在周三之前的几个月里致命的暴动两名直接知情的联邦官员告诉美国广播公司新闻，在美国国会大厦，特朗普政府摧毁了一个负责向全国执法伙伴输送情报和威胁评估的关键联邦机构。

官员们表示，结果是，留下的信息真空可能使华盛顿特区的执法部门失去了一个关键的可采取行动的警告渠道，这些警告本可以帮助官员们为周三聚集在国家广场的右翼极端分子构成的入境威胁做好准备。

一名官员告诉美国广播公司新闻，“在1月6日之前，有大量预先存在的情报应该被收集、分析并传播给联邦、州和地方当局。”

其中一名官员表示，例如，截至周一晚上，国土安全部情报领导人已经收到现场报告，详细说明执法人员已知的人正在前往国会大厦，他们在许多情况下携带武器和绳索前往那里。

一名官员表示:“几位官员都知道这一情报，并估计可能会发生暴力事件。”。

然而，“没有像过去那样提前制定具体的计划，”他说。

官员们说，如果DHS情报分析办公室在过去几个月里一直全力运作，美国国会警察就会更清楚地了解计划参加周三集会的团体构成的“具体和可信”的暴力威胁。

这些威胁预示着周三国会大厦前所未有的破坏，最终导致五人丧生，包括一名国会警察，他们被部署来帮助保护国会议员，因为他们聚集在一起正式证明当选总统乔·拜登的选举团胜利。

这些不愿透露姓名的官员说，DHS情报分析办公室的运作和人员配置在该部门对俄勒冈州波特兰夏季内乱的反应引发争议后被大幅削减。今年8月，DHS前情报局长布莱恩·墨菲被调职，此前有报道称，他所在的部门发布了三份报告，其中包含记者关于该部门泄露的文件的推文。

当这些报道在8月份出现时，专家们表示，收集记者的情报产品推文有可能违反受宪法保护的言论自由。

结果，至少有两个关键的情报收集项目基本上被关闭，该办公室在重大公共事件发生前向警方发布规划公告的例行程序几乎被终止。

香农·斯台普顿/路透社

支持特朗普的抗议者在与警察的冲突中冲进美国国会大厦，在一次前往华盛顿的集会中

在对美国广播公司新闻的一份声明中，一名DHS情报和分析发言人表示，该机构“已经编制了大量情报报告，强调了2020-2021年期间威胁加剧的环境选举季节，包括政治过渡和政治两极化在多大程度上有助于动员个人实施暴力。"

这位发言人表示:“从某种程度上来说，新闻报道表明(情报分析办公室)不相信选举团认证等事件实际上构成了更大的威胁环境，这是不正确的。”。

发言人没有回答具体问题。

美国广播公司新闻(ABC News)最近几周只能找到一份与执法合作伙伴共享的DHS情报公告，警告称，“2020年大选的结果可能会与他们持久的政治和社会观点相结合，并导致一些(国内暴力极端分子)在未来几个月内动员起来实施暴力。”

这一声明包含在12月30日的一份题为“由于持续的不满，多样化的国内暴力极端主义景观可能会持续下去”的报告中。该文件没有将1月6日的国会联席会议确定为潜在目标，也没有表明国会山是目标。

也没有发布会前公告，提醒该地区的警方注意网上发布的讨论，以及那些计划参加的人是否会因为愤怒而采取行动。然而，这样的公告是在事件发生前由监督团体发布的。

例如，上周一，监控极端主义团体的反诽谤联盟(Anti-诽谤罪联盟)发布了一份新闻稿，标题为“极端主义者和主流特朗普支持者抗议国会认证拜登获胜的计划”。

发布的内容包括网上一些人的评论，他们说他们计划参加集会，其中一个人说，如果国会继续证明拜登的胜利，“你闯入国会(原文如此)，杀死沼泽生物。别忘了你的枪，这不应该是一场毫无意义的和平抗议，这是一场革命的开始。”

周三，美国国民警卫队(National Guard)的回应有限。国民警卫队经常帮助华盛顿和其他地方的人群控制。针对这一问题，五角大楼官员直接指出，他们缺乏情报共享。

