WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 100 former senior U.S. diplomats, intelligence and national security officials have urged Senate leaders to hold closed-door hearings to allow a full review of the government’s files on former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s pick for national intelligence director.
The former officials, who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, said they were “alarmed” by Gabbard’s choice to oversee all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. They said her past actions “call into question her ability to provide unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress and the entire national security apparatus.”
A spokesperson for Gabbard from the Trump transition team denounced the call Thursday as an “unwarranted” and “partisan” attack.
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Among those who signed the letter were former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, former NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, and numerous retired ambassadors and senior military officers.
They wrote to current Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and new Republican Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday to push for the private briefings as part of the Senate’s review of Trump’s top appointments.
They urged that Senate committees “consider in closed sessions all information available to the U.S. government in assessing Ms. Gabbard’s qualifications to lead our nation’s intelligence community, and more importantly, the protection of our intelligence resources and methods.”
The letter highlights Gabbard’s 2017 meetings in Syria with President Bashar Assad, who is backed by Russian, Iranian and Iranian-allied forces in a now 13-year war against Syrian opposition forces seeking his overthrow.
The US, which has severed ties with Assad’s government and imposed sanctions over his warfare, has about 900 troops in opposition-controlled northeastern Syria. They say they are needed to block a resurgence of extremist groups.
Gabbard, a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii at the time of her trip to Syria, was heavily criticized for her encounters with an American adversary and ruthless leader.
As the letter notes, her statements on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine align with Russian talking points and deviate from U.S. positions and policies.
Throughout her political career, Gabbard has urged the U.S. to limit military involvement abroad beyond the fight against Islamic extremist groups. She has defended the trip to Syria, saying it is necessary to engage with American enemies.
In social media posts earlier this year, she confirmed that the US had for a time placed her “on a classified terror watch list” as a “potential domestic terror threat.” She blamed political retaliation. Neither they nor U.S. authorities have publicly detailed the circumstances involved.
Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Gabbard on the Trump team, called the letter to Senate leaders “a perfect example” of why Trump chose Gabbard for the job.
“These baseless attacks come from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of flawed ‘intelligence,’” using classified government information as a “partisan weapon to smear and imply things about their political enemy,” Henning said.
A spokesperson for Thune did not immediately respond to questions about the request.
