S congressional hearing.

The bipartisan hearings are looking at how security contingencies failed to respond adequately on why it took hours to call out the National Guard.

So far, the authorities have charged more than 200 people over the riot.

Some are linked to far right groups.

Three of the four officials testifying resigned after the riot, which disrupted congressional ratification of President Biden's election victory.

Well, Stephen Sund, the former chief of the U.

S Capitol police, said his officers were outnumbered by the insurrectionists who deployed dangerous weapons against law enforcement.

On January the sixth.

He said he believed that had bean intelligence failings leading up to the day these criminals came prepared for war.

They came with their own radio system to coordinate the attack and climbing gear and other equipment to defeat the capital's security features.

I am sickened by what I witnessed that day.

Our officers fought valiantly using batons, shields, chemical munitions and pepper ball guns, toe hold back the Attackers, Capitol Police and responding law enforcement agencies showed tremendous restraint by not using their firearms, which would have likely lead to a more chaotic situation and a possible mass casualty incident.

No civilian law enforcement agency to include the United States Capitol Police is trained or equipped to repel an insurrection of thousands of individuals focused on breaching a building at all costs.

I am extremely proud and appreciative of the Capitol police officers, the Metropolitan Police Department and the other law enforcement agencies that came to our assistance.

A clear lack of accurate and complete intelligence across several federal agencies contributed to this event and not poor planning by the United States Capitol Police.

But the former U S House sergeant at Arms, Paul Irving, denied the authorities had rejected having the National Guard deployed at the US Capitol because it might look bad, saying the intelligence did not warn the troops.

Presence by use of the word optics has been mischaracterized in the media.

Let me be clear optics as portrayed in the media, played no role whatsoever in my decisions about security, and any suggestion to the contrary is false.

Safety was always paramount when making security plans for January 6th.

We did discuss whether the intelligence warranted having troops, the capital, that was the issue and the collective judgment at that time was no.

The intelligence did not warrant that if the chief or any other security leader had expressed doubt about our readiness, without the National Guard, I would not have hesitated to request them.

Chief Son Sen.

It started arm stagger, and I were confident in the Chiefs plan, and I did whatever I could to ensure that chief son had the support needed to prepare and execute that security plan.

Paul Irving there The BBC's Washington correspondent, Gary O.

Donohue, gave us his take on today's striking evidence.

The testimony there from Steven Son, who's who resigned as the Capitol Hill police chief after January 6th, was striking E.

He said at one point that they had planned for a protest.

First Amendment protest on what they got was a military style assault on the capital.

Hey said there'd been an intelligence failure, that the intelligence about what was planned hadn't reached them and that he was critical also of the extent to which the National Guard was deployed quickly enough to the capital to help them out.

So There's a whole range of issues here that they're looking at, but those are among some of the most important ones.

And is the heart of these hearings getting to the bottom of what went wrong in security failings that day?

Expecting?

Yeah, there's a few issues.

One is the intelligence in the run up to January.

The sticks.

Who knew what When was it communicated properly?

Was it accurate?

Did he give any kind of sense of the scale of what was being planned on the organization behind what was being planned?

What was the extent of the preparation that went into it beforehand?

Was enough National Guard members in place ready to help out?

If not, who had blocked those requests on?

Then, as the thing unfolded itself, what was the kind of command and control situation?

Why did it take, for example, 2.5 hours after the National Guard was authorized by the Pentagon for them to show up on Capitol Hill?

So there are some big questions.

And of course, this was the first breach of the capital by violent, uh, insurrectionists.

If you might call that since the British attacked US capital back at the beginning of the 19th century.

On day five people died on that day.

And so this is something that is absolutely crucial for the American state to understand and to try and prevent happening again.

More than 200 people have been arrested so far over this, right?

Our investigations very much.

Still ongoing.

Oh, yeah, Absolutely.

I mean, they are sifting through, you know, acres and acres of video footage and photographs and online posts and all that kind of thing.

Uh, they've issued charges against the number of people associating with one of those right right wing groups, the oath keepers.

The number of their members have been charged on the charges range.

A huge range of charges.

Trespass upwards.

Really.

What's not happened?

There's no one's been charged.

For example, in connection with the death of the Capitol Police officer Brian Sick Nick, who has succumb to his injuries The day afterwards.

No one charged on that score yet.