Trump Pick by Tulsi Gabbard Alarms Intelligence Community

RRobert F. Kennedy. Matt Gaetz. Pete Hegseth. The flurry of announcements this week from Donald Trump unveiling his planned cabinet for a second term has drawn astonishing responses across the federal government. In the intelligence community, alarm has focused on Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to be the next Director of National Intelligence.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, has no background in intelligence and a history of making statements about countries like Russia and Syria that have raised questions about her judgment. If Trump has his way, Gabbard will be tasked with overseeing the nation’s 16 other intelligence agencies and some of the nation’s most secretive national security programs.

“We’re all in turmoil,” said one current intelligence official who has worked through several administrations.

Intelligence analysts are most concerned that Gabbard, in her role as director of national intelligence, may be motivated to censor intelligence findings critical of Russia and shut down funding for potentially fruitful investigations. Some intelligence officials are privately considering whether to resign if Gabbard is their new boss.

The Director of National Intelligence is a position created in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to ensure that the United States’ national security apparatus worked together and shared information about the most critical threats. The job typically requires confirmation by the Senate Intelligence Committee — which previously reviewed the candidate’s financial records and an FBI background check. These reviews are conducted to ensure that a DNI nominee has no large outstanding debts or ties to foreign governments that could compromise them coordinating the work of thousands of intelligence officers at the FBI, CIA, NSA and other agencies.

Gabbard’s background is strikingly different from the current Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haynes, who has a decades-long career in intelligence. Haynes was a former deputy director of the CIA in the Obama administration and was a senior member of Obama’s National Security Council.

Gabbard has little or no intelligence experience. During her eight years in Congress, she never served on the House Intelligence Committee, instead being assigned to the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees.

Gabbard emerged as a national figure in 2012 when she became the first Hindu, first American Samoan, and one of the first female combat veterans to be elected to the chamber. Before entering Congress, Gabbard deployed to Iraq in 2004 as part of a medical unit in the Hawaii Army National Guard and is currently a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve.

Over the past decade, Gabbard has stood out for her foreign policy views. She has long been skeptical of US intelligence analysis and has taken public policy positions that reflect Russian propaganda.

While in Congress in 2017, Gabbard met with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after the United States severed diplomatic ties with the country over his bloody abuses against his own people. Russia has long supported Assad, providing troops and weapons to support Assad’s government during Syria’s 13-year civil war. Gabbard said the United States should not support opposition fighters in the country who were being assisted by American intelligence agencies.

Later that year, after the Syrian military attacked civilians with sarin and chlorine in the northern Syrian town of Ltamenah, Gabbard repeated Russian denials that Assad was behind a chemical weapons attack. ONE United Nations The investigation later concluded that the Syrian Air Force dropped the chemicals.

Weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard posted a video supporting a disproved conspiracy theory that alleged pathogens could leak from biolabs in Ukraine, a theory advanced by Russia as part of its propaganda attempt to push for a ceasefire . Then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Gabbard had embraced “actual Russian propaganda” and called it “treasonous.” Late. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Gabbard was “parroting false Russian propaganda.”

It was not the first time Gabbard was accused of trying to advance Russian interests. In 2019, Gabbard launched a long-shot presidential campaign that received favorable coverage from Russian news and propaganda sites. Hillary Clinton suggested that Russians were ‘grooming’ a Democrat to run as a third-party candidate and help Trump win re-election. It was widely believed that Clinton was referring to Gabbard, who accused Clinton of trying to “destroy” her reputation.

Two years ago, Gabbard announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party, which she exposed as “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly vigilantism.” Last month, at a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina, she announced that she was a Republican.

Gabbard has not always supported Trump. She criticized Trump’s decision in 2015 to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which was backed by the Obama administration, Iran and Russia, as well as China, France, Germany and Britain. In 2020, Gabbard criticized Trump’s order to kill Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, who ran Iran’s proxy militia program in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Yemen. Gabbard said at the time that Trump violated the Constitution by removing another country’s top military commander without congressional authorization.