Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer and counterterrorism expert, wrote in an op-ed published by the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that the events surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol reminded him of the time he was staying at a U.S. facility in the Middle East that was attacked by al Qaeda.
In particular, the former CIA agent pointed out news reports about Secret Service agents calling their families on January 6 to say goodbye.
“As a car bomb hit the back gate and automatic weapons fire, as well as grenades, rained down on us, my wife placed a call to her sister back home and said her goodbyes,” Polymeropoulos wrote, according to Raw Story.
“We thought we were all going to die that day. Our children watched from their school a mile away and cried and hugged their friends, thinking their parents would never return home. So I get it. I understand the fear that those Secret Service agents apparently experienced. You don’t make those calls to loved ones if there is a way out.”
Polymeropoulos wrote that the deadly incursion that day is only different because the Capitol and its occupants didn’t come under attack by a foreign terrorist group, they were attacked by domestic insurrectionists.
“A spontaneous riot? A gathering that got out of hand? Please. These talking points are insulting to those who survived that day. I ran counterterrorism operations for the CIA for several decades. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was a pre-planned domestic terrorist event,” he writes, adding that it was not “just a protest that got out of hand.”
In his Op-Ep, Polymeropoulos warns that if the January 6 committee fails to hold those responsible for the Capitol riot to account, the forces behind the riot could launch an even more serious attack.
“Look at al Qaeda after the initial attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Years later, it returned with a vengeance,” he says.
“…what if we whitewash January 6 and the Department of Justice only prosecutes the foot soldiers but not the ring leaders of the coup attempt? … if we fail now, Russia, Iran, and China will point to a whitewash and say, ‘See, they lecture us on democracy and the rule of law, yet they don’t practice what they preach.’ We will undermine our status as the world’s exceptional nation.”
The House Select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol could issue criminal referals against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators, leaving it up to Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide whether Trump or others should be prosecuted for inciting the attack in an attempt to overturn the the 2020 election.
As noted by Raw Story, Garland told reporters last week that the January 6 probe is the “most important” investigation the Justice Department has ever conducted and stressed that “no one is above the law in this country.”
