IG Report? More like C.Y.A. Report

Government concludes government did a wonderful job, actually

I’ve finished reading through the promised IG Report, and it’s more than a little disappointing. As I mentioned on Friday, the focus of the report was the FBI’s handling of their Confidential Human Sources (CHS) and the information provided them before January 6th.

This means we have NO insight into upper-level FBI communications — and very very little in the way of primary communications — just a passing mention of the pipe bombs found outside RNC and DNC headquarters, and no inquiry of other agencies that we know had people on the ground during the protest-turned-riot.

The most disappointing thing about this very narrow scope of the investigation is that it seems to be entirely self-imposed:

As we’ll cover in a few minutes, this limited scope uncovered basically zero “new” information, because most CHS simply report public information they’ve seen on the internet. And limiting the search quite obviously limits the type of evidence that you DO uncover.

I’ve already touched on the 26 CHS in the crowd, so we’re mostly going to skip over that aspect, except to debunk this statement from the DC U.S. Attorney’s Office:

This is quite obviously bullshit, because the report outright states that 4 of the 26 CHS went INTO THE CAPITOL. And while they may have TECHNICALLY not been authorized to enter the capitol or restricted grounds, if you don’t prosecute them for doing so, they’re effectively authorized.

Especially when you pay for one of them to come back a couple weeks later.

One of the main focuses of the report — and a key part of the intelligence ‘failure’ at the FBI revolves around defining the various classifications of emails and events and everything in between. The most “urgent” classification for the FBI is Time Sensitive Information Need.

A TSIN was never issued for January 6th — which struck me as odd considering the agency issued one for what APPEARS to be the Breonna Taylor case. The FBI had the information beforehand — they simply didn’t act on it.

The issue stems from this December 30th e-mail from the Washington Field Office (WFO) complaining the agency is receiving TOO many tips about the upcoming protests on Jan 6th and 20th.

And although this email suggests agents should use their CHS systems to gain actionable information, most offices just ignored the directive because it didn’t have the proper classification. Thus (the report suggests), the WFO THOUGHT it was getting all available information, when they weren’t.

What type of information DID they get?

an individual purporting to be the leader of a group that had “500 people willing to storm the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on January 6th”

These and other tips were correlated into a “Guardian” defined as such — Complaints or tips to the FBI deemed appropriate for further investigatory action may be entered in a system known as “Guardian” and a pre-assessment may be opened. You may remember the term from this email in an earlier article:

(This specific Guardian report starts on page 85 of the report. It’s one of the few actual communications we got.)

But as I mentioned above, none of this information was actually new:

And in fact, this CHS organization had already been activated for a couple post-election protests in DC — one of which ended with multiple firearm arrests.

Early on, the FBI expected January 6th to be more or less like those other protests. When Trump mentioned he would be speaking, however, the agency went into full-blown freak-out mode. Part of that freak-out involved preventing “Domestic Terrorism” subjects from getting to DC in the first place:

Which helps explain this email:

The report mentions (more than once) that the FBI doesn’t really have a whole lot of jurisdiction in DC, and was relegated to a support role. In fact, a number of agencies have jurisdiction over various parts of the Capitol — meaning there are a LOT of people involved in the process of protecting it.

But who WAS in charge? They couldn’t even decide amongst themselves.

“You’re in charge of security.”

“No thanks.”

That’s the same attitude that Mark Milley had, as well:

And while the FBI might not have been the agency responsible for the lack of security on January 6th, it’s ALSO obvious the agencies that WERE in charge had sufficient information about threats to law enforcement and Congress to enact proper security measures.

Hell, the FBI was worried about the protest spiraling out of control and kicking of NATION-WIDE UNREST!

But I’m supposed to believe the WFO only knew of FIVE CHS in the crowd? (The others movement to DC hadn’t yet been reported.) And they were perfectly happy with this situation, even while they were standing up agents all over the region to step in AFTER things went bad?

Still not buying it.

We’ll have to wait for Kash to take over before we get the truth.

This doesn’t have to be a long-term thing…..buy me a coffee on Ko-fi — no subscription required!