Tulsi Gabbard, nominated to be Director of National Intelligence, faced intense questioning during her Senate Intelligence Committee hearing over her past views on Edward Snowden and surveillance programs. While she acknowledged Snowden broke the law, she refused to label him a traitor and emphasized a focus on preventing future leaks. Gabbard's shifting stance on Section 702 of the FISA Act, a key surveillance tool, also sparked scrutiny.
In 2020, then-Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced legislation calling on the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden , the National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 revealed the existence of the bulk collection of American phone records by the NSA before fleeing to Russia.
On Thursday, she refused under persistent questioning by Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee to say whether she now believed Snowden’s actions were traitorous. Gabbard’s repeated dodges during her nomination hearing to become President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence may have further imperiled a nomination that already appeared to be on a knife’s edge. “Was he a traitor at the time when he took America’s secrets, released them in public and then ran to China and became a Russian citizen?” asked Republican Sen. James Lankford in a lengthy line of questioning that described the broad sense of the intelligence community that Snowden’s actions were tantamount to treason. “I’m focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again,” Gabbard said. She sought to lay out reforms she would undertake to prevent future leaks on the scale of Snowden’s, including “making sure that every single person in the workforce knows about the legal whistleblower channels available to them.” At other moments, she gave the same answer almost verbatim, an answer that suggests she still sees value in his actions: “Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said. But, she said, “He also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government that led to serious reforms.” Even when pressed multiple times for a yes-or-no answer by a visibly angry Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, Gabbard calmly and stolidly declined to give one.Gabbard’s views on surveillance – and Snowden – had already disturbed Republicans on the committee, where she can’t afford to lose even a single GOP vote if she is to advance to the full Senate. GOP Sen. Susan Collins, seen as a potentially wobbly vote, said after the hearing that she has still not decided yet whether she’ll support Gabbard. “I want to make a careful decision,” the Maine Republican said. Pressed on surveillance views Hinting at the pivotal role her views on surveillance are likely to play in her success or failure at the committee level, Gabbard was also pressed by Democratic Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner, among others, on an apparent about-face she has made on her views of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law is seen by most lawmakers on the committee as a critical surveillance tool for protecting the United States from terrorism – but as a Democratic member of Congress, Gabbard had called for its wholesale repeal, but in closed-door meetings with Senate lawmakers over recent weeks, she has signaled her support for its use. Gabbard said reforms had been made to the law since her time in Congress that had led her to support the law; Warner pressed her: “Which reforms?” “There are a number of reforms –” she said. Warner pointed out that after the reforms were already passed into law, she told podcaster Joe Rogan that the reforms had made the law “worse.” Republican Sen. John Cornyn at one point appeared to publicly quiz her on her basic understanding of Section 702; multiple sources familiar with her closed door meetings with lawmakers in advance of her confirmation said that some senators said she appeared to be conflating Section 702 and another part of FISA, Title I, which was used to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, raising questions about whether she understood one of the government’s most significant surveillance authorities. “What would be necessary to be shown to establish probable cause to a judge in order to obtain a warrant?” Cornyn asked, referring to a debate over whether a warrant should be required in order for the FBI to search Section 702 holdings for Americans’ information. “That’s not for me to say,” Gabbard said. “Do you know? What the elements of probable cause are and whether that’s a practical and workable solution?” Cornyn pressed
Edward Snowden Tulsi Gabbard Senate Intelligence Committee Director Of National Intelligence Surveillance Section 702 FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Whistleblower Treason
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