Gabbard’s surveillance flip will be in spotlight at DNI hearing
Tulsi Gabbard says she now supports surveillance she once tried to end. The issue could decide whether she's confirmed as director of national intelligence.
At a Senate hearing Thursday, Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, will have to convince Republican senators that she supports a surveillance program she once tried to repeal.
How Gabbard handles that issue, rather than her past sympathetic comments on Russia or her controversial meeting with then-Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, could determine whether she becomes the country’s top-ranking intelligence official.
As a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii from 2013 to 2021, Gabbard called the electronic surveillance program a case of “overreach” by intelligence agencies and a violation of Americans’ civil liberties. In 2020, Gabbard and a Republican lawmaker proposed legislation to repeal section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that allows for the program.
In an interview with Joe Rogan in 2019, she praised Edward Snowden — the former government contractor who leaked a trove of data about the 702 surveillance program — and said he should be pardoned on espionage charges because he had informed Americans about a threat to their rights.
But this month, with her Senate confirmation looming, Gabbard told media outlets that she now viewed the program as a “crucial” tool and that amendments to the law adopted last year had addressed her concerns.
Rating: 5