Weapons are distributed to members of the National Guard outside the U.S. Capitol on January 13, 2src21 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased throughout Washington following the breach of the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday, and leading up to the Presidential inauguration.

Weapons are distributed to members of the National Guard outside the U.S. Capitol on January 13, 2021 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased throughout Washington following the breach of the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday, and leading up to the Presidential inauguration.

Stefani Reynolds—Getty Images

By Kimberly Dozier

Updated: January 14, 2021 2:50 PM EST | Originally published: January 13, 2021 7:24 PM EST

The deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 has prompted U.S. security officials to think the unthinkable as they scramble to secure Washington ahead of next week’s Inauguration: that the enemy is already inside the house.

More than a dozen law enforcement officers and current and former military officials are reported to have taken part in the violent Jan. 6 insurrection that killed a U.S. Capitol Police officer and cost four supporters of President Donald Trump their lives. One Navy and two Air Force veterans are among those being investigated by law enforcement for the attack, as is a junior Army officer by her superiors, while several U.S. Capitol Police officers have been suspended after video showed them appearing to assist some of the rioters who were spurred to action by Trump’s refusal to accept defeat.

Now the FBI is warning of planned armed protests at the Jan. 20 Inauguration in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals, current senior U.S. officials tell TIME. Current and former security officials say they are concerned that serving U.S. troops or law enforcement officers could pose a clear and present danger to the President- and Vice President-elect and other senior U.S. lawmakers on Inauguration Day. Federal investigators are also trying to track down military and law enforcement members or veterans who took part on Jan. 6, and trace their wider network of associates who may be plotting to turn next week into the mayhem being called for on far-right forums.

But there are too many people to look at, and too little time to do it, says Mitch Silber, former Director of Intelligence Analysis at the New York City Police Department. In Washington alone, up to 20,000 National Guardsmen and hundreds of city, federal and neighboring state police will be on patrol.

“We might be talking one or two bad apples here, not anything systematic,” Silber says. Rooting them out would take an internal affairs-style investigation, possibly of entire agencies that are involved in Inauguration security. “We just don’t know, and there’s just no time to conduct that type of investigation.”

The growing sense of urgency and anxiety was reflected in an unprecedented letter from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and all the service chiefs to military members on Tuesday. They wrote that the “violent riot in Washington, D.C.” was a “direct assault…on our Constitutional process.” The chiefs added that the “rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection.”

Their concern is shared by lawmakers who are incensed over the events of Jan. 6 and worried about security preparations underway for Jan. 20. After an FBI briefing on Tuesday, the Democratic chairmen of the Judiciary, Intelligence, Armed Services and Oversight committees released a statement that it’s “clear that more must be done to preempt, penetrate, and prevent deadly and seditious assaults by domestic violent extremists in the days ahead.”

“There is a crisis issue: the rise of extremism and white supremacy in the ranks,” retired Army officer Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) told Politico on Monday. That rise, he said, has been “fueled by President Trump, unfortunately. So that has to be dealt with right away and unequivocally.”

Extremist experts and former law enforcement officials can only guess at how many of the nation’s police and military are members of militia or other extremist groups, or even hold extremist views they might be willing to act on. Of the nation’s roughly 800,000 police, it’s probably far less than one percent, says Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “When you have a body that huge, you’re gonna find some people with ties to extremism in it. That’s just a given.”

Nevertheless, that tiny fraction could still mean a sizable number of trained professionals could have the means and intent to cause serious harm or damage to express their anger over Trump’s defeat and the loss of life among rioters at the U.S. Capitol, including military-veteran-turned-martyr Ashli Babbit. More worryingly, many troops seasoned from fighting terrorists overseas know insurgent tactics, such as communicating via encrypted apps rather than expressing their plots over the now-at-least-temporarily-defunct Parler app, says terrorism expert Mia Bloom of Georgia State University.

“I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that it’s extremely dangerous when you’re talking about people that have actual training in the military, or in law enforcement,” adds Colin Clarke, head of research for the Soufan Group. In reviewing video clips of the assault on the Capitol, he noticed rioters using specialized military tactics. “People were being commanded to move through a broken window in twos,” he noted, reminiscent of how U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan to enter a building.