香农·斯台普顿/路透社

2021年1月6日，在华盛顿特区与警察的冲突中，支持特朗普的抗议者席卷国会大厦。

负责国防部国土安全职能的助理国防部长肯·拉布亚诺(Ken Rapuano)周四对记者表示，总体评估“我们一再得到的信息表明，没有重大暴力抗议的迹象”。

自国会大厦被围困以来的几天里，执法官员一直在大声质疑联邦和地方当局如何未能预见和准备好数十名愤愤不平的特朗普支持者构成的威胁，这些支持者愤怒被点燃了由于特朗普一再坚持选举被操纵，他们的投票被改变了，拜登不是合法的获胜者。

专家们表示，开源报告和公开信息应该已经向美国国会警察、大都会警察局和联邦调查局透露，周三有可能发生暴力事件，但缺乏DHS情报收集的官方渠道可能导致缺乏态势感知。

“整个事件是一个战术上的失败，也是一个情报上的失败，”前纽约警察局局长罗伯特·博伊斯侦探说，他是美国广播公司新闻的撰稿人。他说，国会大厦的官员“措手不及”，导致执法部门“不堪重负，人手不足”。

博伊斯解释说，显然缺乏关键情报来指导他们的规划和反应，这使执法处于不利地位，因此官员们没有准备好让暴徒向前冲击，最终成功入侵国会大厦，突袭参议院和众议院所在的大楼。

博伊斯说:“执法应该由情报驱动的警察来领导，当你评估这么多的人群时，不要这样……这是一项非常重要的工作。”

整理并向执法伙伴传播有用的情报是DHS的一项关键职能。该机构是在911袭击发生后成立的，当时美国当局认定，这些袭击主要是情报和计划的失误。该机构的成立部分是为了确保全国各地的执法机构拥有高质量的情报，以协助警方为周三的事件做准备。

“评估威胁并向我们的国土安全伙伴提供警告是DHS的工作，”伊丽莎白·纽曼(Elizabeth Neumann)说，她是特朗普手下的前国土安全助理部长，也在9.11事件后立即在白宫工作。我觉得很难相信，但如果事实上，国会警察不知道这群人构成的潜在威胁，那么是的，部分责任可以归咎于DHS。"

另一位要求匿名的前情报官员回应了纽曼的担忧，即周三情报的缺失反映了“DHS执行其核心任务的能力的崩溃”。"

“这似乎是对DHS情报和分析办公室资源的一种错误使用，这些资源本应优先处理。不清楚他们为什么发布这些开源情报报告，”贾韦德·阿里说，他曾在特朗普国家安全委员会工作，在联邦调查局和DHS担任情报职务。“我只是不知道这是否是DHS当局被设计用来做事的方式。”

Months ahead of Capitol riot, DHS threat assessment group was gutted: Officials

In the months leading up to Wednesday'sdeadly insurrectionat the U.S. Capitol, the Trump administration gutted a key federal agency responsible for funneling intelligence and threat assessments to law enforcement partners across the country, two federal officials with direct knowledge told ABC News.

As a result, officials said, the information vacuum left behind may have deprived law enforcement in Washington, D.C., of a key avenue for actionable warnings that could have helped officers prepare for the inbound threat posed by right-wing extremists who gathered on the National Mall on Wednesday.

"Prior to Jan. 6, there were mountains of pre-existing intelligence that should have been collected, analyzed and disseminated to the federal, state and local authorities," one of the officials told ABC News.

One of the officials said that by Monday night, for example, Department of Homeland Security intelligence leaders had received field reports detailing that people known to law enforcement were heading to the Capitol, and that they were heading there in many cases with weapons and ropes.

"Several officials were aware of this intelligence and also assessed violence was likely," said one official.

However, "no specific plans were put in place ahead of time as it would have been done in the past," he said.

Had the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis been operating at full capacity over the previous months, the officials said, U.S. Capitol Police would have had a clearer picture of the "specific and credible" threats of violence posed by groups planning to attend Wednesday's rally.

Those threats foreshadowed an unprecedented breach of the Capitol complex on Wednesday, and culminated in the loss of five lives, including a Capitol Police officer deployed to help protect members of Congress as they gathered to formally certify President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College triumph.

The operations and staffing at the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis were slashed in the wake of the controversy surrounding the department's response to civil unrest in Portland, Oregon, over the summer, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In August, a former DHS intelligence chief, Brian Murphy, was reassigned after reports emerged that his unit had disseminated three reports containing journalists' tweets about documents that were leaked from the department.

