Tulsi Gabbard tussles with senators over Snowden, surveillance 

Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that she would leave her own political views “at the door” and deliver “intelligence that is collected, analyzed and reported without bias, prejudice or political influence.”

But she also accused the Biden administration and other national security officials of politicizing intelligence to make Trump look like Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “puppet” and said Trump’s reelection was a “clear mandate from the American people to break the cycle of failure and the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community.”

Gabbard’s nomination to lead the nation’s top intelligence agency is opposed by national security experts for many reasons, including her defense of past information leaks and her criticism of a key U.S. surveillance program.  

In his opening statement, ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., raised questions about a number of Gabbard’s past statements and positions.

Chief among those concerns is her position switch on Section 702, a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes intelligence agencies to collect, analyze and share signals intelligence related to national security threats. While the program is targeted at  foreign sources, it also sweeps up millions of phone records and metadata of American citizens and U.S. persons that can later be searched by agencies like the FBI in domestic investigations.

Gabbard had previously described Section 702 as “overreach,” and as a member of the House introduced legislation to repeal the program. Since being nominated, Gabbard has made statements characterizing the program as a “vital national security tool.”  

Warner described that change of heart as “welcome” but “not credible” given the timing.

Gabbard said that Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, rather than ODNI, should decide whether warrants are required for accessing data on U.S. persons. She remained noncommittal on whether she supported provisions in an extension of Section 702 that required device owners to cooperate with data requests from the government.

Warner also castigated Gabbard for praising former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as a “brave whistleblower” deserving of a pardon, and claiming in pre-hearing interviews that the director of national intelligence did not have a role in determining whether Snowden was a “lawful whistleblower.” Snowden’s 2013 leak exposed numerous global surveillance programs being run by the NSA, the U.S. government and by allies in the Five Eyes Alliance.

Those revelations led to significant legal and bureaucratic reforms around the way intelligence and law enforcement agencies can collect and use call information and metadata of U.S. persons, but Warner described Snowden as “someone who betrayed the trust and jeopardized the security of our nation.”

“What message would it send to the intelligence workforce to have a DNI who would celebrate staff and contractors deciding to leak our nation’s most sensitive secrets as they see fit?” Warner said.

But during questioning from Warner, Gabbard again backtracked, saying flatly that Snowden “broke the law” and that he should have gone through official government channels to report wrongdoing.

She continued to defend her criticism of U.S. surveillance programs and noted that Snowden’s disclosures led to government reform, calling them “reflective of the egregious and illegal programs that were exposed in that leak.” She also declined to answer if she believed Snowden was a “traitor.”

“I take very seriously the protection of American civil liberties and our Fourth Amendment rights,” Gabbard told Sen. Angus King, I-Maine. “If confirmed as director of national intelligence, I’d make sure there’s no further Snowden-type leak in the future and that those who have concerns have legal channels to raise those concerns so that we don’t violate and release our nation’s secrets.”

Snowden, for his part, commented on social media that he believes Gabbard would not be able to answer questions about him truthfully and maintain support for her nomination in Congress.

“Tulsi Gabbard will be required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation [Thursday]. I encourage her to do so,” Snowden wrote on X. “Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff. In D.C., that’s what passes for the pledge of allegiance.”