Smoking Guns and Strong Links
Written by Elizabeth Moon.
The appearance online last week of Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller’s actual instructions to the Secretary of the Army concerning the “possible” use of the District of Columbia National Guard (DCNG) January 6, is the smoking gun here. As Secretary of Defense, Miller was appointed by Trump after his defeat and took his orders from Trump and was authorized to pass Trump’s orders to Secretaries of the military branches. Thus Miller’s instructions to the Secretary of the Army–from whom the command chain of the National Guard descends–would control any National Guard response.
In addition, a Vanity Fair article by Adam Ciralsky (published January 22, 2021) sealed the last holes in the chain of command. There is no written order from Trump, but there is a solid chain of evidence that what Miller did and did not do was authorized by Trump and accorded with his wishes. Ciralsky, who was “embedded” with Miller, has Miller’s own descriptions, and also talked to his two subordinates, Kash Patel and Ezra Cohen, as well as some other individuals he does not name, but quotes. He had very unusual access.
Click to see document.
Both the memorandum sent to the Secretary of the Army and the details of Miller’s actions as reported by Ciralsky are important to close the gaps, but first take a look at the memorandum. Supposedly (according to Trump and Miller) the limitations on the National Guard’s equipment and activity resulted from the D.C. Mayor’s complaints following the savage attacks on a peaceful demonstration in front of the White House July 1, 2020, when federal troops (undesignated, uniforms but no patched) tear-gassed and roughed up noisy but harmless demonstrators so the President could walk through Lafayette Park and pose in front of St. James Episcopal Church waving a Bible. Personally, I think Trump and Miller used that as an excuse for the more ridiculous limits placed on the DCNG troops, to assure that they would not be able to act effectively even if deployed.
Unlike the police, they were not to carry weapons of any kind, wear protective gear (helmets, body armor), use any riot control equipment, make physical contact with any of the demonstrators except to save their own lives or the lives of others, share any equipment with other law enforcement units, make use of any Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance assets (ISR) or conduct any ISR activities such as Incidence, Awareness, Assessment. They were not to employ helicopters or other air assets. They were not to conduct searches, seizures, arrests “or other law enforcement activity,” or to seek support from non-DCNG units (such as the Maryland National Guard which appeared later.)
These restrictions, coupled with the delay in deployment, meant that the DC National Guard was being sent into an active and very dangerous riot zone where the Capitol Police were being beaten, dragged, hit with poles and even a fire extinguisher with less equipment than some of the rioters. The several groups of trained ex-military/paramilitary wore combat quality helmets, body armor, face shields, gas masks…and carried tasers, knives, and some of them other weapons. Many others in the crowd wore helmets of some kind, body armor of a sort, and carried improvised (but effective) weapons.
What, exactly, could the National Guard–without any weapons, without any protective gear, without any riot control gear, with no ability to call in air support or assistance from another National Guard unit (e.g. Maryland NG)–be expected to do? Look impressive? Add to the casualty count? They’d have been helpless to prevent what actually happened, and coming on the scene late, would not have been able to stop what had started. And they required a direct order to do even that much.
The Secretary of the Army had to send them, and he needed the GO from the Secretary of Defense, who knew what Trump had told him…or rather, as the next post will explain, how Trump had sortakinda-but-not-exactly told him. But this is a very smoking gun, blazing hot, with fingerprints right on it, all identifiable.
damning
1Damning evidence that people like Miss Lindsay doesn’t want anyone to see.
2premeditation
3planning
plotting
Reportedly acting Secretary Miller was basically ordered to write that memo which is basically a stand-down order. According to the Vanity Fair article he was not really on board with that but did it anyway. And he is willing to “talk to Senators” about it.
I hope we get some new statements out of him before the impeachment trial starts.
4GD it I want to see Trump in chains. He’s been a cause of my blood pressure spikes for four years and it’s time he tastes prison food. Let’s get the impeachment futility over with so the state and district prosecutors can go to work on him and make his life hell. He more than deserves it.
5Papa @2, Leningrad Lindsey has another name. It surfaced on an old tweet by Jen Psaki. The right wing mobs suddenly are all the new best friends with the gays and calling her out as a homophobe. Bear in mind they had to research every tweet she ever wrote and take it somewhat out of context. But hey this has to be a first for them defending rather than attacking the gay community.
6It has been Miss Lindsey for years.
There is another aspect. Gov. Hogan had the
Maryland Guard loaded and ready to go, all he needed was authority from DoD to cross the border. For more than an hour he was unable to contact anybody in SecDef office.
This was a stall. The office ought to be staffed around the clock but in any event the Pentagon should be working at midday Wednesdays.
7Any commanders who would send troops into ANY situation, even within the US, where they face threat of bodily harm should be immediately dishonorably discharged and stripped of benefits.
8Sorry, I meant to say “face the threat of bodily harm stripped of protective gear and weaponry”.
9300 members of the DC National Guard were apparently expected to stand around and block traffic AWAY from the main areas of contact with demonstrators. Thus, the “optics” of avoiding weapons and substantial body armor.
Hope you’ll include the few National Guard who WERE in full kit in a future entry:
10“A small quick-reaction force [a D.C. National Guard force of 40 troops] assembled by the Defense Department to assist if needed during protests in Washington on Wednesday did not immediately respond when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol because of a lack of a prior planning with Capitol Police over how it might be deployed, Pentagon officials said.”
And this despite the fact that Miller and Trump were certain there would be crowds (the permissions from the Parks dept were for a total of 30,000; actual numbers not known, but probably less), that violence was a possibility, and even Trump telling Miller he would need 10,000 troops (not available in D.C. National Guard) to control the crowd.
11For a military that for three generations has told us it is ready to respond to an all-out attack from Russia in less than 30 minutes, the response time for a telegraphed punch at the Capitol just conforms what I learned in the ’60s: the US military is run by incompetents.
Parkinson’s Law is vindicated again. There are as many lieutenant generals in the Flynn family as there were in the Union Army during the Civil War.
(Parkinson’s Law is usually stated as work expands to fill the time allotted to do it, but his original analysis was based on the expansion of the Admiralty by an order of magnitude while the navy it governed shrank by more than an order of magnitude.)
12Until we know more about the extent of the conspiracy surrounding the events of January 6, I am going to withhold judgment on the refusal of the military command to deploy any troops that day anywhere in DC. Activating the DC NG, or sending active duty units into DC, would have put those units under the operational control of the Commander in Chief. I think it highly probable that the Joint Chiefs had issued instructions to the generals on duty not to send troops of any kind into DC until and unless the Chiefs could be assured control of them, and there was no possibility that Trump people would be able to control them.
13People need to go to prison for this, starting with Chris Miller and Donald Trump. It must not be swept under the rug. What did they think was going to happen when they sent completely unequipped National Guard troops against that mob?
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