By David Jacobs | The Center Square
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday announced that retired Lt. General Russel Honoré, a Louisiana native best known for his role in the response to Hurricane Katrina, will lead a Capitol Hill security review.
The news follows last week’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump and precedes next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
“To protect our Democracy, we must now subject the security of the U.S. Capitol Complex to rigorous scrutiny,” Pelosi said in a prepared statement. “To that end, I have asked Lt. General Russel Honoré (Ret.), a respected leader with experience dealing with crises, to lead an immediate review of the Capitol’s security infrastructure, interagency processes and procedures, and command and control.”
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Department of Defense tapped the Lakeland native to take over what was widely seen as a botched federal response to the storm’s aftermath. In a recent interview, he suggested some members of the Capitol Police may have deliberately allowed the rioters inside.
“It’s like the Capitol Police was doing security by ZOOM like we’re doing this interview by ZOOM,” Honoré said. “I don’t know, I’ve just never seen so much incompetence, so they’re either that stupid, or ignorant or complicit. I think they were complicit.”
Honoré retired from the Army in 2008. He now works as a speaker and consultant and often speaks out on environmental issues as a leader of the “Green Army” activist group.