"WASHINGTON -- President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead powerful U.S. spy agencies has often seemed to embrace Washington's adversaries and questioned key American intelligence judgments, raising alarm among veteran intelligence officials and the wider national security establishment.
If confirmed as director of National Intelligence, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii would hold a post whose extensive powers include briefing the president on the most sensitive U.S. secrets, exercising authority over the $100 billion annual U.S. spy budget, and holding sway over which secrets to declassify.
Gabbard, an Army reserve lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq but has little intelligence experience, has yet to lay out her plans for the position. But her past comments preview the potential internal clashes she could have with intelligence professionals.
"Of course there's going to be resistance to change from the 'swamp' in Washington," she said in a Fox News interview on Wednesday. Her goal, she said, will be "to defend the safety, security and freedom of the American people."
In interviews and social-media posts, Gabbard has blamed the NATO alliance for conflict in Ukraine and echoed a Kremlin claim that Ukraine hosted U.S.-funded labs researching dangerous pathogens.
She later clarified her remarks, saying she was worried about the danger amid the conflict of pathogens escaping from Ukrainian biological laboratories. U.S. funding of Ukrainian biological labs has focused on efforts to improve security and prevent the escape of pathogens.
In 2017, as a Democratic congresswoman, Gabbard questioned a U.S. intelligence assessment that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people and, in that same year, made an unannounced trip to Syria to meet with Assad.
Reaction on Capitol Hill has been mixed, with some in Trump's Republican Party saying they approved his choice of Gabbard, who after a brief presidential run in 2020, left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP. "My worldview might not be the same worldview as hers, but apparently it's pretty close to what Donald Trump wants, and that's what's important," said Rep. Mike Simpson (R., Idaho).
If confirmed, she would oversee U.S. intelligence agencies as they are grappling with major conflicts in the Mideast and Ukraine and confronting a challenge from China.
Trump has chosen John Ratcliffe, who was national intelligence director in his first term, to lead the CIA. Trump credited Ratcliffe, a Republican former House member from Texas, with "exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation."" [1]
It is interesting that the bribe-taker, the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who accepted expensive gifts with his wife for corrupt purposes, promised to expel from the British Labor Party all those who blame NATO for causing the conflict in Ukraine, which led to so many victims in Eastern Europe. Bribery and lies always go together.
1. U.S. News: Gabbard Set to Oversee Agencies She Has Doubted. Strobel, Warren P. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 15 Nov 2024: A.4.
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