Interviews with two dozen military officials as well as texts, internet chats, audio recordings, emails and documents obtained by The New York Times also show that:
Senior Army leaders — in an effort to prevent what they feared would be a calamitous outcome if President Trump ordered combat troops from the 82nd Airborne Division holding just outside city limits to the streets — leaned heavily on the Guard to carry out aggressive tactics to prove it could do the job without active-duty forces.
Guard leaders issued a flurry of ad hoc orders that put thousands of Guard troops in face-to-face conflict with fellow Americans.
Some of the Guard troops were just out of basic training, and others had no experience in controlling disturbances in the streets. Troops were allowed to drive heavy vehicles on the streets without the usual licensing.
In the next days, the Army is expected to release the results of a preliminary investigation into why the
helicopters — a Black Hawk and, in particular, a Lakota with the Red Cross emblem designating it a medical helicopter — came to be used to terrorize protesters in Washington.
Ryan McCarthy, the Army secretary, acknowledged that he gave the order for the helicopters to respond, but by the time that order reached the pilots, officials said, it was interpreted as high profile and urgent to disrupt the protests. Officials expect the pilots who flew the helicopters will receive some type of punishment.
And when National Guard officials requested written guidance allowing troops without military licenses to drive armored vehicles around Washington, the officer in charge of the task force, Brig. Gen. Robert K. Ryan, said it was a verbal order from the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. James C. McConville. Written confirmation never came, and a Defense Department official with direct knowledge of the situation said General McConville never gave such an order.
The D.C. National Guard did not respond to a request for comment.
Around 9:15 a.m. Monday, June 1, more than an hour into Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper’s weekly videoconference staff meeting with officials at the Pentagon, an aide slipped a note to the secretary. “I’ve got to go,” Mr. Esper said, ending the call and summoning top aides for a smaller meeting on security in the capital and in Minnesota.
The night before, some demonstrators had hurled projectiles at the police and other law enforcement authorities. The night before that, six National Guard troops had been injured — five hit in the legs with bricks and one hit in the head. Thinly sourced intelligence reports, with no direct corroboration and highlighted in a brief early last week, suggested that fringe groups might try to use car bombs to attack government and law enforcement positions.
Mr. Trump himself was enraged by news reports that he had been moved on Friday night, May 29, to a White House bunker because of the protests outside his gates. The president was alarmed and unsettled by the violence, and by Monday, he was threatening to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would allow him to order active-duty troops into cities across the United States. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, objected, saying it was a terrible idea to have combat troops trained to fight foreign adversaries at war with Americans.
A wild scramble ensued to use another option: Summon National Guard troops from other states to reinforce the 1,200 D.C. Guard troops already called up. Unlike other Guard units, the D.C. Guard reports not to a state governor but to the Army secretary, who in turn reports to the defense secretary and the president.
From the Pentagon and a National Guard operations center on Monday in nearby Northern Virginia, officials held a hastily arranged conference call with all of the commanders of state National Guard forces.
The appeal was blunt and urgent: How many troops can you send and when can you send them? Pentagon officials said they preferred troops with previous training in civil disturbances, but they knew they did not have time to be picky.
Some states with Republican governors quickly jumped in — Tennessee, South Carolina, Utah. West Virginia’s National Guard sent a reconnaissance plane, typically used for border security and to spot drug smugglers.
Along with the troops, National Guard units from other states brought weapons and ammunition. Tens of thousands of rifle and pistol rounds were stored in the D.C. Armory and partitioned in pallets, labeled by their state of origin, to be used on American citizens in case of emergency.
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Originally Posted by Latrinsorm
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