A 21-year-old intelligence analyst stumbled upon a plan to storm the Capitol and execute members of Congress to prevent the certification of electoral votes to make Joe Biden.
An analyst with the Department of Homeland Security saw a link to a website where people were discussing acts of terroristic violence and the overthrow of the government of the United States.
The analyst saw hundreds of pages of potential threats to national security, including people urging others to smuggle illegal weapons into the nation's capital. The DHS intelligence analyst saw discussion of overthrowing the US Government by force/sparking a second civil war, and veiled threats of violence toward other US persons who were perceived enemies.
The intelligence analyst said that he was one of the DHS intelligence officials charged with trying to prevent that day's violence. The final inspector general investigative report documenting this analyst's efforts and dozens of credible threats that DHS did not act on was obtained by Yahoo News.
The attempt to sound the alarm and push the various parts of the DHS intelligence apparatus into action was a failure. The office was created in the wake of 9/11 to share intelligence more broadly and prevent another catastrophic attack.
The plot unfolded in detail over the course of 16 days. They watched as maps of the Capitol access tunnels were posted online, along with information about how to smuggle illegal weapons into D.C. There were threats to members of Congress and Capitol police. They saw online posts by people who said they had put their last will and testament in order and were going to Washington, D.C., to defend the country and were willing to die for their cause.
On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of President Donald Trump's supporters as well as white supremacists, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, militia and other violent extremists invaded the Capitol in an attempt to stop congress from certifying Biden's win in the presidential election. More than 100 police officers were injured and at least nine deaths, including suicides, have been tied to the attack.
The four-page letter written by the intelligence analyst who did everything he could to warn of the impending attack was obtained by Yahoo News.
The analyst's name is not being released by Yahoo News after the Department of Homeland Security expressed concern about the analyst's personal safety.
The methods and tactics discussed online match up with those used in the attack, but it is unclear if any of the people DHS tracked were involved. The inspector general's report states that in a December 29 post on a forum with over 5,000 likes and over 250 comments, one user suggested bringing hooks and ropes for breaching the Capitol complex.
DHS has a duty to alert other law enforcement agencies.
The sole intelligence agency in the U.S. is the Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security. It's a duty to warn.
According to documents obtained by Yahoo News, this arm of DHS did not produce any warnings, bulletins or other reports on threats it was seeing.
The police posture at the Capitol could have been impacted if this had happened. According to the inspector general report, there was no information shared about potential threats.
The Capitol Police wouldn't speak to Yahoo News about what it did or didn't receive from the DHS, but said via email that it had improved the way it shared and received intel.
The mechanism for sharing critical intelligence among agencies was activated by the young analyst inside DHS. That person's attempts to sound the alarm were shut down, delayed or flat-out rejected at every turn according to the analyst's written account provided to inspector general investigators.
The future of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to fulfill its core mission are at stake. He testified before the House Homeland Security Committee for the first time since being confirmed by the Senate. The Senate held a classified hearing on November 30th.
An office with a history of manipulating intelligence and abusing its sweeping authorities over the American public was brought in to steady and focus by a long time national security professional.
The failures of the Capitol Police have been made public, but there has been no detailed accounting of the actions of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of Homeland Security and its Office of Intelligence and Analysis refused to comment on the inspector general report and actions of the intelligence analyst.
The public servants at the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence & Analysis and across the federal government worked to collect and share information leading up to the January 6 attack. In order to ensure the safety and security of all communities, the Department of Homeland Security will share information with federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector partners.
The Department of Homeland Security has renewed its commitment to sharing timely and actionable intelligence with the public and our partners across every level of government, in the private sector and local communities.
On December 20, 2020, the young analyst found the blueprints of a plot to overthrow the government on the internet. On the day before, Trump had said it was impossible to lose the election. There was a big protest in D.C. Be there, it will be crazy.
Some thought this was a call to action. An analyst found links to online forums and saw the beginnings of a plan to storm the Capitol to stop the electoral votes from being certified and prevent Biden from becoming president.
A senior member of the Counter terrorism Mission Center was shown the findings the next day. The supervisor was interested in getting more information about the threats to attack the Capitol. An official Request for Information was sent to the open source collection office by the analyst. The manager told them to do it as soon as possible.
It was possible to turn what the analyst saw online into official government reporting that could be sent out to law enforcement partners in raw intelligence reports that could be used to warn local, state and federal agencies about an emerging threat.
The Capitol Police, the FBI, the ATF, the Secret Service and all local D.C. agencies are listed in the analyst's Request for Information. If material is found, federal and state, local partners will need to be informed quickly so contingency plans can be made.
An open source collector was tasked with searching for posts on social media and other public websites for potential threats of violence, as well as calls for attacks by domestic extremists and talk of illegal weapons entering the country.
The warnings would make other agencies aware of the threats, or give more weight to their own intelligence, and would likely prompt an adjustment of posture, impacting what resources and people were deployed where. Agencies can ask law enforcement nearby to be on stand-by.
