LIVE Updated 24 minutes ago

Live Updates: Capitolʼs Former Security Officials Point to Intelligence Failures Before
Riot
Top security officials who were at the Capitol told lawmakers of a communications breakdown ahead of the Jan. 6 attack. The Senate
confirmed Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. President Biden is planning to travel to Houston on Friday to
review the storm recovery in Texas.

Hereʼs what you need to know:

Ex-Capitol security officials blame other agencies and communication failures in the riot.

ʻWe still think thereʼs a shot.ʼ Biden says he wonʼt give up on Neera Tanden as her nomination teeters.

A huge hack may still be underway as the White House weighs how to punish Russia for it.

Deb Haaland, interior secretary nominee, says she will enact ʻBidenʼs agenda, not my ownʼ on fossil fuels.

Becerra, nominee for health secretary, vows to ʻfind common causeʼ as Republicans seek to paint him as extreme.

Senate confirms Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be U.N. ambassador and Tom Vilsack to be agriculture secretary.

Liz Cheney says G.O.P. must ʻmake clear that we arenʼt the party of white supremacy.ʼ

The Bidens will visit Texas on Friday to review storm recovery and vaccine efforts.

Hillary Clintonʼs ʻworst nightmareʼ is set to publish in an upcoming political thriller with her as co-author.

Ex-Capitol security officials blame other agencies and communication failures in the riot.
Three former top Capitol security officials and the chief of the Washington police blamed federal law enforcement and the Defense
Department on Tuesday for intelligence failures ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and for slow authorization of the National Guard as the
violence escalated.

“None of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred,” former Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund told senators who are
investigating security failures related to the attack. He called the riot “the worst attack on law enforcement and our democracy that I have
seen” and said he witnessed insurrectionists assaulting officers not only with their fists but also with pipes, sticks, bats, metal barricades
and flagpoles.

“These criminals came prepared for war,” Chief Sund said.

Chief Sund, Paul D. Irving, the former House sergeant-at-arms, and Michael C. Stenger, his former Senate counterpart, each said they had
not seen a report from an F.B.I. field office in Norfolk, Va., that flagged an anonymous social media thread that warned of a looming war at
the Capitol despite planning meetings with the bureau and others in federal law enforcement.

They pointed to a breakdown in communication of some of the intelligence. Chief Sund testified he now knows the F.B.I. report had
reached the Capitol Police the day before the attack, but he had not personally seen it. He said that a Capitol Police officer assigned to a
law enforcement joint terrorism task force received the document the night before the riot and sent it to an intelligence division official on
the force.

“It did not go any further than that,” Chief Sund said.

Robert J. Contee, the chief of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, laid the blame for the slow deployment of the National Guard
solely on the Defense Department, noting that the Army had expressed reluctance to send in the troops as the violence escalated.

“I was stunned at the response from Department of the Army,” Chief Contee said.

The joint meeting of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Rules and Administration Committee was the
first time the public has heard Mr. Sund and Mr. Irving, the top two security officials at the Capitol on the day of the assault. Both resigned
after the attack.

They have come under scrutiny amid reports that they did not act swiftly enough to call for the National Guard.
Mr. Irving took issue with former Chief Sund’s account that the former sergeant-at-arms rejected National Guard support because of
“optics.” He also disputed Mr. Sund’s timeline of events on Jan. 6 that indicated Mr. Irving waited half an hour before approaching political
leaders about calling in the guard.

“Certain media reports have stated that ʻoptics’ determined my judgment about using those National Guard troops. That is categorically
false,” Mr. Irving said. “ʻOptics’ as portrayed in the media did not determine our security posture; safety was always paramount when
evaluating security for Jan. 6.”

Still, he acknowledged the security failures. “We now know we had the wrong plan,” he said.

Some Republicans have sought to undermine the severity of the attacks by claiming that they were unplanned. In response to questions
from Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Homeland Security committee, Mr. Sund, Mr. Conte and Mr. Irving
all said that they believed the siege was coordinated.

“These people came with equipment, climbing gear,” Mr. Sund said, adding that two explosive devices placed near the Capitol distracted
the authorities. Mr. Conte said that there is evidence the attackers used hand signals and coordinated their use of irritants, like bear spray.

In response to questioning, Mr. Sund said that Capitol Police had not been trained on how to deal with a mass infiltration and that many
officers had not been equipped with riot gear. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, seemed somewhat surprised by the disclosures,
calling for such training and for protective gear for officers including helmets and gas masks.

Capitol Police Capt. Carneysha Mendoza testified to the violence she confronted Jan. 6. After she was called in early to duty at 1:30 p.m.,
she fought to keep rioters from damaging the Capitol, nearly breaking her arm and suffering burns from gas deployed in the Rotunda.

“I received chemical burns to my face that still have not healed to this day,” Captain Mendoza told senators.

After fighting the mob for four long hours, she spent the next day at the hospital with the family of Officer Brian Sicknick, who collapsed
after suffering injuries during the siege and later died.

“It’s sad to see us attacked by our fellow citizens,” Captain Mendoza added.

— Luke Broadwater

ʻWe still think thereʼs a shot.ʼ Biden says he wonʼt give up on Neera Tanden as her nomination teeters.
President Biden said on Tuesday that he still had confidence in Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget, even as her
nomination teetered in the Senate amid opposition from crucial lawmakers.

