Uncovering Army secretary’s Jan. 6 delay of National Guard

OPINION:

The District of Columbia National Guard, or DCNG, is the only military organization in the Department of Defense over which the president has direct and immediate command authority. The president’s authority has historically been delegated to the secretary of defense, who has further delegated operational control of the DCNG to the secretary of the Army.

On Jan. 5, 2021, the secretary of the Army, who was in charge of the DCNG, issued a memo expressly prohibiting D.C. National Guard Commanding Gen. William Walker from deploying National Guard forces — including the Quick Reaction Force — to the U.S. Capitol without the secretary of the Army’s explicit approval. This prohibition was unprecedented.

On Jan. 6, 2021, the Capitol perimeter was breached at 12:53 p.m. But the Guard forces didn’t arrive for over five hours. During this time, the U.S. Capitol Police were overrun, and people died.

My investigation of the events of Jan. 6 and its aftermath revealed a disturbing truth: The DCNG was not at the Capitol to save lives or restore law and order in those vital hours because the approval and order to deploy were not relayed to the DCNG until after 5 p.m.

While members of Congress donned gas masks and retreated, the Guard troops sat on buses waiting less than 2 miles from the Capitol at the D.C. Armory. Despite being ready, the DCNG could not answer the Capitol Police’s call for help at 2:10 p.m. without authorization from the Pentagon due to the unusual restrictions established in the Jan. 5 memo.

In March 2021, Mr. Walker testified before Congress that the DCNG’s response to the Capitol on Jan. 6 was delayed by senior Defense Department officials and fears of “optics.” After Mr. Walker testified, the Department of Defense inspector general published a November 2021 report that rebutted the Defense Department’s culpability and instead attributed the delay to DCNG’s lack of response to the secretary of the Army’s deployment order at 4:35 p.m.

This conclusion was based on the testimony of the secretary of the Army and secondhand accounts from other Army staff members — but was contradicted by other witnesses interviewed by the Department of Defense inspector general — and by even more witnesses who should have been interviewed by the inspector general and included in the report but were not. The secretary of the Army himself even testified under oath to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 Select Committee that he didn’t personally communicate a deploy order at 4:35 p.m., as the inspector general asserted.

Instead, the secretary of the Army explained that a member of his staff who “had the authority to speak as the Secretary of the Army” communicated the order to the DCNG on his behalf, while the secretary himself was preparing talking points for a national news conference. The staff member in question did not recall this version of events, which is astonishing — and pivotal — to understanding why the DCNG was crucially delayed.

Four Guardsmen who were with Mr. Walker on Jan. 6 became whistleblowers and publicly testified to my subcommittee earlier this year about the Defense Department’s control over their delay. Mr. Walker’s testimony and that of the whistleblowers remain consistent.

In February, my subcommittee contacted Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch to ask how he reached certain conclusions in his November 2021 report — including the one the secretary of the Army himself contradicted. Inspectors general were created to provide transparency to Congress and the public. Unfortunately, after I contacted Mr. Storch seeking a full, unbiased review, the Office of the Secretary of Defense intervened and prohibited the inspector general from producing the evidence I requested. Finally, after threatening to subpoena both the inspector general and the Defense Department, they agreed to produce the interview transcripts used to develop the factually flawed inspector general report.

Like most Americans, I believed that any official document issued by the Defense Department inspector general would be based on facts after a thorough investigation. What I found was the opposite. I will make these transcripts public so you can decide for yourself.

The events of Jan. 6 were tragic, and four years later, it is concerning that the public still does not know the truth. I am committed to finding the truth and sharing it with the American people.

• Barry Loudermilk represents Georgia’s 11th Congressional District. A Georgia native and Air Force veteran, he serves as chairman of the House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee and is a member of the House Financial Services Committee.