Assault on the Capitol

[Steve M. Galbraith]

From the AP: "Three days before supporters of President Donald Trump rioted at the Capitol, the Pentagon asked the U.S Capitol Police if it needed National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. The police turned them down both times, according to senior defense officials and two people familiar with the matter."

And this was reportedly the reason (or one of them):
"Still stinging from the uproar over the violent response by law enforcement to protests last June near the White House, officials also were intent on avoiding any appearance that the federal government was deploying active duty or National Guard troops against Americans."

We're getting all sorts of conflicting reports. If this is true, this indicates that it wasn't the White House that held back protection, it was the Capitol Police that rejected the offer of additional security/personnel.

And the chief security officer for the House of Representatives has resigned. Speaker Pelosi asked for his resignation.

This appears to me to be old fashioned incompetence and nothing conspiratorial.

[Joe Elliott]

From the AP: "Three days before supporters of President Donald Trump rioted at the Capitol, the Pentagon asked the U.S Capitol Police if it needed National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. The police turned them down both times, according to senior defense officials and two people familiar with the matter."

And this was reportedly the reason (or one of them):
"Still stinging from the uproar over the violent response by law enforcement to protests last June near the White House, officials also were intent on avoiding any appearance that the federal government was deploying active duty or National Guard troops against Americans."

We're getting all sorts of conflicting reports. If this is true, this indicates that it wasn't the White House that held back protection, it was the Capitol Police that rejected the offer of additional security/personnel.

And the chief security officer for the House of Representatives has resigned. Speaker Pelosi asked for his resignation.

This appears to me to be old fashioned incompetence and nothing conspiratorial.

I agree. Nothing conspiratorial. But maybe Sund giving minimum protection in the hopes of helping Trump. But probably just a series of bad decisions by Capitol Police Chief Sund. It would be unlikely that both Trump and Sund would be equally delusional and both think that this could work.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

There's lots of finger pointing and fanny covering here so it's hard to discern what happened. Clearly though the Capitol Police were simply unprepared for this. Just in terms of having enough force - officers - on the scene. Sund didn't need approval, I don't believe, from anyone to put more officers out.

This reminds me a bit of James Hosty's account of the assassination. He was the FBI agent assigned to monitor the Oswalds (both of them). He said in his book ("Assignment Oswald") that two days - two - before the visit he was informed by his superiors of the details of the President's visit. He claimed there was almost no coordination between the FBI and Secret Service and that the SS provided the agency with "very restrictive criteria for threats to the President." That's his account, of course; so take it with a large dose of skepticism.

Forrest Sorrels, the SS agent in charge in Dallas, said that if he had been told about Oswald that they would have taken him in before the visit for questioning. But they were never informed.

So the FBI is pointing its finger at the SS, the SS back at the FBI. The DPD criticized the FBI and on and on. That sounds like what is happening here. "I didn't mess up, they did."

[Bill Chapman]

There's lots of finger pointing and fanny covering here so it's hard to discern what happened. Clearly though the Capitol Police were simply unprepared for this. Just in terms of having enough force - officers - on the scene. Sund didn't need approval, I don't believe, from anyone to put more officers out.

This reminds me a bit of James Hosty's account of the assassination. He was the FBI agent assigned to monitor the Oswalds (both of them). He said in his book ("Assignment Oswald") that two days - two - before the visit he was informed by his superiors of the details of the President's visit. He claimed there was almost no coordination between the FBI and Secret Service and that the SS provided the agency with "very restrictive criteria for threats to the President." That's his account, of course; so take it with a large dose of skepticism.

Forrest Sorrels, the SS agent in charge in Dallas, said that if he had been told about Oswald that they would have taken him in before the visit for questioning. But they were never informed.

So the FBI is pointing its finger at the SS, the SS back at the FBI. The DPD criticized the FBI and on and on. That sounds like what is happening here. "I didn't mess up, they did."

[Steve M. Galbraith]

From yesterday's (1/9/21) Wall Street Journal account of the preparations for the protests/rally:

"In the days before the Jan. 6 rally, local and federal officials took a different tack in their preparations.

[Washingont DC Mayor] Ms. Bowser, in a letter to federal officials Monday, urged a light security footprint for Wednesday’s protests to avoid the type of show of force that inflamed tensions during last year’s racial-justice protests.

Military and defense officials offered assistance and prepared what all sides saw as a sufficient number of D.C. National Guard soldiers—about 340—to perform support duties such as traffic management, military officials said.

The U.S. Capitol Police, which is responsible for security at the Capitol and answers to Congress, twice told the Pentagon that no additional support was needed, according to officials and a Defense Department timeline. Local police generally require permission from Capitol Police to control crowds on the grounds of congressional buildings.

'The general attitude from Capitol Police was: ‘We got this. We do this all time,’” said a U.S. official familiar with the discussions."

Full story here (account needed): https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-capitol-riot-communications-between-agencies-hampered-forceful-response-11610242709

[Joe Elliott]

'The general attitude from Capitol Police was: ‘We got this. We do this all time,’” said a U.S. official familiar with the discussions."

They don’t deal with a treasonous President, all the time.
They don’t deal with a treasonous President, convincing tens of millions of Americans that the election was stolen from them, all the time.
They don’t deal with a treasonous President, calling upon his most devoted followers, to descend on Washington D. C. on a critical day for electing our President, with “Be there, it will be wild”, all the time.
They need to understand, that with the success of MAGA, that there might be ten times as many on January 20.
They need to understand that there is a significant chance that they will be as surprised on January 20, as they were on January 6, if they are expecting a January 6 number of MAGA people to show up.

They need to understand, that we are not in Kansas anymore.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

They don’t deal with a treasonous President, all the time.
They don’t deal with a treasonous President, convincing tens of millions of Americans that the election was stolen from them, all the time.
They don’t deal with a treasonous President, calling upon his most devoted followers, to descend on Washington D. C. on a critical day for electing our President, with “Be there, it will be wild”, all the time.
They need to understand, that with the success of MAGA, that there might be ten times as many on January 20.
They need to understand that there is a significant chance that they will be as surprised on January 20, as they were on January 6, if they are expecting a January 6 number of MAGA people to show up.

They need to understand, that we are not in Kansas anymore.

From the NY Times today (stating the obvious): "Poor planning and communication among a constellation of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies hamstrung the response to the rioting. Once the Capitol building was breached, a patchwork group of reinforcements was forced to try to navigate a labyrinthine complex of unfamiliar passages and byways that would prove dangerous."

How many times have we seen this through the years? These bureaucracies not talking to one another, turf battles over control, patchwork organization, no coordination, in-fighting.

It's why, for one reason, these JFK conspiracy theories about multiple agencies conspiring to kill JFK, frame an innocent person, engineer a fake investigation and then cover all of this up make no sense on so many levels. They simply can't pull it off in secret. Too many people, too many obstacles, too much bureaucratic independence.....It can't be done AND then kept secret for decades. And frankly, for me JFK simply wasn't the supposed threat to "them" that conspiracists think. There was no need, if you will, to remove him.