In an interview with ABC News, former White House Situation Room officer Mike Stiegler revealed that Jan. rioters “came that close” to murdering Mike Pence.

“It’s important to me that we don’t forget that it did come that close. And that we did have discussions. If we lose the VP, if the 25th is invoked. We started running through all of these game plans because it was getting close,” he told George Stephanopoulos.

Excerpt from Stephanopoulos's new book, "Situation Room," via Vanity Fair:

With reports coming in from the Secret Service and other officials on Capitol Hill, the Situation Room scrambled into action. “Things got very chaotic,” Stiegler told me. “We went into a continuity-of-government situation.”

Stop there. Take that phrase in: “continuity-of-government situation.” That bland bit of bureaucratic jargon masks a deadly serious set of policies and actions first ordered by President Eisenhower at the height of the Cold War. “COG” was designed to ensure the government would still function after a disaster such as nuclear war. It involves secret command centers—the Sit Room being a critical one—elaborate chains of command, the relocation of Congress and the replacement of executive branch officials killed in attacks. It had been activated only once before, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The most harrowing part?

“How close we came to losing the vice president,” he told me. He paused, then looked up at the ceiling, struggling to compose himself. “The screams, the yelling. The different things that we heard that day.” Stiegler is a young man with a cheerful disposition, but when he talked about January 6 he seemed to age before my eyes.