Former US officials alarmed over Tulsi Gabbard’s alleged ‘sympathy for dictators’ | US foreign policy
Nearly 100 former US diplomats and intelligence and national security officials have called on the Senate to hold closed-door briefings on Donald Trump’s nomination for director of national intelligence because of her alleged “sympathies with dictators like Vladimir Putin and [Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad]” and other concerns.
In an open letter, officials erupted Tulsi Gabbardformer presidential candidate and representative of Hawaii, because of her lack of intelligence experience, embracing conspiracy theories about a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. and “joining Russian and Syrian officials” after an “uncoordinated” meeting with Assad in Damascus in 2017.
The letter was signed by former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, former NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemueller, former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and a number of other former ambassadors, intelligence and military officers and other senior officials. senior members of the national security apparatus.
It was addressed to current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and incoming Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican.
In the letter, officials urged the Senate to “fulfill its constitutional advisory and consent role … including through appropriate scrutiny, hearings and regular order.” He urged Senate committees to consider “all available information” in closed sessions to review Gabbard’s qualifications to manage “the protection of our intelligence sources and methods.”
Gabbard and her supporters denounced such attacks as a smear campaign, saying her track record of anti-interventionism in Syria and Ukraine has been misrepresented by her political enemies.
In Washington, she has carved out a unique foreign policy position as a strong supporter of Israel and the “war on terror” – but also as a critic of US rivalries with countries such as Russia and Iran (she sharply criticized Trump’s decision to kill Iranian General Qassem Soleimani as an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war”).
“When it comes to the war on terror, I’m a hawk,” she told a Hawaii newspaper in 2016. “When it comes to counterproductive regime change wars, I’m a dove.”
But many in Washington’s tight-knit foreign policy and intelligence community see Gabbard as dangerous. Concerns listed in the open letter include Gabbard’s public doubts about Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians, despite “U.S. intelligence reports and overwhelming public reports” confirming the attacks.
They also noted her online posts after the Russian invasion “implied that US-funded laboratories in Ukraine are developing biological weapons and that Ukraine’s engagement with NATO poses a threat to Russian sovereignty”.
Her public sympathy for Putin and Assad, the letter said, “raises questions about her judgment and fitness.”
“These baseless attacks are from the same geniuses whose hands are bloodied by decades of botched ‘intelligence,'” and who use classified government information as a “partisan weapon to smear and insinuate things about their political enemy,” Gabbard spokeswoman Alexa Henning of Trump’s team, ABC News said in response to the letter.
Activists have told the Guardian that officials from both parties raised concerns during a 2018 hearing. with a former Syrian military whistleblower saying Gabbard could reveal details about the person’s identity. A person familiar with high-level intelligence discussions said there were also concerns about Gabbard’s other contacts in the region.