When these reports emerged in August, experts said the collection of journalists' tweets for intelligence products threatened to breach Constitutionally protected free speech.

As a result, at least two critical intelligence-gathering programs were essentially shuttered, and the office's routine of issuing planning bulletins to police in advance of major public events was all but terminated.

In a statement to ABC News, a DHS intelligence and analysis spokesperson said the agency "has produced numerous intelligence reports highlighting the heightened threat environment during the 2020-2021electionseason, including the extent to which the political transition and political polarization are contributing to the mobilization of individuals to commit violence."

"To the extent press reports suggest that [the Office of Intelligence and Analysis] did not believe events such as the certification of the electoral college in effect presented a heightened threat environment, they are incorrect," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson did not respond to specific questions.

ABC News was only able to identify one DHS intelligence bulletin shared with law enforcement partners in recent weeks warning that the "outcome of the 2020 general election could combine with their enduring political and social views and lead some [domestic violent extremists] to mobilize to violence in the coming months."

That statement was included in a Dec. 30 report entitled "Diverse Domestic Violent Extremist Landscape Probably Will Persist Due to Enduring Grievances." The document did not identify the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress as a potential target, nor did it indicate that Capitol Hill was being targeted.

Also absent was a pre-event bulletin alerting police agencies in the area about discussions being posted online and whether those planning to attend might be looking to act out because of their anger. Such bulletins, though, were published by watchdog groups prior to the event.

Last Monday, for example, the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors extremist groups, issued a news release headlined "Extremists and Mainstream Trump Supporters Plan to Protest Congressional Certification of Biden's Victory."

The release included examples of online comments from people who said they were planning to attend the rally, including one that said that if Congress proceeds to certify Biden's win, "you break into the congress (sic) and kill the swamp creatures. Don't forget your guns, this is not supposed to be a good for nothing peaceful protest, it's the beginning of a revolution."

In response to questions about the limited response Wednesday from the National Guard, which frequently helps with crowd control in Washington and elsewhere, Pentagon officials pointed directly to a lack of intelligence shared with them.

Assistant Defense Secretary Ken Rapuano, who oversees homeland security functions at the Defense Department, told reporters Thursday the overall assessment "that we got repeatedly was no indications of significant violent protests."

In the days since the siege on the Capitol, law enforcement officials have wondered aloud how federal and local authorities failed to foresee and prepare for the threat posed by scores of aggrieved Trump supporters whoseanger had been fueledby Trump's repeated insistence that the election was rigged, their votes were changed, and Biden was not the legitimate winner.

Experts said that open-source reporting and publicly available information should have tipped off U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department, and the FBI that there was a chance of violence on Wednesday -- but that the absence of the official channel of DHS intelligence gathering likely contributed to a lack of situational awareness.

"This entire event was a tactical failure as well as an intelligence failure," said former New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce, an ABC News contributor. Officers at the Capitol were caught "flat-footed," he said, leading to a situation where law enforcement was "overwhelmed and understaffed."

The apparent void of critical intelligence to guide their planning and response left law enforcement at a disadvantage, Boyce explained, so officers were not ready for a mob to surge forward in what was ultimately a successful effort to invade the Capitol complex and storm the building that houses the Senate and House of Representatives.

"Law enforcement should be led by intelligence-driven policing, and to not have that when you're assessing a crowd of that magnitude … it's a really important job," Boyce said.

Collating and disseminating useful intelligence to law enforcement partners is a key function of DHS, an agency created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington after authorities determined that the attacks were largely failures of intelligence and planning. The agency was formed in part to ensure that law enforcement agencies across the country have top-quality intelligence to assist police in preparing for events like Wednesday's.

"It is DHS' job to assess threats and provide warning to our homeland security partners," said Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under Trump who also worked at the White House in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. "I find it hard to believe, but if, in fact, Capitol Police had no knowledge of the potential threat this crowd posed, then yes, part of the blame can be laid at the feet of DHS."

Another former intelligence official who asked to remain anonymous echoed Neumann's concern that the absence of intelligence on Wednesday reflected a "breakdown in DHS' ability to carry out its core mission."

"This seems a misguided use of DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis resources on a set of priorities from what they should be. It's not clear why they issued these open-source intelligence reports," Javed Ali, who worked on the Trump National Security Council, and in intelligence positions at the FBI and DHS. "I just don't know if that's the way the DHS authorities were designed to be used."