WASHINGTON—In a new book, a former Capitol Police chief reveals how federal intelligence failed to raise the alarm before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and how the siege began after it began. He is lashing out at the military bureaucracy that has been waiting for hours.
Stephen A. Sand, who served as the Capitol Police Chief during the 2021 riots, wrote in his book Courage Under Fire that intelligence agencies owned by the FBI, Homeland Security, and the Defense I wrote that I should have had It looks red,” but didn’t alert the Capitol Police instead.
Adding to Sand’s complaints, he said, he faced a series of delays in appealing to the military to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol.
“I respect the military. I come from a military family,” Sand said in an interview about the book. “I have a lot of respect for people on the ground who try to tell the truth. I don’t understand why they didn’t send help.”
Released Tuesday, almost two years after the bloody attack on the Capitol, Sand’s book details the day’s turmoil minute by minute. He spreads responsibility for the attacks around.
Understanding the events of January 6th
In his book, he says that when former President Donald J. Trump acted irresponsibly, he agitated crowds, led them to the Capitol, and watched the violence for hours without even trying to intervene. Sand He also accuses security at the Capitol of being politicized.
(All three top Capitol security officers resigned under pressure after the Capitol break-in. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for Sand’s resignation at a post-attack press conference.)
Sand says he blames senior Capitol Police officers who worked with him for some of the security failures, but he also takes responsibility.
In retrospect, he says he should have done more to persuade the National Guard to be sent to the Capitol in the days before the assault. He also said he wanted to be more involved in communicating with officers during the attack.
“I should have known there would be a loss of communication,” he said in an interview. “The police were asking for help, but there was no one to help them.”
But Sando reserves his most vehement criticism of those he once viewed as law enforcement partners.
He accuses the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies of “watering down” reports of possible Jan. 6 violence. “DHS hasn’t issued a bulletin. DHS hasn’t even issued a warning.”
And the Pentagon, he says, was more interested in “optics” than deploying the National Guard quickly during an attack.
“I called the Pentagon and asked for the National Guard,” he said. “There was delay after delay.”
“I now believe they knew it was coming,” Sandoz said, adding that military officials “put limits on the very assistance needed.”
Sand’s account is consistent with the testimony of Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, commander of the District of Columbia National Guard, who said concerns from higher ups about the military’s “optics” delayed the response. Army involvement.
General Walker told a House committee investigating the attack that it was because “someone or someone deliberately, deliberately delayed a decision.”
The panel looked at the issue of security delays and said that some in the Pentagon “may issue an illegal order to use the military to support his efforts to overturn the election.” Concern” was concluded. Resistance to deploying troops.
Other security officials have disputed some of Sandoz’s testimony.
Julie Farnham, assistant director of the Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division for the Capitol Police, said on Twitter that some of Sand’s statements about his interactions with the division’s intelligence officials were false or misleading. rice field.
She wrote that she blamed Sand for not making better use of information officials shared with him that showed Congress could be targeted by armed protesters.
The Jan. 6 riots were “not an intelligence failure,” she wrote in an open Twitter message to Sandoz. “We were given enough information in advance that we needed to prepare properly. You didn’t.”