After checking back on the request, the analyst was told by the collections manager that no further action should be taken. The analyst continued to track the threat and sound the alarm after a new process for submitting these requests was put in place.
The intelligence analyst explained in a written account that they needed one of these reports to produce an accurate and unbiased report of the threat environment that would be used to warn and hopefully prevent any potential attack.
Between December 29 and January 4 the analyst sounded the alarm on the need for reporting that could be used to warn other agencies.
There were calls for people to bring weapons to D.C. on January 6 in online posts. One post said to bring your gun. If you don't, you'll see Biden slide into the white house. The report included a post from a group of people who said they were willing to die for the cause.
The mission center and the counterterrorism analyst were unable to warn agencies in D.C. of the threats they were seeing online because the open source collection office had not produced any reports or warnings. The analyst was tasked with producing a brief that could quickly be turned into an intelligence product and sent out to Capitol Police and others in D.C.
The threat assessment was drafted and it showed that all but one indicator of violence was present.
The intelligence product that was supposed to be sent out never came.
On the morning of January 6th, 2021, the analyst made one more phone call begging for us to be given the intelligence reporting that we needed desperately which could have been used to inform those on the ground of the full threat.
The intelligence analyst was not able to comment on intelligence activities when contacted by Yahoo News.
The analyst wrote that he was appalled at what happened as he was on the tip of the United States Government trying to stop the attack. Despite my best efforts, my actions weren't enough.
The DHS inspector general found that the open source collection office failed to respond to a request for information on threats submitted by the intelligence analyst.
The extent of the threats the office was seeing online was revealed in the analyst's letter that was provided to the investigators. No reports were produced despite the threats. The office stopped the intelligence sharing.
Inside the open source collection office, internal communications seemed to show confusion and hesitancy from staffers to produce the reports requested because of a lack of training, ever-changing guidelines or too high or unclear a reporting threshold
The counterterrorism analyst requested information from the open source collector. For a variety of reasons, the raw intelligence reports the analyst needed to send out warnings about the likely attack were not produced. The open source collector talked about their findings.
There is a map of all the exits and entrances to the capitol building. People will try and hurt politicians. The 6th of January is going to be crazy.
People are talking about storming Congress, bringing guns, willing to die for the cause, hanging politicians with ropes, but still not meeting the threshold.
Dozens of threats were not shared or reported. The inspector general's report said inexperienced and poorly trained collectors didn't know what to report. A lack of understanding about the domestic terrorism landscape is one of the reasons cited by the report.
A collector drafted a report about a person who claimed to be going to D.C. to win a small war after the analyst requested it. The post included a phrase associated with the Proud Boys, but open source collectors did not have knowledge of such domestic terrorism groups, so they were unable to determine if the post met the guidelines for what they could report The person who posted again said they were in D.C. and were looking for places to smuggle weapons into the city.
Emails from the DHS intelligence law division told sources that they could make reports on threats associated with the Proud Boys, a known threat actor, and also on discussions to evade detection and smuggle illegal weapons into D.C. The report was not published The Proud Boys discussed how to sneak weapons into Washington for the attack. Two days after the attack, this was published.
The backlash to the reports this office had produced on protesters, journalists and others related to the 2020 protests in Portland, Ore., led to hesitancy about what to report, even when told by its lawyers that certain threats were within the new guidelines. The Associated Press reported in October that the DHS had compiled intel on the people who were arrested during Black Lives Matter protests in Oregon.
New guidelines were put in place to prevent the kind of domestic intelligence collection that was led by the Trump official when he was removed from his post. Something had to be considered a true threat in order to be part of the new protocol.
It was nearly impossible to meet the new threat threshold for election-related products in the wake of Portland.
The inspector general report states that reports were held or killed in other instances. Some people told investigators that they didn't believe it was possible to storm the Capitol.
The probe was limited. The office of intelligence and analysis has a responsibility to give intel to state and local officials. The office may have warned law enforcement about the threats.
The account of the young intelligence analyst shows the deep flaws in the intelligence collection guidelines at that time.
It raises more questions about whether the infrastructure created in the wake of 9/11 is up to the task of preventing threats from coming from inside the U.S.
John Cohen, a former DHS undersecretary, said that the nation's counterterrorism capabilities were designed to prevent attacks. Today's terrorism threat in the U.S. is very different from the one faced on 9/11 The events at the Capitol are an example of that.
Cohen told Yahoo News that the lead up to that day was a failure to take intelligence and take steps to protect against the threat.
There are two big lessons from January 6. He said that intelligence needs to be looked at differently. It's possible that critical intelligence about emerging threats can be made public. The second lesson is that we need to use that intelligence more effectively. We don't know how we will do that in the future.
Cohen said steps were taken to improve the training, leadership and legal guidance of analysts and collectors so they could more effectively gather intelligence. Time will tell if that work will be put in place to protect the mission.
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