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The history of violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol

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The history of violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol

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While the building has seen politically motivated mayhem in the past, never before has a mob of insurrectionists tried to overturn a presidential election

smithsonianmag.com

On Wednesday, far-right insurrectionists stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The mob forced lawmakers to flee for safety, smashed windows, vandalized offices and posed for photos in the House chambers. One woman died after being shot by law enforcement, an officer with the U.S. Capitol Police died from injuries sustained during the fighting, and three other people died from medical emergencies during the riot, reports CNN.

Images from the scene show attackers waving the Confederate battle flag in the halls of the Senate. As Judith Giesberg, a Civil War historian at Villanova University tells Business Insider's Aria Bendix that the flag was appropriated in the 20th century, and continues to this day, to perpetuate the system of white supremacy in America. Wednesday was a grim first: During the entire Civil War from 1861 to 1865, the flag never entered the U.S. Capitol. (In fact, Confederate troops never took Washington at all. When Confederate General Jubal A. Early launched an attack on Fort Stevens, Union reinforcements arrived in the nick of time to save D.C. from Confederate invasion.)

Although Wednesday's attempted coup failed, historians also pointed out that the U.S. has witnessed one successful coup d'état before: in Wilmington, North Carolina. As Gregory Ablavsky, associate professor of law at Stanford University, notes in a statement, during the Wilmington Massacre or Coup of 1898, white supremacists overthrew the government of the then-majority-black city and killed as many as 60 black people.

And while the attack on the Capitol shocked many, it was also predictable: Plans to invade the Capitol building have been circulating on various social media platforms for weeks, as Sheera Frenkel and Dan Barry report for the New York Times.

Since President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol in 1793, assailants with a range of motives have launched attacks on the building with varying levels of success. Most notably, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, a fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was likely intended for the Capitol Building, per the National Park Service. A group of passengers overtook the hijackers and crashed the aircraft into an open field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing all 44 people onboard.

A number of "lone wolf" attackers have also thwarted Capitol security: in 1835, Richard Lawrence attempted to assassinate President Andrew Jackson as he exited the building's east portico. In 1915, a former Harvard professor successfully exploded three sticks of dynamite in the Senate Reception room, and an armed assailant in 1998 shot and killed two Capitol police officers.

But Wednesday's mob joined the ranks of just a handful of groups with political motivations that successfully carried through with their plans. Here, Smithsonian takes a closer look at three instances of coordinated political violence against the U.S. Capitol.

1814: British forces burn the Capitol

Flames leapt from unfinished wreckage of the U.S. Capitol on August 24, 1814. British forces set fire to this building, the White House and much of Washington in retaliation for Americans' burning of the Canadian capital at York the year prior. Britain and its young former colony were embroiled in the War of 1812, a conflict that ignited over the Royal Navy's practice of "impressing" American soldiers into British service by wrongly accusing them of being British subjects, among other causes, reports Joel Achenbach for the Washington Post.

At the time, the Capitol building housed the House, Senate, Supreme Court and Library of Congress, per the Architect of the Capitol. British forces burned the 3,000 or so books in the collection in the Library of Congress and piled furniture together in the Supreme Court Chamber to create a huge bonfire. The Capitol building was still under construction and did not yet have its famous dome, reports Gillian Brockwell for the .

Nature happened to save the day. A huge storm, possibly a tornado brought on by the previous day's 100-degree heat, struck Washington and put out the fires, sending British forces packing earlier than planned. Some interior structures and much of the Capitol's exterior survived the blaze, and after some debate, officials decided to rebuild the federal government's building where it stood. As Cassandra Good reported for Smithsonian magazine in 2016, just one casualty was reported from the fires: John Lewis, the grandnephew of George Washington himself.

1954: Puerto Rican nationalists open fire

On the morning of March 1, 1954, Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Irving Flores Rodriguez boarded a train from New York City to Washington, D.C. With little to no security measures in place at the Capitol, the group walked into the building with concealed handguns and entered the gallery overlooking the House floor, where Congress was in session.

Around 2:30 p.m., Lebrón shouted her support for Puerto Rican independence, and the group shot indiscriminately at lawmakers from the gallery. They managed to wound five Congressmen before being overtaken by visitors and police officers, per a House of Representatives oral history of the event.

