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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Wednesday criticized the FBI for its lack of transparency with Congress, saying “it is not tolerable” to have an agency that does not answer questions from lawmakers about its actions. His comments come a day after he criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray for failing to respond to written questions from lawmakers in hearings involving FBI witnesses for the past four years.
“It is just not tolerable to have a government agency, let alone a law enforcement agency, that will not answer questions for years at a time about its conduct,” the presenter told the anchor. of Red & Blue Elaine Quijano, Whitehouse, a Democrat. .
If the FBI does not improve its process for answering questions from the legislature, Whitehouse said it would consider withholding funds and blocking candidates, as well as other “legislative persuasion” tools.
Whitehouse spoke to Wray about the FBI’s responsiveness at a hearing on Tuesday Assault on the Capitol. In response, Wray cited “an elaborate interagency process for answering questions”, but said he “would do what I can to improve the process”. He said he was as “frustrated” as lawmakers and agreed that “we need to improve”.
When asked if he believed the FBI would change their practices, Whitehouse replied to Quijano, “No, they’re going to have to prove it to me.”
“I have a proven record of [a] categorical blockade of information, “he said.” And I know that because we just received 800 questions answered on behalf of the designated attorney general. [Merrick] Garland, which they can do if they want to. ”
Wray testified on Tuesday as part of the Senate inquiry into preparations for the attack on Capitol Hill. At the end of February, the former police chief of the Capitol blamed the intelligence community in his testimony he said his force was ready to handle the number of people they were told to expect. The former House sergeant-at-arms testified that daily intelligence reports between January 4 and 6 “predicted that the chances of civil disobedience or arrest during protests were as remote as they were improbable.”
The former House and Senate sergeant-at-arms said he had not seen a report from an FBI field office in Norfolk, Va., Warning law enforcement officials about an anonymous thread on social media threatening war on Capitol Hill. The former Capitol Police chief said the report reached police the day before the attack, but said he had not seen the raw data.
“The intelligence did not get where it needed to be,” the acting Capitol Police chief said, adding that the Jan. 5 report was sent by email, when it should have been released via ” a phone call or something like that “.
Whitehouse said it was not yet clear how to improve the intelligence-gathering process to prevent similar incidents from occurring.
“I suspect there will be a much broader solution than just, like, a specific little quick fix,” he said, adding, “It’s very difficult when you get tons of information in one. merge center that has to go through it., sort it out, analyze it, figure out what it means and scale it down so that the consumer of these services can actually take advantage of it to solve this problem. ”
“But certainly when a Norfolk FBI report says there is going to be a war and the information does not reach the decision makers protecting the Capitol, something has gone wrong,” he added.
But the senator said despite the communication problems, he felt safe on Capitol Hill.
“In fact, I would like to see the barbed wire fall as soon as possible,” he said. “As soon as the security professionals come up with their plan – it is not a good move for our great Republic to have its capital surrounded by barbed wire.”
Stefan Becket and Nicole Sganga contributed reporting.
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