Lawmakers press Tulsi Gabbard on Snowden, Assad, and Russia
Highlights from Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation hearing to be the country's next Director of National Intelligence.
It was a heady day of confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, with two of President Donald Trump’s most controversial nominees testifying before lawmakers at the same time. It is a tactic called flooding the zone, and lawmakers have used it before.
With Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) acknowledged the hearing was controversial. He spent time saying that FBI leadership tried to take down Trump, adding, “They have yet to learn a lesson.” He told Patel, cryptically, “Either you're going to run your agency or the agency is going to run you.”
Ranking member Dick Durbin (D-IL) brimmed with criticism for Patel — how Patel called Capitol Police “cowards in uniform” and made false statements that the FBI was planning the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Obviously the President has found a loyalist,” Durbin said. “Mr. Patel's record is clear. He traffics in debunked conspiracy theories that serve or benefit his political beliefs.”
Thirty minutes into the hearing and Patel had yet to speak. But then I had to switch to Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing as Director of National Intelligence, a role that would place her as the nation’s top spy, overseeing 18 intelligence agencies.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) opened up the hearing by thanking her for her decades of service and saying that the latest FBI background check, more than 300 pages, showed Gabbard was “clean as a whistle.” He said Gabbard’s sometimes “unconventional” views aligned with his own, both opposing U.S. intervention in Egypt and Libya. “I'm sure that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) could use more unconventional thinking,” he said.
If Gabbard is confirmed, Cotton told her, “the measure of your success will largely depend on whether you can return the ODNI to its original size, scope, and mission.” He wants a lean organization with staff numbering in the dozens or low hundreds. (And I’ll add that at least some in the CIA would prefer a smaller, weaker ODNI too.)
Like Durbin with Patel, ranking member Mark Warner (D-VA) ticked off his concerns about Gabbard. “It appears to me you have repeatedly excused our adversaries’ worst actions,” he said. “Instead, often blaming them on the United States and those very allies” — blaming NATO for Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, rejecting the conclusion that Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in Syria, defending Edward Snowden and putting forward legislation asking for his pardon. “What message would it send to have a DNI who would celebrate the work of a member of the IC, or a contractor, that would on their own mission decide what is appropriate to leak?”
Warner also questioned Gabbard’s change of heart on Section 702, a surveillance program that the NSA and CIA say is crucial to their overseas work, from catching terrorists to supporting Ukraine’s defense to stopping cyberattacks. In 2020, Gabbard tried to repeal the tool, calling it “illegal government surveillance.”
Soon, it was Gabbard’s turn to speak. “For too long, faulty, inadequate, or weaponized intelligence have led to costly failures,” she began. Sitting in a white suit and with her famous shock of gray hair, she listed off the grievances often voiced by Trump.(Remember that letter 51 former senior intelligence officials wrote about Hunter Biden's laptop?)
Gabbard described the ways she had been accused “of being Trump's puppet, Putin's puppet, Assad's puppet, a guru's puppet, [Prime Minister of India Narendra] Modi's puppet, not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters — the same tactic was used against President Trump and failed.”
She vowed to be more transparent with Congress about such surprises and mysteries as Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, the origins of Covid, Havana Syndrome, and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UFOs. “I'll begin by leading by example, checking my own personal views at the door and committing to delivering intelligence that is collected, analyzed, and reported without bias, prejudice, or political influence,” she promised.
For anyone who watches hearings on the Hill, you know the question-and-answer phase is usually where things get more interesting. And so it was with Gabbard’s hearing, as politicians operated in the confines of their allotted five minutes.
“Who's responsible for the war in Ukraine?” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) asked Gabbard.
“Putin started the war in Ukraine,” she said.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) followed up. “I want to make certain that in no way does Russia get a pass in either your mind or your heart.”
Gabbard replied, “Senator, I'm offended by the question.” No country, group, or individual would get a pass, she insisted.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) asked her, “Are you aware that your comments about proxy wars and Russia's legitimate security concerns, to quote your own words, are in alignment with what the Russians have said to justify their invasion of Ukraine?”
Gabbard told him, “I don't pay attention to Russian propaganda. My goal is to speak the truth, the answer is regardless of whether you like it or not.”
But it was her stance on Snowden that was most debated. He was, by my count, mentioned 57 times. At point, Sen. Bennet shouted at Gabbard, “Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? That is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high.”
At no point would Gabbard say that Snowden was a traitor. “Edward Snowden broke the law,” Gabbard would say, time and time again.
Sen. Angus King (I-ME) pushed Gabbard on why she supported Snowden with legislation she introduced in 2020. “I focused on raising concerns around egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that our government was conducting that clearly violated Americans' Fourth Amendment rights,” she said. “I would take seriously the responsibility to protect our nation's secrets,” she went on to say, “just as I have for almost 20 years of holding a security clearance of some sort myself.”
Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) invoked the words of Snowden, who told Gabbard on X before the hearing, “Tell them I harmed national security.”
And the lawmakers may have proved Snowden’s point, when he went on to write, “That's what passes for the pledge of allegiance.”
Gabbard’s trip to Syria in 2017 has been another flash point for the former Congresswoman. She admitted that she did not know who was funding the trip — two brothers with links to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, said to be an ally of Hezbollah. She said she reimbursed them after learning of their ties.
Did she question Assad about his chemical attacks? “I asked him tough questions about his own regime's actions, the use of chemical weapons, and the brutal tactics that were being used against his own people.” Asked if Assad made any concessions, “No, and I didn't expect to but I felt these issues were important to address.”
After the trip, Gabbard said she met with Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. “Quite frankly, I was surprised that there was no one from the intelligence community or the State Department who reached out or showed any interest whatsoever in my takeaways from that trip,” she said. “I would have been very happy to have a conversation.”
Gabbard did not express concern over the national security risks of TikTok, still currently owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance. Instead, she focused on data privacy and First Amendment rights. But she criticized China for its cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure and telecommunications, Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon.
Following Trump’s firing of numerous inspectors general, in breach of a required 30-day notification to Congress, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked her, “If President Trump orders you to withhold appropriated funds from the Inspector General, will you refuse that illegal order?”
“I don't believe for a second [that] President Trump would ask me to do something that would break the law,” she said. Wyden insisted she answer the question. “My commitment has been and will be, if confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, to comply with the law.”
In a hearing that lasted about 2.5 hours, Gabbard vowed to reform security clearances, establish “a direct hotline to myself” for whistleblowers, identify where intelligence gaps exist, and eliminate “bloating” at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Toward the end of the hearing, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked Gabbard if she knew why the position she would fill was created in the first place. And she did, describing how in the aftermath of Sept. 11, assessments pointed to a lack of communication between the CIA and FBI. “There was almost ships passing in the night,” she said.
Wicker was curious about what it would mean to cut back staff at the ODNI. “There's been some discussion about reforming the Office of DNI to eliminate redundancy and increase effectiveness. Do you worry that in doing so, we might be getting back to the same problem that we had in 2001?”
“I am concerned that there are still problems with ‘stovepiping’” — sharing intelligence with leadership but not with other agencies. “In some cases, my concern would be that unnecessary bureaucratic layers may be contributing to that problem.”