Nearly 100 former US diplomats and intelligence and nationwide safety officers have known as for the Senate to carry closed-door briefings on Donald Trump’s nominee for director of nationwide intelligence for her alleged “sympathy for dictators like Vladimir Putin and [Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad]” and different considerations.
In an open letter, the officers blasted Tulsi Gabbard, a former presidential candidate and consultant from Hawaii, for her lack of expertise within the area of intelligence, embracing conspiracy theories concerning the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and “aligning herself with Russian and Syrian officers” after an “uncoordinated” assembly with Assad in Damascus in 2017.
The letter was signed by the previous deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman, the previous Nato deputy secretary normal Rose Gottemoeller, the previous nationwide safety adviser Anthony Lake, in addition to quite a few different former ambassadors, intelligence and army officers, and different high-ranking members of the nationwide safety equipment.
It was addressed to the present Senate majority chief Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and to the incoming majority chief John Thune, a Republican.
In the letter, the officers known as on the Senate to “totally train its constitutional recommendation and consent function … together with via acceptable vetting, hearings, and common order”. It known as for Senate committees to contemplate “all data accessible” in closed classes to assessment Gabbard’s {qualifications} to handle “the safety of our intelligence sources and strategies”.
Gabbard and her supporters have denounced comparable assaults as a smear marketing campaign, saying that her file of anti-interventionism in Syria and Ukraine has been misrepresented by her political enemies.
In Washington, she has staked out a novel overseas coverage place as a powerful supporter of Israel and the “conflict on terror” – but additionally as a critic of US rivalries with nations like Russia and Iran (she strongly criticised Trump’s resolution to assassinate the Iranian normal Qassem Suleimani as an “unlawful and unconstitutional act of conflict”).
“When it involves the conflict in opposition to terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she instructed a Hawaiian newspaper in 2016. “When it involves counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”
But many in Washington’s tightly knit overseas coverage and intelligence neighborhood see Gabbard as harmful. The considerations listed within the open letter included Gabbard’s public doubts of Assad’s use of chemical weapons in opposition to civilians despite “US intelligence stories and overwhelming public reporting” corroborating the assaults.
They additionally famous her on-line posts after the Russian invasion “insinuating that US-funded labs in Ukraine have been growing organic weapons and that Ukraine’s engagement with Nato posed a risk to Russian sovereignty”.
Her public sympathy for Putin and Assad, the letter stated, “raises questions on her judgement and health”.
“These unfounded assaults are from the identical geniuses who’ve blood on their fingers from many years of defective ‘intelligence’,” and who use categorised authorities data as a “partisan weapon to smear and suggest issues about their political enemy”, Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Gabbard with the Trump staff, instructed ABC News in response to the letter.
Activists have instructed the Guardian that staffers from each events had expressed concern throughout a 2018 listening to with a Syrian ex-military whistleblower that Gabbard may leak particulars of the individual’s id. An individual with information of high-level intelligence discussions stated that there have been considerations over Gabbard’s different contacts within the area as nicely.
