Tulsi Gabbard’s skeptics in the Senate have questioned her qualifications for Director of National Intelligence (DNI), but past DNIs who were confirmed with bipartisan support oversaw flagrant civil liberties abuses and major intelligence failures.
Many of the Democrats, and even some of the Republicans, who have expressed skepticism toward Gabbard supported her predecessors in the Biden and Obama administrations.
Gabbard’s harshest opponent, Virginia Democrat and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Mark Warner, implied in his opening statement that she may be legally unqualified for the position. The DNI is required to have “extensive national security expertise,” Warner said.
Gabbard is a Lieutenant Colonel in the National Guard, and she served in the Army National Guard for over twenty years where she was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait. Gabbard also served on the House Armed Services committee as a member of Congress from 2013 to 2021.
Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell has been notably silent on Gabbard’s nomination. He was also one of the Republicans who voted against confirming Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.
During a floor speech in January, McConnell said he would support Trump’s national security picks “whose record and experience will make them immediate assets, not liabilities, in the pursuit of peace through strength.”
Maine Sen. Susan Collins previously expressed doubts about Gabbard’s position on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which permits warrantless spying on American citizens. Gabbard previously opposed Section 702, introducing the Protect Our Civil Liberties Act with Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in 2020. The legislation would have repealed the USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act.
But in January, Gabbard told Punchbowl News she would “uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702.” She also said there are now reforms in place that address her concerns. Then, in a move that surprised some, Collins announced Monday she’d support Gabbard’s confirmation.
James Lankford is pressing Tulsi on whether Snowden is a “traitor.” The problem with this is that I’ve never seen Lankford offer even a whisper of criticism of James Clapper, who was the DNI at the time of the Snowden leaks, and who lied under oath to Congress about the extent of…
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) January 30, 2025
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford and Indiana Sen. Todd Young are among the other Republicans who had expressed skepticism toward Gabbard, including over her refusal to label Edward Snowden a “traitor,” although both have joined Collins in backing her.
Despite Gabbard going through the gauntlet, previous DNIs in the Biden and Obama administrations faced much less scrutiny.
🚨 “In Jan 21, Avril Haines, President-elect Biden’s pick to be the DNI, was the first of Biden’s cabinet nominees to be confirmed in a strongly bipartisan 84-10 vote. Trump and @TulsiGabbard deserve the same consideration from Senate Dems.” https://t.co/ezZCbfTL3C
— Alexa Henning (@alexahenning) January 18, 2025
Biden’s DNI, Avril Haines, was confirmed 84-10 with support from Republican skeptics of Gabbard like Sens. Collins, Young, Lankford, and McConnell, as well as Warner. Obama’s DNI, James Clapper, was confirmed with a unanimous voice vote. Neither Collins nor McConnell were identified as having any opposition to Clapper’s confirmation. Clapper’s nomination was also unanimously approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
One former national security official told the Caller that these DNIs oversaw “massive failures” during their tenure.
When Haines was DNI, the U.S. botched its withdrawal from Afghanistan, and was seemingly caught off guard by the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Before Haines, there was Clapper, who allegedly lied to Congress about overseeing a mass NSA surveillance program that spied on Americans. Clapper was also at his post when terrorists attacked and killed Americans at the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
Despite this litany of past failures and abuses, Gabbard’s confirmation is on the line amid opposition from both parties.
“I think that the intelligence committee often now regards itself as representing the interests of the [IC] to Congress,” Alex Marthews, national chair of the civil liberties group Restore the Fourth, told the Caller.
Haines oversaw numerous intelligence debacles during the Biden administration.
In August 2021, Biden withdrew the U.S. from Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of 13 U.S. troops working to evacuate Afghan allies after Kabul was overtaken by the Taliban.
A former national security official previously told the Caller that American lives were lost because of a “failure to collect intelligence in Afghanistan.” Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies did not predict how rapidly the Taliban would gain power, according to an October 2021 Wall Street Journal report.
“There’s no question that as you pull out … our intelligence collection is diminished,” Haines said at the 2021 Intelligence & National Security Summit, after the withdrawal. “In Afghanistan, we will want to monitor any reconstitution of terrorist groups.”
Prior to serving as DNI, Haines served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where she worked under CIA director John Brennan — one of the officials who signed onto the letter doubting the authenticity of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.
In 2014, when Haines was deputy CIA director, The New York Times reported CIA staffers hacked a Senate Intelligence Committee computer network used to prepare a scathing report on the agency’s torture program.
An inspector general report revealed the CIA unlawfully gained access to the computers, forcing Brennan to issue an apology to members of the Senate Intelligence committee, including then-Chairwoman Democratic California Sen. Diane Feinstein.
Brennan created an “accountability board” to review the spying, which recommended against disciplining those CIA officials. Haines agreed with the conclusion and told the Daily Beast she found the Board’s assessment “persuasive,” generating backlash from progressives.
Left-wing activists opposed Haines’ nomination over the CIA torture report, among other reasons, yet Haines sailed through her confirmation process. Progressives have since offered little support to Gabbard, even as she has echoed many of their concerns over the surveillance state and endless wars.
Obama’s DNI James Clapper was caught up in multiple scandals throughout his time in charge of the intelligence community.
Clapper propagated the “Russian collusion” narrative against Trump and oversaw the mass surveillance of Americans.
Clapper claimed in 2013 that the NSA does not collect data on Americans. However, a report from Glenn Greenwald published that same year demonstrated Clapper’s claim was false — the NSA was, in fact, collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers in the U.S. In 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled the NSA’s mass surveillance of American’s phone records was illegal and potentially violated the Fourth Amendment.
Clapper apologized in a letter to Sen. Feinstein for his initial claim to Congress about the NSA’s surveillance programs, calling his response “clearly erroneous.”
Clapper also defended the FBI informant who spied on the Trump campaign for potential Russian interference, deeming it a “legitimate activity.” He allegedly lied about leaking the since-debunked Steele dossier to CNN, a House Intelligence Committee report revealed in June 2024.
Christopher Steele, a former British spy, alleged in the dossier that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 campaign. The dossier played an “essential role” in the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, the Justice Department inspector general found in 2019.
Clapper was also among the 51 former officials to sign the Hunter Biden laptop letter.
Clapper was at the helm of the IC during one of the biggest scandals of the Obama administration — the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed by terrorists tied to al-Qaeda-linked groups. A report released by the House Armed Services Committee found that Libya was unstable prior to September 2012 and there were multiple threats posed to U.S. and Western interests in the area.
While Haines and Clapper were confirmed with bipartisan support, key senators are still wary about confirming Gabbard, despite repeated intelligence failures and dwindling public trust in the IC from supposedly more experienced spooks.
Former North Carolina senator and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr lauded Gabbard’s qualifications and railed against efforts to stop her nomination during the hearing. A more establishment Republican, Burr’s endorsement could be crucial in swaying hesitant senators to support her.
Burr isn’t exactly MAGA — he voted to convict Trump in the Senate in 2021 after the president was impeached in the House over his alleged role in the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. A former chair of the committee, his endorsement could sway hesitant Republican senators.
Gabbard was advanced by the Senate intelligence committee by a 9-8 vote Tuesday. Her floor vote is not yet scheduled.
AUTHOR
Intelligence state reporter.
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