Should Figliuzzi's Criticism of the Jan 6 Committee Questions Be Heeded As Sept 18 Approaches?

[ancianita]

transcript:

FIGLIUZZI: Yes, I was wholly unimpressed with what I heard in the first hearing. And I realize it`s likely just a prelude of what`s to come.

But here`s the bottom line. Try as I might, Lawrence, I cannot make sense out of the security failure that occurred on January 6th. And here`s why. Even when I factor in the very real civil liberties concerns and legal constraints on what law enforcement can and can`t do in monitoring social media and collecting intelligence on U.S. persons, I get that, I factor that in.

Even when I factor in the possibility of political intervention in the planning and later response to the insurrection, and that needs to be investigated.

Even when I do that, I still am faced with a conflict here. We have former chiefs of police and sergeants at arms saying that the intelligence available to them did not indicate a threat in their professional minds.

Yet we know that the intelligence was crystal clear that people were violently going to target the Capitol, and the target was the center of the -- the Capitol was the center of the action that day.

So here`s my conclusion. We seem to collectively have a problem in this country, writ large and in the law enforcement community, with seeing people who look like us as threats even when the threat and intelligence is staring us in the face.

And I want to be clear I`m not saying that these officers, former executives in law enforcement are lying. I`m saying that would be something we could deal with. We have laws against lying to Congress.

I`m saying it`s more disturbing than that. They`re telling us the truth, that when they look at the available intelligence, intelligence that I saw sitting at home of what was being planned and what was going to be executed, they say that wasn`t a threat to them.

And I`m saying collectively the hard question here is why, why not? And when you contrast that on the flip side and say look at the deployment and security presence for Black Lives Matter protests where there was little to no intelligence indicating a threat, you see that disparity.

And you`re left with the conclusion I write about in my article released today that we`ve got a problem seeing ourselves as a threat. And we find it much easier to find people who don`t look like us as a threat even when they`re not.

O`DONNELL: So what`s an example of the way the Congress should focus its questions going forward?

FIGLIUZZI: So we`re going to hear next week, I believe it`s on Tuesday -- we`re going to hear from the federal side. We`re going to hear from active duty FBI and other federal agencies. So we`re likely to hear very valid lessons that we all need to listen to about what they can and can`t do on social media.

You know, this myth that big brother government is listening to everybody and monitoring everything is simply not true. And we don`t want that to be true. But we need to ask those folks why is it that you find these other groups a threat yet the intelligence was so unapparent to you that you just send it casually in an e-mail? We need that answer.