The group designed their violent attack to draw attention to the cause of Puerto Rican independence. Their grievance dated back to the Spanish-American War, when in 1898, the United States invaded Puerto Rico and established it as an "organized territory." At the time, this meant that Puerto Ricans were subject to American imperial rule but were not considered full citizens. Even after Puerto Ricans achieved citizenship in 1917, the territory still has no voting representation in Congress and little political autonomy. More than a century of U.S. imperialism and its adverse effect have led some Puerto Ricans, such as these nationalists, to argue that their territory should be completely independent of American rule.

"Bullets whistled through the chamber in the wildest scene in the entire history of Congress," Speaker Joseph W. Martin, who was presiding that day, would later recall. According to the Office of the Historian of the House of Representatives, the police had sealed off the Capitol within minutes of the shooting and conducted a thorough search of the grounds until they captured Rodriguez, who had narrowly managed to slip away in the mayhem. The four attackers were tried and sentenced to federal prison with sentences ranging from 16 to 75 years. They remained imprisoned until President Jimmy Carter, responding to international pressure, granted the shooters clemency in 1979.

1983: Far-left extremists bomb the Senate Chamber

Leftist groups had attacked the Capitol directly before: In March 1971, for instance, members of the extremist group Weather Underground set off a bomb in a bathroom on the Senate side of the Capitol, harming no one, reports Brockwell for the Post.

But the most serious terrorist attack took place a decade later, when a group of women split from the group to form the May 19th (M19) Communist Organization. Just before 11 p.m. on November 7, 1983, a member called the Capitol switchboard to announce that a bomb was about to explode.

Minutes later, M19 detonated a bomb in the Capitol's north wing, blowing a hole through a wall and knocking the Senate majority leader's office door off its hinges. Luckily, the area was already deserted and nobody was harmed, but the attack resulted in $250,000 worth of damage and shredded a portrait of Daniel Webster, per the U.S. Senate.

Members of M19-named for civil rights icon Malcolm X and Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh-coordinated the attack to protest U.S. military involvement in Grenada and Lebanon. Broadly, the group argued that violence was a necessary ingredient in the fight for "revolutionary anti-imperialism," and its members would go on to bomb other high-profile buildings such as an FBI office. Some of the women involved were later arrested and charged with lengthy sentences, Brockwell writes for the Post.

National historian security expert and historian William Rosenau, who wrote a book on the bombings, told Smithsonian's Lila Thulin last year that the group is the only documented terrorist group run entirely by women. They were "a group of essentially middle-class, well educated, white people who made a journey essentially from anti-war and civil rights protest to terrorism," he says.

Rosenau added that in his view, people should tread cautiously when comparing militant leftist organizations of the 1970s to extremism of all political stripes today.

"Historical context is absolutely paramount," he says. "We kind of lump terrorism together, like groups as disparate as Students for a Democratic Society, Al Qaeda, Red Army Faction, Aum Shinrikyo, but these are all products of particular times and particular places.

Rosenau continues, "The important thing is just to realize that there are some similarities, but these are very different periods in time and each period of time is unique."

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The History of Violent Attacks on the U.S. Capitol

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smithsonianmag.com On Wednesday, far-right insurrectionists stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The mob forced lawmakers to flee for safety, smashed windows, vandalized offices and posed for photos in the House chambers. One woman died after being shot by law enforcement, an officer with the U.S.

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Domestic extremism has become 'mainstream,' could threaten American life for 20 years 

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Domestic extremism has become 'mainstream,' could threaten American life for 20 years 

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The Washington, D.C., Homeland Security director and terror analysts warned lawmakers Thursday that the threat posed by domestic extremists, manifested last month by the deadly Capitol attack, is likely to persist for more than a decade.

"We must be prepared for a long fight," Christopher Rodriguez, chief of the district's Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, told the House Homeland Security Committee.

Rodriguez said the Capitol attack exposed a long-simmering threat in the "starkest terms," adding that radical violent extremism has "rapidly become part of the cultural mainstream."

Jan. 6 called 'most predictable terror attack in US history'

Rodriguez, who participated in the security preparations for what had been billed as demonstration against Congress' certification of President Joe Biden's electoral victory, acknowledged that the FBI had shared information before the event that included the potential for violence.

