Few issues, other than John F. Kennedy’s assassination was a conspiracy, 9/11 was an inside job, and Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself, unite Americans more than belief that the January 6th 2021 Washington DC “insurrection” was incited by federal agent provocateurs. While initially the Biden administration aggressively exploited the incident for partisan political purposes, with officials ludicrously likening the unrest to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, it subsequently dropped off the mainstream radar without a trace.

An official desire to suppress awkward questions these disclosures raise about what precisely happened that fateful day, and why, may account for this. After all, a stream of clues suggesting the “insurrection” may have been fomented by shadowy actors has trickled into the public domain ever since. The latest is quite a bombshell. Legal activist group Judicial Watch has unearthed 88 pages of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records proving CIA operatives were covertly present on January 6th.

The files, secured via court order after the Department of Justice ignored Freedom of Information requests, include a series of text messages between Bureau agents, in a group chat titled “January 7 Intel Chain”. The exchanges contain two references to CIA participation in the official response to tumult. One message states that “two CIA bomb techs” were assisting with “a pipe bomb scene on New Jersey and D ST SE.” The other talks of “several CIA dog teams on standby.”

In theory, despite the CIA’s constitutional prohibition on domestic activities - which the Agency regularly breaches with impunity in any event - there is nothing necessarily suspicious about the Agency’s covert presence in Washington DC on January 6th. As an official factsheet notes, Langley’s “K9 unit” has been routinely deployed to “external events” on US soil, including Super Bowls, Miss Universe Pageants, Major League Baseball Games, and the Olympics. Moreover, there were numerous pipe bombs secreted in the US capital, requiring expert removal.

However, the factsheet reveals bomb disposal isn’t the CIA K9 Unit’s sole, or even prime responsibility. Its “mission” is to: “protect the worldwide assets and personnel of the CIA [emphasis added]. K9 teams are trained to detect all types of explosives by searching delivery trucks, buildings, vehicles, packages, and assisting CIA police officers [emphasis added].” When one considers that whoever laid explosives in DC remains at large today, suspicions about clandestine federal machinations on January 6th can only multiply.

Phantom Bomber

The FBI announced that it had diffused “viable” pipe bombs left at the Democratic and Republican National Committee buildings in DC mere hours after the Capitol’s breach on January 6th, and before the National Guard arrived on the scene. The Bureau subsequently published “images and video of the suspect, the suspect’s backpack, the suspect’s shoes, the explosive devices, and a map of the route the suspect walked the night the pipe bombs were placed.” 

A $500,000 reward was offered for information leading to the suspect’s prosecution. Fast forward three years, and the sum remains unclaimed. A renewed call for witnesses issued by the FBI January 4th 2024 noted that in the intervening time, “a dedicated team of FBI agents, analysts, data scientists, and law enforcement partners has worked thousands of hours conducting interviews, reviewing physical and digital evidence, and assessing tips from the public.” These leads reportedly helped the Bureau “advance the investigation.”

It is unclear how, given the culprit hasn’t yet been caught. Why pipe bombs were placed at the DNC and RNC is likewise uncertain. Then-Capitol police chief Steven Sund, and several US lawmakers, have speculated that the purpose was to divert law enforcement from the site of the looming “insurrection”. As it was, three separate police teams posted there were dispatched to the RNC, leaving just one squad at the Capitol building, right when Trump supporters were massing at barricades.

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Curiously, the RNC pipe bomb was found via happenstance. A local US Department of Commerce employee working remotely that day decided to use her lunch hour to do laundry. Her apartment block’s laundry room was situated at the back of the building, accessible via an alleyway shared with the RNC building. Having dropped her clothes off and returned home at noon, she went back to use a dryer at around 12:45pm, when she spotted the device, 20 minutes before its allegedly timed detonation.

Alerted police arrived almost immediately, a crew of ATF and FBI agents in tow. If the bomber’s objective truly was to divert law enforcement from the Capitol, this can only be considered miraculous timing, given at 12:54pm, Proud Boys activist Ryan Samsel breached the barricades, leading to a deluge of Trump supporters following suit, and the subsequent “insurrection”. Were it not for a US government employee’s chance find minutes before, the day may have proceeded very differently.

‘Proper Outcome’

The DNC pipe bomb was discovered at around 13:15pm, authorities having the foresight to check the building’s grounds too, on a whim. Given it didn’t explode, its timer was apparently set differently. The FBI states the two devices were laid “between approximately 7:30pm and 8:30pm” on January 5th. This lack of clarity is peculiar, given extensive footage of the suspect planting the pipe bombs, and the Bureau mapping their movements to and from the area with precision.

Washington DC is the second-most CCTV-saturated US city by some margin, which is remarkable given its small size - there are 35,082 surveillance cameras in total, making for 55.5 cameras per 1,000 citizens. Evidently, the feeds are not monitored in real-time, for the suspect made no attempt whatsoever to conceal their activities. A hooded and masked individual openly secreting something at two highly sensitive, well-protected political sites in succession would surely arouse some suspicion if so.

That the pipe bomber placed highly destructive payloads at the DNC and RNC so brazenly on January 5th 2021 without incident, entirely unnoticed, before disappearing into the ether is extraordinary. With Trump’s “Save America” rally scheduled for the next day, DC had begun to fill up with his supporters. That evening, they staged a demonstration in Freedom Square, which turned violent when Antifa and Black Lives Matter counter-protesters arrived, producing clashes, broken up by police. The city was already on high alert.

Over the prior week, the FBI and its field offices consistently warned of armed protests in every state, and plans by Trump supporters that included violence. On January 5th, the Bureau’s Norfolk, Virginia HQ emailed Capitol police an internal Situational Information Report, subject line: “potential criminal activities in the Washington DC area planned for tomorrow.” It contained social media posts indicating “Save America” attendees had malign intentions aplenty. One boldly declared:

“Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their [Black Lives Matter] and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

The FBI’s warning may account for why, according to mainstream media reports published in the immediate aftermath of January 6th, Capitol Hill staffers were told by supervisors not to attend work that day, due to greatly heightened risk levels. But it does not account for DC authorities simultaneously failing to deploy precautions, such as frozen zones and hardened barriers, commonly used for major events in the area.

By contrast, it appears the outgoing administration was highly security conscious on January 6th. In January 2022, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato told House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack investigators his superior, Mark Meadows, pressured DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to request a sizeable National Guard presence on the day, for fear of violent clashes erupting with counterprotesters again. Trump purportedly suggested up to 10,000 peacekeepers would be necessary.

Ornato also revealed White House frustration with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller’s slow deployment of the National Guard on the afternoon of January 6th. Once the Capitol was breached, Meadows ordered Miller, “get them in here, get them in here to secure the Capitol now.” His exculpatory testimony was concealed until March 8th this year. Two months earlier, Committee chair Liz Cheney claimed there was “no evidence” Trump ordered the Capitol to be protected.

In February 2021, TIME magazine published a lengthy investigation into how Democratic activists, unions, anti-Trump Republicans, corporations, and Big Tech secretly banded together to “fortify” the 2020 Presidential election, and ensure “every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome…was defeated.” It noted there were “virtually no counterdemonstrators” on January 6th, as “to preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was ‘strenuously discouraging counter activity’” that morning.

Many powerful figures and government agencies clearly foresaw “mayhem” on January 6th. Putting these facts together, we are left with the ineluctable conclusion that, at the very least, the “insurrection” was known about in advance, and perhaps consciously permitted to proceed. The now confirmed presence of CIA personnel near the Capitol while that “mayhem” was taking place represents an entirely new, deeply troubling dimension of an already disquieting record.