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, has also watched the videos, and says while the “vast majority of those inside the building really have no idea of what they’re doing,” there were a handful of people that seemed “very personal purposeful and seemed to know where to go and what to do, and came equipped with flexi ties and other, and other kinds of tactical gear.”

Some who entered the building wore the militia patch of the Oath Keepers, a group he says brags about having a number of military and law enforcement members in its ranks. “When you have a President who holds campaign rallies called ‘Cops for Trump,’ and they are heavily attended…all of this makes the challenge of securing Washington, securing the inauguration, even more difficult than it already is.”

A disappearing target

Ironically, the Jan. 6 insurrection has handed the FBI the best possible blueprint to find future plotters, giving them legal cause to investigate not just those caught on camera storming the Capitol but associates who cheered them on and say they want to take part in up to four days of further, possibly armed insurrection before and on Inauguration Day. The Justice Department has already opened 170 case files with more on the way, officials said Tuesday.

One problem in their investigation, however, is that many of the would-be anarchists are erasing themselves online, according to Army veteran Jeff Bardin of private intelligence firm Treadstone 71.

Military members have always been careful not to use real identities online, but are becoming even harder to spot in the immediate wake of the Jan. 6 attack, he says. In the last week, he has tracked well-known neo-Nazis and other extremists deleting social media posts and taking their conversations “private” on encrypted apps like Telegram or moving to encrypted app Signal or GAB, a site popular with the alt-right, now that Parler has been taken offline.

“Everybody’s scrubbing their sites and trying to remove things if they participated in the insurrection last week,” Bardin says. “They’re

!–>!–>!–>

Asia

How a national security threat label has reignited Indonesia’s LGBTQ debate

Indonesia last October classified the “spread of LGBTQ culture” as one of the country’s non-military threats. A series of developments thrust the provision into the public eye this month, sparking a debate.

New: You can now listen to articles.

This audio is generated by an AI tool.

Ericssen

SINGAPORE: For more than eight months, a provision tucked away in an Indonesian presidential regulation on national defence drew little public attention.

In an appendix to Presidential Regulation No. 111/2025 on the General National Defence Policy signed in October last year, the government classified the “spread of LGBTQ culture” as one of the country’s non-military threats.

The clause, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer culture, appeared alongside a range of other threats deemed capable of affecting national resilience. They included illegal trafficking, natural resource theft, terrorism, atheism and radicalism.

A presidential regulation is a legally binding regulation published in the State Gazette, while General National Defence Policy documents are highly technical and usually attract little public attention outside government and defence circles.

But a series of developments thrust the provision into the public eye this month, sparking a debate on the place of LGBTQ issues in state policy and the extent to which social issues should be framed within Indonesia’s defence strategy.

The issue quickly spread beyond social media into mainstream Indonesian media with national outlets including Antara, Kumparan, and Tempo examining the regulation and prompting public responses from senior government officials.

Some observers and activists say the clause could heighten discrimination against LGBTQ individuals in society, even as Indonesian ministers have defended the regulation while saying the government has no intention of curtailing the fundamental rights of citizens.

“As Indonesian citizens, LGBTQ people are entitled to education, employment, healthcare and other public services without restrictions, segregation or discrimination,” Indonesia’s Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai told CNA in a phone interview.

CNA Games

Guess Word

Crack the word, one row at a time

Buzzword

Create words using the given letters

Mini Sudoku

Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser

Mini Crossword

Small grid, big challenge

Word Search

Spot as many words as you can

Show Less

Indonesia’s Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai. (Photo courtesy of Human Rights Ministry)

But he added that Indonesian society is not ready to accept the LGBTQ community, even as the state remains obliged to respect, protect and fulfil every citizen’s rights to education, employment, healthcare and public services.

“The time has not yet come to formally recognise them as an official group because society is not yet ready to accept them,” he said.

HOW THE CLAUSE CAME TO PUBLIC ATTENTION

While it remains unclear what first drew widespread attention to the provision, it resurfaced amid a series of developments involving LGBTQ issues. One was a Pride Month-themed social media post in mid-June by Suara Mahasiswa, a student publication at the University of Indonesia.

