The J6 "False Flag" Conspiracy Garbage Debunked
That so many former senior FBI officials refused to cooperate with the IG's investigation is both telling and outrageous. Every single one of them was in a critical management position between November 4, 2020, and the day of the attack.
In a report that should've received wall-to-wall media coverage, late last week the Department of Justice's Inspector General (DoJ IG) released its long-awaited report debunking MAGA-world's conspiracy theory crap that the FBI or its informants orchestrated the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. What got no coverage to speak of was the IG's findings of what can only be described as an FBI intelligence failure that rivals the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 debacles.
Since this December 14, 2024 USA Today piece provides a good example of the kinds of limited reporting on the DoJ IG report's findings, I'm going to focus instead on some other extremely telling details in the IG report that point to what I suspect is a de facto cover up about just how badly the FBI performed it's domestic counterterrorism mission between November 4, 2020 and January 6, 2021.
Former Senior FBI Officials Stiff-Armed the IG
From the IG's report (p. 7):
Former FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich declined our request to be interviewed, as did former Executive Assistant Director Jeffrey Sallet, former Executive Assistant Director for National Security John Brown, former Executive Assistant Director for Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch Terry Wade, and former Executive Assistant Director for Intelligence Stephen Laycock. The OIG lacks subpoena authority to compel former Department employees and third-party witnesses to testify.
Of the named individuals, only Bowdich is mentioned in the House J6 Select Committee report and references to his account to the committee largely deal with events on the day the Capitol was overrun by the Trump-incited mob.
I've examined Bowdich's committee interview transcript as well and while it provides some limited details on his actions post-November 2020, his refusal to cooperate with the IG robs us of a chance to compare his account to the J6 Select Committee with what he might have--and should have--revealed to the IG.
That so many former senior FBI officials refused to cooperate with the IG's investigation is both telling and outrageous. Every single one of them was in a critical management position between November 4, 2020, and the day of the attack.
With Trump's second takeover of the Executive branch imminent and the Congress guaranteed to be in GOP hands for the next two years, there will be no additional official investigations into the Justice Department's and the FBI's mishandling of the events leading up to Trump's attempted coup. Accordingly, I intend to use the DoJ IG's report as a road map for using FOIA and FOIA litigation to try to force into the public domain the key correspondence of the five FBI officials who refused to cooperate with the IG.
Bureaucratic Inertia and the Looming Threat
What comes across clearly in the IG report on the FBI's failure to properly and promptly task its vast network of confidential human sources (CHS's, i.e., snitches) is the amount of time that was wasted by FBI headquarters offices and the Washington Field Office (WFO) arguing over who should be tasking CHS's and what they should be asked to do or find out. This was especially true after Trump on December 19, 2020, issued his infamous "going to be wild" tween about January 6.
During the last 11 days of December 2020, FBI intelligence analysts and mid-level managers went back-and-forth over email and other communications modes about the specific language that should be used for any intelligence taskings to FBI field offices and their CHS's. Again, the IG's report says it best. After a December 30, 2020, exchange between the FBI's Intelligence Division and its Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD), the IG noted (p. 24):
We did not find evidence of any further communications within the Intelligence Division about a collection product concerning January 6, including any discussions with WMDD about adding a question to its CPM [Collection Priorities Message] related to the electoral certification. As noted previously, WMDD ultimately did not issue its CPM until January 12.
The lack of urgency to task every single information source available to the FBI during that critical three-week period between December 19 and January 6 eerily echoes similar intelligence failures prior to December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
If we are ever to learn something approximating the full facts behind the FBI's pre-January 6 intelligence and operational failures, it will take a new, nongovernmental effort to uncover the documentary record of those events. I'll begin that effort in earnest in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading The Sentinel. If you're not currently a subscriber, please consider becoming one as doing so is free through 2024 and it's an easy way to show your support for my work. Also, please share this piece with family, friends, and anyone else you believe would benefit from reading it.