At least some of the information was received as early as mid-December, Rodriguez said.

In a series of meetings before Jan. 6, Rodriguez said the intelligence was shared with law enforcement partners, including the U.S. Capitol Police.

"The issue was the inability or the unwillingness to act on the intelligence," Rodriguez said.

Last week, the acting Capitol Police chief apologized to lawmakers for the agency's failures to repel the rioters and said the department was not prepared for the "terrorist attack." The riot left five dead, including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was eulogized Wednesday at a Capitol ceremony.

"What happened at the U.S. Capitol was the most predictable terror attack in U.S. history," Anti-Defamation League Executive Director Jonathan Greenblatt told the House panel Thursday, describing a "terrifying resurgence of right-wing extremism."

Greenblatt called the Capitol assault a "watershed moment" particularly for the white supremacist movement that is likely to leverage the riots for recruiting like-minded extremists.

Experts say response should rival post-9/11 action

Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, characterized the threat as especially daunting, suggesting that it would linger for "10 to 20 years."

Neumann and others called on the government to respond in the same way it had after the 9/11 attacks.

She urged the formation of a national commission to chart a strategy to confront the threat just as the George W. Bush administration had done to deal with international terror threat posed by al-Qaeda and other groups.

Neumann said the mix of extremist groups represented at the Jan. 6 riots view the assault as "a rallying point."

"Some view this as a huge success," she said. "The concern I have is that we see more mainstreaming of this fringe ideology."

Brian Jenkins, a terror analyst and senior adviser at the Rand Corp., also cautioned that the Capitol assault would pose "long-term" challenges for lawmakers and law enforcement.

Because of the increased scrutiny after the attacks, Jenkins said extremists could "transition" from mass protests to "clandestine" acts.
More: More: Capitol riot inquiry grows to 400 suspects; feds expect to bring sedition charges 'very soon' 'We are coming for them': Feds charge West Coast Proud Boys leader in Capitol riot investigation
The hearing comes on the eve of the Senate impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump, accused of inciting the deadly insurrection with baseless claims that the election had been stolen.

"The irrefutable fact is that the threat of right-wing and more specifically, white nationalist terrorism has been growing for years," committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. "The previous administration failed to address this threat appropriately, and on Jan. 6 we saw the result right here at the U.S. Capitol."

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Domestic extremism has become 'mainstream,' could threaten American life for 20 years

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The Washington, D.C., Homeland Security director and terror analysts warned lawmakers Thursday that the threat posed by domestic extremists, manifested last month by the deadly Capitol attack, is likely to persist for more than a decade. "We must be prepared for a long fight," Christopher Rodriguez, chief of the district's Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, told the House Homeland Security Committee.

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The assault on the U.S. Capitol opens a new chapter in domestic terrorism. 

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The assault on the U.S. Capitol opens a new chapter in domestic terrorism. 

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Members of the National Guard arrive at the Capitol on Jan. 12. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Some 20,000 National Guardsmen may be on hand to secure Washington for next week's inauguration. But for police and security officials - and the incoming Biden administration - last week's mob assault on the U.S. Capitol and the risk of continued violence from those protesting the 2020 election results raise difficult questions.

There is some debate about whether what happened on Jan. 6 should be called " terrorism," though many Democrats and some Republicans were quick to use the label. A new Washington Post report suggest dozens of people on the FBI's terrorist watch list headed to Washington, D.C., that day.

So what does almost 20 years of U.S. counterterrorism experience since 9/11 tell us? Here are some insights.

1. Is there a new terror threat?

Unlike al-Qaeda, ISIS or white supremacists like the shooter who murdered 23 people in 2019 when he targeted the Hispanic community at an El Paso Walmart, those who stormed the U.S. Capitol were not seeking to kill large numbers of random civilians. Rather, they sought to overturn the election results, with some apparently seeking to kill or at least intimidate supposed enemies of President Trump like Vice President Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

The marchers were a mix of the ordinary, the enraged and the bizarre rather than a united movement. In addition to ubiquitous Trump flags, some protesters wore Crusader crosses to show off their white supremacist beliefs. Others had the Roman numeral III in place of the stars of an American flag, referencing the (false) belief that only 3 percent of Americans fought in the Revolutionary War and thus a vanguard is necessary to, again, liberate America. And, of course, the world of QAnon was everywhere.

