Senate’s Jan 6 report blasts missed warning signs: ‘Planned in plain sight’

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy A new report from the Senate Homeland Security Committee offers a withering look at the inability of America’s intelligence agencies to guard against insurrection following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Mr Peters faulted the two agencies specifically in his report for failing to “sound the alarm and share critical intelligence information that could have helped law enforcement better prepare for the events of January 6th.” “My report shows there was a shocking failure of imagination from these intelligence agencies to take these threats seriously, and there is no question that their failures to effectively analyze and share the threat information contributed to the failures to prevent and respond to the horrific attack that unfolded at the Capitol,” he concluded in a statement on Tuesday. The report’s release follows the work of the House select committee to investigate January 6; that bipartisan panel released a separate report last year which determined that unlike the FBI and I&A, senior officials at the White House such as chief of staff Mark Meadows were taking that “open-source intelligence”, aka the very numerous threats and calls for an insurrection that were prevalent on right-wing social media in the days leading up to the attack. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide working under Mr Meadows, testified to the committee last year that her boss fretted openly that the day of the attack would be “real, real bad” on January 6 in the days immediately leading up to the insurrection.