Updated 20 minutes ago

Live Updates: Capitol’s Ex-Security Officials Point to Intelligence Failures Before Riot

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Ex-Capitol security officials blame other agencies and communication failures in the riot.

Three former top Capitol security officials and the chief of the Washington police blamed federal law enforcement and the Defense Department on Tuesday for intelligence failures ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and for slow authorization of the National Guard as the violence escalated.

“None of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred,” former Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund told senators who are investigating security failures related to the attack. He called the riot “the worst attack on law enforcement and our democracy that I have seen” and said he witnessed insurrectionists assaulting officers not only with their fists but also with pipes, sticks, bats, metal barricades and flagpoles.

“These criminals came prepared for war,” Chief Sund said.

Chief Sund, Paul D. Irving, the former House sergeant-at-arms, and Michael C. Stenger, his former Senate counterpart, each said they had not seen a report from an F.B.I. field office in Norfolk, Va., that flagged an anonymous social media thread that warned of a looming war at the Capitol despite planning meetings with the bureau and others in federal law enforcement.

They pointed to a breakdown in communication of some of the intelligence. Chief Sund testified he now knows the F.B.I. report had reached the Capitol Police the day before the attack, but he had not personally seen it.

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