President Donald Trump's pick to serve as director of national intelligence, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, was scorched by the Wall Street Journal editorial board on Tuesday, over her seeming lack of concern for the security of state secrets.
Gabbard, who was a Democrat until two years ago, has faced accusations of promoting Russia-backed conspiracy theories about U.S. intelligence and has long been one of the Trump nominees that the Senate GOP is most skeptical about.
The board took aim at Senate Intelligence Committee chair Tom Cotton (R-AR), who "recently said he hopes nobody questions Ms. Gabbard’s patriotism." As to that, the board continued, "We aren’t. The issue is what she believes and what she does, especially on U.S. intelligence. Her history isn’t encouraging. In 2020 she introduced a House resolution, alongside then Rep. Matt Gaetz, calling for the feds to drop charges against Edward Snowden."
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The resolution stated, “The National Security Agency’s bulk collection telephone records program was illegal and unconstitutional. Edward Snowden’s disclosure of this program to journalists was in the public interest.”
"Oh, his disclosure of one NSA program to some trusted journalists? Is that all Ms. Gabbard believes Mr. Snowden did? The reality is that Mr. Snowden betrayed his oath by pilfering a massive cache of U.S. secrets, fleeing to Russia, and subsequently taking citizenship there," noted the board.
Furthermore, most of the documents Snowden stole didn't have anything to do with the NSA's surveillance programs, according to a House report in 2016, and “instead pertain to military, defense and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries.” Indeed, the board noted, Cotton himself has called Snowden an "egotistical serial liar and traitor" who "jeopardized the safety of Americans and allies around the world."
The fact that Gabbard cannot understand this distinction, the board wrote, is disqualifying.
"The question isn’t Ms. Gabbard’s patriotism. It’s judgment, and what message it would send friends and foes to confirm a director of national intelligence who doesn’t really seem to believe in protecting national intelligence," the board concluded.
