On Dec. 20, 2020, a 21-year-old intelligence analyst went online to search for local Washington, D.C., fishing holes and stumbled upon the blueprint of a plot to storm the Capitol and execute members of Congress and law enforcement officers to prevent the certification of electoral votes to make Joe Biden the next U.S. president.
The domestic terrorism analyst with the Department of Homeland Security saw a link to a website where people “actively at that moment were discussing the commission of acts of terroristic violence and the violent overthrow the government of the United States,” according to the analyst’s written account later provided to investigators.
Over those 16 days, this analyst and others inside the DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis saw the plot unfold in excruciating detail. They watched as maps of the Capitol access tunnels were circulated online, along with tactical information about how to smuggle illegal weapons into D.C. and which radio frequencies they would use to communicate during the attack. They saw threats to members of Congress and local D.C. and Capitol police, and operational plans for the attack.
It’s unclear how many, or if any, of the people DHS tracked but did not report were directly involved in the attack, however the methods and tactics discussed online match up with those used on Jan. 6. For example, the inspector general report says that in a Dec. 29 post “on a forum with over 5,000 likes and over 250 comments,” one user suggests “bring[ing] hooks and ropes for taking down fencing” and breaching the Capitol complex.
But DHS’s intelligence office shared no information about potential threats, the inspector general report says. Wainstein is a longtime national security professional who was brought in to improve workplace morale and to steady and focus an embattled office with a history of manipulating intelligence and abusing its sweeping authorities over the American public.
“Under the leadership of Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security has renewed its commitment to sharing timely and actionable intelligence and information with the public and our partners across every level of government, in the private sector, and local communities.”The young analyst’s story began on Dec. 20, 2020, with a search on Reddit for local fishing spots that uncovered the blueprints of a plot to overthrow the government.
The analyst’s Request for Information lists U.S. Capitol Police, FBI, ATF, Secret Service and all local Washington, D.C., agencies as the intended recipients of this information. “This matter is time sensitive/urgent as if material is found, federal and state, local partners will need to be informed quickly so contingency plans can be made for any planned events,” the request noted, adding that the information would no longer be useful after Jan. 6.
“We needed one of these reports or other government reporting to produce an accurate and unbiased report of the threat environment that would be used to fulfill our duty to warn and hopefully prevent any potential attack,” the intelligence analyst later explained in their written account. “The threat assessment l drafted showed that all but one indicator of violence was [present] and there was an exceedingly high likelihood that mass violence would occur,” the analyst wrote in their account.
Inside the open source collection office, internal communications seemed to show confusion and hesitancy from staffers to produce the reports requested because of a lack of training, ever-shifting guidelines or too high or unclear a reporting threshold — even as those who worked there became increasingly convinced the attack would take place.
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