“We’re going to push. We still think there’s a shot, a good shot,” Mr. Biden said following a round table at the White House with Black
essential workers.

One day after two moderate Republicans said they would oppose Ms. Tanden’s confirmation, sparking speculation that her name could be
quickly withdrawn, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Biden’s focus remained on getting her confirmed.

“There’s one candidate to lead the budget department; her name is Neera Tanden,” Ms. Psaki said on Tuesday.

Ms. Psaki would not say if the White House had a backup plan in the event that Ms. Tanden withdrew her name or her nomination failed,
dismissing a question about whether Mr. Biden was considering any fallback options, including Gene Sperling, a former National
Economic Council director, or Ann O’Leary, the former chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

Some House Democrats have also been lobbying for the job to go to Shalanda Young, the first Black woman to serve as staff director for
Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, who is Mr. Biden’s pick to be the No. 2 at the budget agency.

Ms. Tanden has now had a total of 44 meetings with senators from both parties, Ms. Psaki said, and the White House is continuing to work
the phones to gather sufficient support.

“She’s committed to rolling up her sleeves, having those conversations, answering questions as they come up, reiterating her commitment
to working with people across the aisle and also sharing some of her own experience of working with people of different viewpoints,” Ms.
Psaki of Ms. Tanden.

Ms. Tanden’s nomination is endangered largely because of statements she made in the past, particularly on social media, in which she
leveled partisan and often personal criticism at lawmakers in both parties.

She would need the support of at least one Republican to be confirmed, after Senator Joe Manchin III, the centrist Democrat from West
Virginia, announced he would not support her. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah (an earlier version
incorrectly identified his home state as Massachusetts) said on Monday that they would also oppose her confirmation.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, on Tuesday privately counseled members of the Republican conference during
their weekly lunch to remain united in opposition to Ms. Tanden, according to two people familiar with the discussion. One moderate
Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has repeatedly declined to say whether or not she will support Ms. Tanden.

— Alan Rappeport and Emily Cochrane

A huge hack may still be underway as the White House weighs how to punish Russia for it.
The scope and scale of the most sophisticated hack of government and corporate computer networks in U.S. history remained unclear, key
senators and corporate executives warned on Tuesday, and the attack may still be ongoing.

The hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee was a rare public airing of one of the biggest failures of American intelligence since
Pearl Harbor and the September 11 attacks, known as the “SolarWinds” attack after the name of the Texas-based firm whose network-
management software was one way Russian hackers gained access. Even after spending billions of dollars planting sensors in networks
around the world, the National Security Agency missed the evidence for more than a year.

“Who knows the entirety of what happened here?” Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, told senators. “Right now the attacker” — one
of Russia’s main intelligence agencies — “is the only one who knows the entirety of what they did.’’

Microsoft was one of the first firms to raise the alarm about the intrusion into networks across the government and private sector.

No representative of the nation’s intelligence agencies appeared at the hearing. Senators said that executives with Amazon Web Services
declined to attend, leaving no one to explain how the Russian hackers secretly used their servers inside the United States to run
command-and-control centers that stripped emails and other data from at least nine government agencies and more than 100 companies.

Mr. Biden’s aides are contemplating a range of responses that his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, referred to over the weekend as
“a mix of tools seen and unseen.’’

Mr. Sullivan promised that when a response comes, it “will not simply be sanctions,’’ the most common way the government has reacted to
similar situations in the past, including North Korea’s hack into Sony Pictures Entertainment, Iran’s hack into American banks and a dam,
and China’s theft of 22.5 million security clearance files from the Federal government’s archives.

Those options, according to officials familiar with the discussions, include direct action to reveal or freeze assets secretly held by Russia’s
president, Vladimir V. Putin, and technological moves to help Russian dissidents communicate to the Russian people, at a moment of
political unrest in Moscow.

But the subtext of the testimony was that Russia’s intelligence services may have laced American networks with “backdoor” access that
could enable them to retaliate for any punishment the Biden administration metes out.

— David E. Sanger

Deb Haaland, interior secretary nominee, says she will enact ʻBidenʼs agenda, not my ownʼ on fossil fuels.

Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico, President Biden’s pick to head the Interior Department, sought Tuesday to find the line
between her past remarks as an activist opposing the fossil fuel industry, and her prospective role at the helm of an agency that oversees
drilling and conservation on the nation’s more than 500 million acres of public land.

In the first day of a two-part confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy Committee, Ms. Haaland’s most important audience was the
panel’s chairman, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat who has often sided with Republicans on environmental policy as
he seeks to protect his home state’s coal industry.

Privately, however, Democrats have warned Mr. Manchin against being seen as derailing the candidacy of Ms. Haaland, who, if confirmed,
would make history as the first Native American cabinet secretary.

Mr. Manchin asked Ms. Haaland if she supports the idea of American energy independence, to which she said, “We want to move forward
with innovation,” but added, “That’s not going to happen overnight. We will still rely on fossil fuel energy.”

Mr. Manchin replied, “I’m totally committed to innovation, not elimination.”

Ms. Haaland has previously called for a total ban on all fossil fuel exploration on public lands, and if confirmed, she would be charged with
executing one of Mr. Biden’s most contentious policies — halting future hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and gas on public lands.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the energy committee’s ranking Republican, said that while her nomination deserved to be recognized
for its historic nature, he was troubled by some of her views.