Newsweek - USA (2021-02-12)

14 NEWSWEEK.COM FEBRUARY 12, 2021

permission to request that the D.C. Guard be put

on standby, he was told to informally seek help, to

not go through the White House. His bosses were

partisan too, beholden to the Republican majority

in the Senate and answerable to an angry collec-

tive in the House.

So when well over 100,000 Americans protest-

ed in Washington, D.C., that day and as many as

1,000 demonstrators forced their way into build-

ings, there were 9/11-like errors and blind spots

that fed a preventable disaster. The 2,100-strong

Capitol Police didn’t go on alert and didn’t erect

sufficient defenses, such was the denial that the

usually overly-cautious national security guard-

ians displayed.

Already, blame and suspicion is swirling from

top to bottom—from President Trump to the

Capitol police officers on the beat—that insiders

colluded with the insurrectionists, that the dots

weren’t connected, that partisan actors intention-

ally looked the other way because they too want-

ed to overturn the people’s will. And because they

could not conceive that thousands of white peo-

ple, many dressed in military garb, could seek to

overthrow their government, they couldn’t move.

‘Why Fuel the Fire?’

“there’s a general rule of security, that once

they’re inside the perimeter, it’s all over,” one se-

nior military officer told Newsweek, referring to

mob control. Congress shouldn’t have been tak-

en by surprise by the size of the crowd and the

willingness of the mob to attack America’s seat

of democracy, the officer says. But he, and many

others, are sympathetic with the Capitol Police.

Once the rioters were inside, he says, focus on pro-

tecting Vice President Mike Pence and some 500-

plus members of Congress, as well as thousands in

the Congressional workforce and even dozens of

members of the news media, rather than on pro-

tecting a “building,” was the right course of action.

“Yes there was a massive failure,” he says, “but

why fuel the fire with more oxygen.” He says we

are lucky that only five people died, and that even

more physical damage wasn’t done.

Despite another impeachment of now former

President Trump and investigations that seek to

place blame somewhere, lawmakers have issued

a torrent of words thanking the Capitol Police

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