Intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty insid­ers warn against Tul­si Gab­bard as DNI: ‘Seri­ous red flags’

The offi­cials who served in both Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions said Gabbard’s past actions “call into ques­tion her abil­i­ty to deliv­er unbi­ased intel­li­gence brief­in­gs to the Pres­i­dent, Con­gress, and the entire nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus.”

The group urged incom­ing Repub­li­can Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader John Thune (R‑SD) and cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) to hold closed brief­in­gs to scru­ti­nize her nom­i­na­tion ful­ly.

“Sen­ate com­mit­tees should con­sid­er in closed ses­sions all 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,” the let­ter said.

The let­ter comes as Trump’s team announced Tues­day that it had entered into a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with the Jus­tice Depart­ment, paving the way for FBI back­ground checks. The MOU comes after pres­sure from bipar­ti­san law­mak­ers who aired con­cerns after it appeared that some appointees would skip the process.

The doc­u­ment men­tions Gabbard’s trav­el to Syr­ia in 2017, where she met Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad, a Russ­ian ally, and ulti­mate­ly aligned her­self with Russ­ian and Syr­i­an offi­cials. At that time, she was at odds with the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion in call­ing for the end of sup­port for Syria’s oppo­si­tion move­ment against Assad’s rule.

It also notes her state­ments on wars in Ukraine and the Mid­dle East dif­fer from Unit­ed States pol­i­cy and have mim­ic­ked Russ­ian talk­ing points.

“Ms. Gabbard’s past state­ments and actions raise seri­ous red flags and indi­cate sig­nif­i­cant gaps in knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence on these issues. I encour­age the Sen­ate to care­ful­ly weigh her suit­abil­i­ty for this crit­i­cal role,” said Rose Got­te­moeller, for­mer deputy sec­re­tary gen­er­al of NATO, who signed the let­ter.

The for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­woman-turned-Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for a key Trump admin­is­tra­tion role served in the Hawaii Army Nation­al Guard and was deployed to Iraq with a med­ical unit. Dur­ing her career in the House from 2013 to 2021, she was known for her anti-inter­ven­tion­ist pol­i­tics and pop­ulist eco­nom­ics.

The let­ter goes on to say that Gab­bard if con­firmed, “would be the least expe­ri­enced direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence since the posi­tion was cre­at­ed,” point­ing out that many pre­vi­ous direc­tors had exec­u­tive branch expe­ri­ence work­ing on intel­li­gence mat­ters or served on an intel­li­gence pan­el.

“The Sen­ate must care­ful­ly eval­u­ate whether Ms. Gab­bard is equipped to effec­tive­ly over­see an orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture as unique and large as the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Pro­gram and also the effect of her hold­ing this posi­tion on the will­ing­ness of our clos­est allies to share intel­li­gence with the U.S.,” the let­ter said.

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Alexa Hen­ning, a spokes­woman for Gab­bard on the Trump tran­si­tion team on Thurs­day called the let­ter an “unfound­ed attack” and a “par­ti­san weapon.”

“This is a per­fect exam­ple of why Pres­i­dent Trump chose Tul­si Gab­bard for this posi­tion. 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,” Hen­ning said in a state­ment pro­vid­ed to the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er.

“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,” she added.