The notion that Secret Service agents were calling home to say goodbye to their families as they valiantly tried to protect then-Vice President Mike Pence was the most shocking revelation from the Jan. 6 committee’s latest hearing.
It brought back vivid memories. On Sept. 12, 2006, al Qaeda attacked a U.S. facility in the Middle East where my wife and I were located. 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. 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.
Of note, it was not al Qaeda or Hezbollah or the Islamic State that attacked Americans in a far-off diplomatic post on Jan. 6. No, it was our fellow Americans who violently stormed the Capitol.
Think hard about that.
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. It included all elements of a terrorist operation, including training, surveillance, and then the execution of the attack. It was an attack that almost succeeded in killing the vice president of the United States, as well as members of Congress. It was an attack on our democratic system of government. I don’t want to hear that this was just a protest that got out of hand. That’s BS.
The risks are clear: We cannot afford a whitewash of the events on Jan. 6. It is absolutely imperative that the rule of law prevail, and if the evidence means that includes the prosecution of senior U.S. officials, including potentially our former president, so be it. Full accountability is a deterrence. Enemies of American democracy don’t take a knee after just one failed attempt.
Look at al Qaeda after the initial attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Years later, it returned with a vengeance.
I’m not sure the public really understands how much the world pays attention to what is happening here. I remember several years ago, while visiting Greece, a taxi driver gave me his detailed impression of the domestic U.S. political scene. He offered his thoughts on who would win congressional races and on the various policy issues at hand. I was first surprised at the level of granularity that he possessed. But at the end of the day, America is the world’s only superpower, given the combination of political, military, economic, and cultural reach and might that we enjoy. America matters, at home and globally.
Our allies worry about the degeneration of democracy in America. They watch too many on the Right embrace anti-democratic trends, unable even to admit the basic truth that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected. CPAC flies its members to Hungary for a conference and gives a warm embrace to the fascist, racist dictator-in-training, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Not to be outdone, CPAC will now host Orban in Texas in August.
Ronald Reagan must be rolling in his grave.
But what if we whitewash Jan. 6 and the Department of Justice only prosecutes the foot soldiers but not the ring leaders of the coup attempt? I represented the U.S. government overseas for many years. America always promoted the rule of law as foundational to our country’s ideals. The American model mattered. Well, 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.
America remains the land of the free — despite the political dysfunction in Washington. There are long lines at U.S. Embassy consular sections. Those lines attest to the pursuit of a ticket to America. To a widespread belief in the American dream.
That dream continues to exist. Thank God. But the Jan. 6 hearings matter for that reason and more.
Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. A former CIA senior operations officer, he retired in 2019 after a 26-year career serving in the Near East and South Asia. His book Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA was published in June 2021 by HarperCollins.
