Over 100 former U.S. national security and intelligence officials have called for the Senate to issue closed hearings on Tulsi Gabbard, president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, over previous stances regarding dictators such as Vladimir Putin and the recently deposed Bashar al-Assad.
In a letter published by Foreign Policy for America (FP4A) on Thursday to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator and Majority Leader-elect John Thune, the coalition of former officials warned that Gabbard would be “the least experienced” person to assume to role of Director of National Intelligence and that “several of Ms. Gabbard’s past actions call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus”.
“Her sympathy for dictators like Vladimir Putin and Assad raises questions about her judgment and fitness.”.
In 2017, Gabbard went on an uncoordinated trip to Damascus to meet with then-president Assad, amidst Syria’s bloody civil war. The letter noted that following that trip, “Ms. Gabbard aligned herself with Russian and Syrian officials”. Gabbard doubted the validity of U.S. intelligence and public reports of the chemical weapons attack committed against Syrian civilians by Assad, and reportedly supported the conspiracy that the attacks were staged by U.K. agents.
The letter also criticized Gabbard for her stances during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. During this time, Gabbard claimed that Ukraine’s engagement with NATO was a threat to Russia and shared a video spewing claims of U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine created bioweapons. As mentioned by the letter, both of these arguments were initially used by Russia when justifying its invasion.
As NBC reports, Gabbard called for Ukraine to be a “neutral country” in the opening days of the invasion and encouraged the Ukrainian people to “embrace the spirit of aloha”.
The letter concluded by asking Senate committees to “consider in closed sessions all the information available to the U.S. government when considering Ms. Gabbard’s qualifications to manage our country’s intelligence agencies, and more importantly, the protection of our intelligence sources and methods”.
“Incompetent, unqualified, erratic – these adjectives hardly begin to describe this lickspittle to our enemies, danger to our secrets, and wrecking ball to our capabilities”, said former head of U.S. counterintelligence policies Joel Brenner, in a FP4A statement. “Ms. Gabbard’s nomination is an insult to our intelligence agencies and the thousands of people who labor in them night and day to keep our nation safe.”.
Activists reportedly told The Guardian that both Republican and Democratic staffers were apprehensive in a 2018 hearing with a Syrian ex-military photographer and dissident codenamed “Caesar”, where it was feared that Gabbard would leak information about Caesar’s identity. Someone with knowledge of high-level discussions also told The Guardian that there were also concerns regarding some of Gabbard’s contacts in Syria.
“There was genuine concern by Democrats in her own party, and Republicans and us and Caesar, about how were we going to do this?”, said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, in an interview with The Guardian. “With the member sitting on this committee that we believe would give any intelligence she has to Assad, Russia and Iran, all of which would have wanted to kill Caesar.”
In a statement acquired by Newsweek, Trump transition spokesperson Alexa Henning said that “These unfounded attacks are from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of faulty ‘intelligence,’ including the non-existent weapons of mass destruction”, in response to the letter. “These intel officials continue to use classification as a partisan weapon to smear and imply things about their political enemy without putting the facts out.”
When it comes to foreign policy, Gabbard has been a staunch supporter of both Israel and the “war on terror”, while taking a stance against the U.S.’s rivalries with Russia and Iran. As mentioned by Axios, Gabbard would be overseeing over 18 agencies as Director of National Intelligence, including the FBI and CIA.
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