Acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher McGaffin admitted Tuesday that an armed man stormed deep into the Capitol because police ignored radio messages that warned of the man, a police cruiser was parked in the wrong position to stop him, a supervisor who was supposed to guard a construction site was on a 13-week leave, and an electronic security door failed.
Two congressmen and a staff member told The Examiner that McGaffin also admitted that almost everything he said to the public about last week’s incident was a lie.
The stunning admissions came in a closed-door meeting of the House Appropriations Committee, as angry Congress members demanded an explanation for how a shirtless Carlos Greene was able to drive into the construction site of the Capitol Visitor Center, race up the Capitol steps and get all the way to the House Flag Office before being tackled by two office workers.
Lawmakers who attended Tuesday’s briefing offered the following account:
Apologizing profusely, McGaffin admitted that most of the story he had given out to the public last week after Carlos Greene was arrested near the House Flag Office was false. Among other things, McGaffin told the congressional reps that Greene was tackled by civilians in the Flag Office — not by Capitol Police officers, as McGaffin had claimed last week.
McGaffin had also announced last week that Greene had slammed his way through a Capitol Police car that was parked at the entrance to the Capitol Visitor Center construction site at the corner of First Street. The tapes McGaffin showed the committee showed that Greene brushed by the officer’s car, in part because the car was in the wrong position.
And police were given a warning — via a flash radio message — that Greene was coming.
The inspector who is supposed to guard the construction site wasn’t on duty that day because he was on some 13 weeks of compensatory leave, McGaffin said. Supervisors at Capitol Police wracked up hundreds of weeks of comp time under former Chief Terrence Gainer.
Greene then went through a door in the Capitol that was supposed to be locked. An electronic security door, which is supposed to take 30 seconds before opening, failed, and Greene breezed into the stairwell.
The tapes show Greene running through the Capitol without encountering a single police officer.
Greene’s raid was another stinging embarrassment for the Capitol Police. After Tuesday’s briefing, lawmakers wondered publicly about the competence of the force, whose budget has more than doubled since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“We are very upset and very concerned that we have given them everything that they wanted — every position, every dollar, every piece of equipment — and you can have a fellow come into an area that’s supposed to be secured and get into the Capitol,” said Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill. “The point is, it shouldn’t have happened.”
House members told McGaffin they didn’t hold him responsible for the collapse, but they urged him to move quickly on fixing the troubled department. He promised to bring in the Inspector General for a full investigation.