The post had led to a heated online debate, with critics arguing it was inconsistent with Indonesia’s religious and social norms. They questioned why it invoked the Pancasila national ideology to defend the LGBTQ community. Pancasila comprises five principles: Belief in one God, civilised humanity, national unity, democracy and social justice.

The backlash prompted the university to publicly distance itself from the post and launch an internal review.

Then in late June, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) said it was preparing an academic paper and a draft bill to criminalise LGBTQ-related conduct for Parliament’s National Legislation Programme.

MUI deputy chairman Muhammad Cholil Nafis argued that moral appeals alone were no longer sufficient to curb what he described as the growing activities and campaign surrounding LGBTQ culture.

“If there are no legal penalties at all, it eventually becomes normal. We should not normalise it. Punishment helps people understand that it is not normal,” he said.

“Deviant activities, such as same-sex parties, are now increasingly being displayed openly in public without any sense of shame,” he added.

Scrutiny then shifted to the new regulation that had previously gone largely unnoticed.

The belated attention came as no surprise to Agus Wahyudi, head of the Inter-Religious Studies Programme at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta.

Documents such as the General National Defence Policy typically circulate within government bureaucracy and rarely become the subject of public debate, he said.

But a provision can take on political significance when a series of events – in this case, the Pride Month-themed social media post and the MUI’s planned bill – draws the public’s notice, said Agus.

“What changed was not necessarily the policy itself, but the public attention it attracted,” Agus said.

WHY WAS IT PLACED IN A NATIONAL DEFENCE DOCUMENT?

Asked whether the presidential regulation represented the first national policy to explicitly mention LGBTQ, human rights lawyer Asfinawati said Indonesia’s 2008 Pornography Law referred to “lesbian” and “homosexual” acts in its explanatory notes to a provision banning the production, distribution and sale of pornographic material.

It defined what the law described as “deviant sexual intercourse” for the purposes of pornography offences, rather than creating a standalone offence based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Presidential Regulation No. 111/2025 goes further by classifying the “spread of LGBTQ culture” itself as a non-military threat, argued Asfinawati, the former chair of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation.

“This regulation no longer links it to sexual conduct. Simply having a particular sexual orientation or gender identity is placed within a threat framework,” she said.

Experts have questioned whether a national defence framework was an appropriate instrument for addressing issues such as sexual orientation and gender identity.

In principle, national defence should focus on military threats, said Tangguh Chairil, a lecturer in security studies at the Department of International Relations at Binus University, Jakarta.

Indonesia, however, classifies threats into three categories: Military, non-military and hybrid. As a result, issues beyond the traditional defence sphere are increasingly viewed as national security issues.

“Because the definition is so broad, almost anything can be treated as a national security threat,” Tangguh told CNA.

Classifying LGBTQ culture as a non-military threat under a defence framework means the issue may be treated as a security concern requiring state attention and resources, he added.

“Issues that have been successfully securitised tend to receive greater attention than others,” he said.

Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Coordinating Minister for Legal Affairs, Human Rights, Immigration, and Corrections, told news outlet Tempo on Jul 9 that “non-military threat” was used to categorise risks against national resilience.

In the socio-cultural context, “resilience” refers to values, ethics, character of the younger generation, families, digital space, and social cohesion, he said.

“What the government perceives as a threat is the campaign, propaganda, and dissemination of LGBT behaviour aimed at altering the values that align with the nation’s culture and morality,” he added.

Indonesia’s Chief Minister for Law and Human Rights, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, speaks as Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, listens during a press conference following their meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, December 3, 2024. (REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan)

Asfinawati said the regulation cannot serve as the legal basis for introducing new criminal provisions or for regional governments to impose criminal sanctions unless authorised by law.

Under Indonesian law, a person’s sexual orientation as well as consensual same-sex relations between adults are not, by themselves, criminal offences. The exception is Aceh province, which implements Islamic crimina

Security Officials Face the Possibility of a Threat from the Inside on Inauguration Day

A disappearing target