Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, nominee for director of national intelligence, appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Jan. 30 for her confirmation hearing.
Gabbard previously served in the House as a Democratic representative for Hawaii from 2013 to 2021 and was a member of the House Committees on Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, and Armed Services, including its Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations.
She joined the Hawaii Army National Guard in 2003, transferred to the Army Reserve in 2020, and currently holds the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Then-President-elect Donald Trump nominated Gabbard in November 2024, saying she would help defend the security and constitutional freedoms of all Americans.
Gabbard’s fitness for the role has been questioned by both sides of the aisle because of her stances on intelligence collection and U.S. interventionism.
Support for FISA 702 Scrutinized
Gabbard has often been at odds with the intelligence establishment in Washington over her long-held belief that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) should be repealed.
That statute allows U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance of foreign targets on a massive scale in a process that sometimes inadvertently collects the sensitive private data of U.S. citizens.
During her time in Congress, Gabbard attempted to repeal FISA 702 and the Patriot Act, which granted the authority to wiretap Americans’ communications.
“702 provides a unique tool and capability that is essential for our national security,” Gabbard said during the hearing, noting that “significant FISA reforms have been enacted” since her time in Congress.
Former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified last year that 702 provided intelligence agencies with “unique insights” and that too much regulation would hurt the “agility” required to respond to emergent threats.
Many at the Jan. 30 hearing met Gabbard’s recent support of 702 with skepticism, with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) questioning Gabbard’s “confirmation conversion” on the issue.
“You actually said you wanted to repeal it,” Warner said.
Accountability for Politicized Agencies
Gabbard also took aim at many of the actions taken in recent years by current and former intelligence officers, which she said weaponized the intelligence community for political purposes.She condemned actions taken by the FBI to undermine Trump’s first term in office, which included using FISA authorities to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
She also condemned the role of 51 former intelligence officials who used their credentials within the intelligence community to falsely suggest that a story about a laptop belonging to former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was Russian disinformation.
To that end, Gabbard said her priority would be providing “unbiased, timely, and accurate intelligence” to secure freedom and safety for the American people.
The remarks come at a time when partisanship and distrust in institutions continue to grow in the United States.
During the same timeframe, the number of Americans who believed that the Intelligence Community presented a threat to civil liberties nearly doubled.
Those opinions were often held in highly partisan terms, with trust in U.S. intelligence now fluctuating rapidly based on whether the president in office is of the same party as the person taking part in the survey.
“I’ll work to rebuild trust through transparency and accountability. This is a national security imperative,” Gabbard said.
Snowden and Government Leaks
Perhaps the most contentious question that arose repeatedly throughout the hearing was about Gabbard’s previous support for Edward Snowden.Snowden was a technical assistant for the CIA and worked at the National Security Agency (NSA), which gathers intelligence through electronic means, and Booz Allen Hamilton before stealing more than 1 million files from government servers in 2013 and leaking much of the information to the press. He ultimately fled to Russia.
Those actions earned him a reputation among some as a traitor who put American servicemembers’ lives at risk, while others viewed him as a hero for exposing widespread surveillance and civil rights abuses by the U.S. government.
Notably, the leaks disclosed the existence of Prism, an NSA program that obtained Americans’ audio and video chats, emails, texts, photographs, and other documents from Microsoft, Google, and Apple.
Ever since, the United States has wanted Snowden on espionage charges. In 2022, Snowden was granted Russian citizenship by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Before the committee on Jan. 30, she said: “Edward Snowden broke the law, and he released this information in a way that he should not have. He also acknowledged and exposed information that was unconstitutional, which drove a lot of the reforms that this body has made over the years.
“My statements in the past have been reflective of the egregious and illegal programs that were exposed in that leak.”
Several lawmakers, including Warner and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), said Snowden endangered the lives of U.S. agents and revealed intelligence processes to the nation’s enemies.
The lawmakers described Snowden as a “traitor” and pressed Gabbard repeatedly to do the same, which she refused to do.
Gabbard did say that she would not seek a pardon for Snowden if she were confirmed to the DNI position.
Domestic Security Over Interventionism
Gabbard’s previous comments on several international conflicts were also brought to the forefront as lawmakers sought to understand the former congresswoman’s thinking about U.S. adversaries.Numerous lawmakers took issue with Gabbard’s claims that the invasion of Ukraine was merely a proxy war between Russia and NATO and with her questioning of the existence of widely documented chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
On international conflict, Gabbard turned the focus toward the Intelligence Community itself, accusing it of engaging in “bureaucratic mission-creep and empire-building.”
Faulty U.S. intelligence and overzealous interventionism, she said, led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its creation of power vacuums in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere.
“The fact is what truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet,” Gabbard said.
“For too long, faulty, inadequate, or weaponized intelligence have led to costly failures and the undermining of our national security and God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.”
Some on the committee questioned the wisdom of using military force to alter the political systems of other nations.
“I opposed the disastrous interventions in Egypt and Libya as well,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said.
“The vast number of governments throughout history and still today are not democratic. We may wish it were different, and we can work to improve it, but that’s the way the world is. If we only befriended nations that shared our system of government and our social and cultural sensibilities, we wouldn’t have many friends.”
