Report faults lack of intelligence analysis for US Capitol riot

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) – The failure to properly assess a bevy of collected intelligence helped ensure a mob of then-President Donald Trump's supporters was able to violently raid the US Capitol, according to a recent think tank report.

The Atlantic Council report Domestic Violent Extremism and the Intelligence Challenge said the US intelligence community, including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and others, collected mounds of relevant intelligence.

But senior officials at those agencies failed "to issue warnings based on that intelligence," said the report, which was authored by former New York Police Department Intelligence Analysis Director Mitchell Silber.

"Intelligence collection did not fail. In fact, it was robust," the May 18 report says.

Silber determined that none of the intelligence analysis failures were made within the Capitol Police ranks, but instead found intelligence "sharing problems within" the FBI, and said its "lack of intelligence analysis providing an overall assessment of the situation from the FBI before January 6 was an analytic intelligence failure."

It further said the DHS Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) was the subject of politicization from the Trump administration, particularly when it addressed matters of domestic violent extremism and white supremacists, and was faced with shortage of social media analysts under Trump.

"Regardless of the internal challenges within DHS I&A, the failure of its analytic cadre to provide a threat-assessment warning based on social media and the reporting coming in from fusion centers around the country regarding the possibility of violence on January 6 constituted an analytic intelligence failure by DHS I&A," the report said.

US President Joe Biden tasked I&A on May 11 with forming a new unit devoted to targeting domestic terrorism.