Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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The former chief of U.S. Capitol Police says security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early requests to call in the National Guard ahead of a demonstration in support of President Trump that turned into a deadly attack on Congress.

Former chief Steven Sund -- who resigned his post last week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for him to step down -- made the assertions in an interview with The Washington Post published Sunday.

Sund contradicts claims made by officials after Wednesday's assault on Capitol Hill. Sund's superiors said previously that the National Guard and other additional security support could have been provided, but no one at the Capitol requested it.

Sund told the Post that House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving was concerned with the "optics" of declaring an emergency ahead of the protests and rejected a National Guard presence. He says Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger recommended that he informally request the Guard to be ready in case it was needed to maintain security.

Like Sund, Irving and Stenger have also since resigned their posts.

Sund says he requested assistance six times ahead of and during the attack on the Capitol. Each of those requests was denied or delayed, he says.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser also wanted a light police presence at the Capitol. She reportedly wanted to avoid a similar scenario as last summer, when federal forces responded to demonstrators opposed to police abuses who assembled near the White House.


https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11...ver-called-during-ri

The full WaPo article on MSN. No paywall.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...al-guard/ar-BB1cDy2U


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

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Posts: 37651 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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