- The government has a framework it regularly uses for big events that pose major threats to national security.
- It's used to coordinate security for events like presidential inaugurations and the Super Bowl. It wasn't in place ahead of the riots at the US Capitol this week.
- Law enforcement experts say it's "baffling" that a special national security event wasn't declared in advance of violent mobs storming the Capitol to protest Joe Biden's presidential win.
- Better coordination at the top could have prevented the invasion of the Capitol that led to five deaths and shook Americans’ faith in the national security apparatus and in democratic institutions, former government officials told Insider.
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The Trump administration failed to follow a well-known playbook for coordinating police and law enforcement responses ahead of the deadly pro-Trump riots at the US Capitol this week, national security experts told Insider.
It's a framework government officials regularly use for big events that pose major threats to national security, like a State of the Union address, the Olympics, or the Super Bowl.
Those events are officially known as National Special Security Events, and they usually happen a few times per year for significant occasions. Getting an NSSE designation means top law enforcement officials get in a room together to address threats and respond in real time.
But the Trump-led Department of Homeland Security didn't make that designation ahead of the siege on the US Capitol this week by a pro-Trump mob disputing the official congressional ceremony for certifying President-elect Joe Biden's 2020 victory.
That was a massive failure, according to law enforcement experts who told Insider this week that better coordination at the top could have prevented the violent invasion of the Capitol that led to five deaths and shook Americans' faith in the national security apparatus and in democratic institutions.
The breakdown that led to the siege involved "a failure to anticipate, coordinate, and then plan," said Charles Marino, a former supervisory special agent in the US Secret Service. That's exactly what NSSEs can help accomplish, he said.
A former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told Insider it was "baffling" that an NSSE wasn't designated in advance of the mob's invasion on Wednesday, given how publicly Trump's supporters were about telegraphing their plans and calling for an armed revolution on social media.
The absence of that designation "gave us what I think we saw" on Wednesday, the former DHS official said, "which was an underestimation by the leadership of the Capitol Police as to what was coming, even though the signals were there that this had the potential to go south."
There's a consensus among current Secret Service and DHS officials, that person added, "that there should have been an NSSE."
Working 'side by side'
Here's how an NSSE works.
The president or the secretary of Homeland Security can sign off on making the official designation. Then the Secret Service takes charge of coordinating the security operations for the event with the relevant state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies. If the NSSE is a Super Bowl in New Jersey, for example, state and local police would be involved.
It's a major undertaking that experts say shouldn't be done lightly, but it allows important officials to get in a room together. And it can help prevent incidents like what happened on Wednesday. After the high-profile disaster this week, Washington DC and federal officials have been trading blame and publicly sniping at each other over who was responsible for the failures.
The framework from NSSEs dates back to the Clinton administration. For a few years, only the president could make the determination, but that was expanded to the DHS secretary after that agency was established in 2003 following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Typically, two security coordination posts are set up during these events, said Douglas Smith, who served as a DHS assistant secretary during the Obama administration. There's a smaller command post near the event in addition to one "outside, for lack of a better term, the blast radius," Smith said. He noted that New York City's emergency command center was located in the World Trade Center, which was destroyed during the Sept. 11 bombings.
If officials had been coordinating in a room like that this week, dozens of officials could have been in the same room sharing information from their various agencies.
"They're side by side. They've got stations with reach back to their organizations. The intel is up on the board. They can see the movement of the crowds. It's a very coordinated, methodical approach," said the former DHS official.
The DHS press office declined to comment Friday about why a special security event wasn't designated. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Finger pointing
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was in the Middle East during Wednesday's melee in Washington. Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli toured the Capitol to assess the damage after the riots and later pointed a finger at the Capitol Police, which is controlled by the legislative branch, for being unprepared in an interview with CBS News on Friday.
"We were moving folks, Secret Service agents in particular, over before the violence began, but that has to come at the request of the Capitol Police because they have jurisdiction there," Cuccinelli said. "It does appear that there was inadequate preparation and numbers by the Capitol Police."
The Capitol Police had rejected an offer from the Pentagon for National Guard manpower that was made three days before the riots, the Associated Press reported. The Capitol Police did not respond to a request for comment Friday about how it had coordinated with federal officials leading up to the invasion on Wednesday and whether it had requested an NSSE designation.
Marino said the Capitol Police force was "set up for failure," even though they should have had a better plan in place.
The Department of Homeland Security should have played a bigger role, he said, particularly given the high stakes at the Capitol as Biden's presidential victory was being certified with Vice President Mike Pence on hand.
Protests and Electoral College certification ceremonies aren't usually candidates for NSSE designations, former Secret Service and DHS officials told Insider. But given the political climate and the fact that the president himself was disputing the election results, an NSSE should have been considered in this case, they said.
"You had the number two and number three in the line of succession. And you had all the other senior leadership from the House and the Senate," Marino said. "Not to mention, it would have been a bad day if the entire Congress were held hostage."