Report: DHS Division Failed To Analyze Intelligence Ahead Of Capitol Violence

For months, officials have been saying the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of a classic intelligence failure. Now key officials are questioning whether that was the case.

A report written by the former head of intelligence at the New York Police Department, Mitch Silber, and titled Domestic Violent Extremism and the Intelligence Challenge makes clear that officials at the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies had collected plenty of intelligence leading up to the insurrection at the Capitol. What they failed to do was analyze it.

"Intelligence collection did not fail," Silber writes in an analysis for the Atlantic Council obtained by NPR before its publication next week. "In fact, it was robust. Rather, the failure was in the analysis of the intelligence and the failure of senior government officials to issue warnings based on that intelligence."

That could explain why a little-known division of DHS called the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, or I&A, is now receiving so much attention. In addition to the upcoming report, the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is devoting a hearing on May 18 to I&A and it will focus on what the intelligence division was doing in the run-up to the Capitol attack.