The Capitol siege shows how White Americans can express anger that Black Americans cannot

Complicating any threat analysis, political leaders - including, notably, the president - incited the Jan. 6 violence using speeches and social media to call for action, but did not control the mob. The president's supporters also used social media platforms ranging from Facebook to more obscure ones like Gab and Parler to coordinate their activities. However, there does not appear to be any top-down direction.

2. What can we learn from past counterterrorism efforts?

There's no one solution, of course, but it's useful to think of the " Swiss cheese " model for fighting the spread of infectious diseases like covid-19 - all interventions have holes but can be far more effective when layered together.

This approach applies to counterterrorism as well. When the FBI has full authorization and resources, it can devastate potential threats at home. In the 1960s, the FBI used a tough mix of law enforcement and covert action to crush Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. After 9/11, an aggressive FBI campaign helped keep Islamist militant attacks in the United States low, though some experts contend there was little threat to begin with. In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol assault, the FBI has opened at least 170 case files, with more sure to come.

What you need to know about how many Americans condone political violence - and why

Global efforts also can pay off. Some U.S. extremist networks have connections overseas, and countries like Russia try to exploit this. Working with allies can hinder individuals who try to go to Ukraine and other places for training and combat experience. And designating foreign white supremacist organizations as terrorist groups then criminalizes Americans who support these groups.

Social media companies also play an important role. After years of operating freely, ISIS was largely removed from major platforms like Facebook and chased from more minor ones, making it harder for the group to recruit and coordinate. Social media companies, however, were far more tolerant of U.S. white supremacist and anti-government activity, in part because they feared a political backlash.

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 violence, major tech companies deplatformed President Trump and made it harder to access Parler and other platforms embraced by extremists. If the companies keep this pressure up, domestic extremists will find it harder to reach large audiences.

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3. But many Americans apparently believe Trump's lies about the election

Here's the big difference, in 2021. In contrast to ISIS attacks in America, many of those who assaulted the U.S. Capitol are part of a large and open movement that includes numerous peaceful Trump supporters as well as a range of violent groups. Many of those who participated in the violence are at risk of arrest or at least losing their jobs because of their open activity on social media.

This mob enjoyed significant public support. Polls taken shortly after the Capitol assault suggest 45 percent of Republicans favored the attack. Because of their false beliefs about a stolen election, nearly half of Republicans surveyed in a new VOX/DFP poll said they don't believe Biden should be inaugurated. One study of right-wing violence in Europe found that violence was more common when people felt peaceful politics was thwarted, as many Trump supporters feel today.

This overlap with a broader community may mean that a crackdown risks further social polarization. After 9/11, for instance, the roundup of many innocent Muslims angered many in the community. This did not lead to an increase in anti-Americanism - but it did increase concerns within the Muslim community about their place in America.

The broader community of Trump supporters is simply much larger. However baseless the claims of election fraud, alienation of a group this large will have consequences.

New research shows the connection between political victimhood and White support for Trump

An added concern is the extent to which people willing to lay siege to the U.S. government may be well-armed, or military trained - in contrast to the frequent incompetence of many American jihadis. Indeed, as the selfies with members of the Capitol Police indicate, some members of law enforcement are sympathetic to the movement, and some police officers who allegedly breached the Capitol have been arrested.

Better policies can reduce the risk of violence and its scope should it occur, but the election fraud myths embraced by many Republican leaders and media outlets remain a broader underlying issue. Tackling this challenge is a tall order given the polarization in America. Biden campaigned on unity, however, and the events at the Capitol may give more sensible Republicans pause about how much to fan the flames.

Professors: Don't miss TMC's expanding list of classroom topic guides.

Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Follow him on Twitter @dbyman.

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Analysis | The assault on the U.S. Capitol opens a new chapter in domestic terrorism

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Some 20,000 National Guardsmen may be on hand to secure Washington for next week's inauguration. But for police and security officials - and the incoming Biden administration - last week's mob assault on the U.S. Capitol and the risk of continued violence from those protesting the 2020 election results raise difficult questions.

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Domestic Terrorist Attack on the US Capitol

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Domestic Terrorist Attack on the US Capitol