Brian Bennett
If the Senate votes to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, she will be the person briefing him each day on the nation’s most closely held secrets. At her confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senators from both parties expressed serious concerns about whether they trust Gabbard in that crucial role.
While Gabbard, a former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii and U.S. Army Reserve officer with no background in intelligence, faced questions about controversial moments in her past—her 2017 meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, her expressing skepticism of U.S. intelligence assessments about Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and her criticism of how the intelligence community collects data on U.S. citizens—many Senators homed in on her praise of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden as a way to question her overall judgment.
In 2013, Snowden fled the country after removing 1.5 million classified documents about military and intelligence programs, initially traveling to Hong Kong to share some of the files with journalists and eventually seeking asylum in Russia. Snowden leaked thousands of documents that revealed a broad collection of American telephone records by the U.S. government and other secret programs, prompting a national debate about civil liberties. Gabbard has called Snowden “brave.” Senators suggested Gabbard’s support for someone who so famously leaked classified documents would undermine her credibility as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence.
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