According to a recent report, the FBI and other US government organizations miscalculated the likelihood of violence before the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 "at a fundamental level.".
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were found by Democrats on a Senate panel to have "downplayed" the risks and thus failed to adequately prepare.
Planned in Plain Sight, a 105-page report, was published on Tuesday.
It criticizes officials for making erroneous judgments and responding slowly to tips.
According to the report, "at a fundamental level, the agencies failed to carry out their mission and connect the public and non-public information they received.".
According to the report, agency officials failed to "formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners with sufficient urgency and alarm to enable those partners to prepare for the violence that ultimately occurred.".
The report provides specific examples of the types of warnings the FBI received, including flagged online extremist activity, public tip-offs, and alerts from its own field offices across the nation.
A social media post on the Parler platform four days prior to the riot that targeted the FBI is one instance the report highlights. It says, "We are drawing the red line at Capitol Hill with this final stand.". Don't be shocked if we seize the capitol building. ".
The report by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee insinuates that numerous other posts made references to a potential violent attack on the Capitol.
The document also contains a previously unreleased alert from the FBI's New Orleans office, dated January 5, 2021. It claimed that some of the protesters who intended to show up in Washington the following day were going to be armed.
The Democratic chair of the committee, Gary Peters, said: "What was shocking is that this attack was basically planned in plain sight in social media.". And yet, it appeared as though our intelligence services made a complete mess of things. ".
The FBI, according to a statement from a spokesperson, is "constantly trying to learn and evaluate what we can do better or differently, and this is especially true in light of the attack on the US Capitol.".
The spokesman added that the bureau had centralized information flow since the attack to ensure that all field offices received timely threat notifications.
Separately, a DHS representative informed the Washington Post that the organization had been carrying out a "comprehensive organizational review" and would soon produce recommendations.
As lawmakers certified the results of the 2020 election, in which President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, more than 2,000 people entered the US Capitol during the riot on January 6.
Following a speech by Mr. Trump, who was speaking at a rally not far from the Capitol grounds, the mob stormed the building. In his speech, Mr. Trump accused the then-vice-president Mike Pence of committing election fraud and urged him to annul the results.
With hundreds of people facing criminal charges, the riot sparked the largest police investigation in US history.
