ARGUMENT: INSTITUTIONAL CULTUREThe Missing Review of FBI’s January 6 Intelligence and Law Enforcement Failures

Published 11 November 2022

Much attention has been paid to the troubling institutional culture among agents at the U.S. Secret Service – agents who, according to Asha Rangappa.  sympathized with, and since minimized their advanced knowledge of, the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6. “It is time to focus similar attention on the FBI,” she writes.

Much attention has been paid to the troubling institutional culture among agents at the U.S. Secret Service – agents who, according to Asha Rangappa.  sympathized with, and since minimized their advanced knowledge of, the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6.

She writes in Just Security:

It is time to focus similar attention on the FBI. To be sure, the Bureau has done a commendable job over the last eighteen months. It has helped bring to justice hundreds of the “foot soldiers” from January 6 as well two organized militia groups – the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys – indicating that by and large agents across all field offices are following their constitutional duty to uphold the law without fear or favor. However, these victories have masked what appears to be internal resistance by at least a small minority of agents who believe that the January 6 investigations are unjustified or overblown. That’s a factor which, it stands to reason, may have played a role in the lack of proactive measures taken by the FBI in the face of multiple warnings of potential violence on January 6. The evidence presented by the January 6 Committee, combined with reporting over the last year, offer clues into what may be going on behind the scenes at the Bureau. If the picture painted by these sources is true, it suggests an internal, long-brewing problem that the FBI needs to investigate and nip in the bud. That, to date, FBI Director Christopher Wray has not taken action to address the problem internally also suggests that congressional oversight committees may need to get involved and demand answers.

Rangappa concludes:

[T]here should be a comprehensive congressional oversight review of the FBI. Director Wray should be called to personally account for the Bureau’s inaction leading up to January 6, with respect to at least the following five issues:

1. Discrepancy between congressional testimony and the intelligence information the FBI possessed;

2. Clarification on use of social media in investigations, and why it was not monitored leading up to January 6th;

3. Specific efforts made to curb the “permissive” culture of leaking which the Office of Inspector General found in its 2021 report;

4. Attempts made to identify agents who sympathize with the attack on January 6, and to screen new agents for extremist views; and

5. Specific steps taken to prevent January 6th failures from occurring in the future.

The status quo at the Bureau is an untenable situation, given that politically-motivated violence continues, even against the FBI itself. And the kinds of political pressures on the Bureau during the Trump presidency may yet return in one form or another. With an intelligence and law enforcement failure of the magnitude of January 6, the country needs an examination of the structural flaws and the personal ones as well that brought us to this point.