The Dni Under Tulsi Gabbard A Stark

Tulsi Gabbard stands out in the lengthy list of staggeringly unqualified cabinet appointees as she corrupts the Intelligence Community she leads.

She has reinvented herself so many times in her career it is hard to say who she is. She seemingly has no core values other than to ingratiate herself to the President. The latest move – making criminal referrals of former intelligence officials of the Obama administration to the Justice Department because of an unsubstantiated conspiracy to politicize intelligence assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 election – reflects not only her lack of attention to her job but appears to be nothing less than turning our intelligence community into a mouthpiece for the president’s desires to attack his political “enemies.”

Is there anything going on in the world that the top intelligence official in the government might want to be focusing on, instead of searching for ways to hop on to the retribution bus? Apparently not. We first heard from her in March, when she accurately reflected an Intelligence Community (IC) assessment that there was no evidence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. That didn’t last long. When contradicted by the President she quickly fell right back into line, loudly proclaiming her agreement with the President’s contrary “analysis” and immediately crawled under the cone of silence, having apparently learned her lesson.

She has now raised her head again, choosing to focus on IC criminal referrals of the unnamed Obama officials involved in the IC investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. As it happens, the referrals and the documents on which they are based are available (at least for the moment) on the ODNI website. Ditto, the juxtaposed public record concerning Russian influence activities that is freely available, including the report of a 2020 Republican-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence inquiry into Russian election interference (Mario Rubio was a member).

That juxtaposition shows that the referrals are disingenuous at best. Her DNI statement trumpets that “ recently uncovered” internal IC communications show that intelligence officials did not believe that Russia had succeeded in changing vote counts by cyber attacks on the voting infrastructure. This “admission” is purported evidence of complicity on the part of the Obama administration to mislead the public, and as as evidence of bias and anti-Trump conspiracy, and most ridiculous of all, treason.

In fact, this “recently uncovered” information was shared at the time by intelligence officials. and served as a reminder that the defense against Russia’s efforts to subvert the vote was successful. As concluded by the IC in 2017 and supported by the bipartisan SSCI in 2020 investigation Russia did try to interfere in the 2016 election, partly using data obtained from a cyber hack of the Democratic National Committee to mount covert campaigns on various social media outlets that were supportive of Donald Trump and negative about Hillary Clinton.

So if the revelation that intelligence officials did not believe that Russia succeeded in cyber attacks against the voting infrastructure is not a revelation at all, what is the substance of the referral to the Department of Justice? There is none.

The referral can, however, be explained.

Either our DNI is providing misleading information and false conclusions in an effort to help the sitting president divert public (and perhaps congressional) attention from the “Epstein Papers” that is undermining political support from his base. There could be no more stark example of politicization of intelligence.

Or worse, our DNI is helping the president by providing spurious, unsubstantiated accusations to solidify his power, using a now-compliant Justice Department to prosecute his ideological opponents. If this sounds like something from a cold war spy movie from the last century, it is no surprise; using intelligence agencies as “law enforcement” comes right out of the authoritarian playbooks that produced the Soviet KGB and the East German STASI.

In the meantime, while wasting time and resources, Tulsi Gabbard and her team were not looking at the real issue: the Russian influence campaign of 2016 was not a one-off. That campaign continues today, and is an ongoing serious and significant threat to our democracy. But Tulsi Gabbard is ignoring it in order to concoct tales to please President Trump. She stands out, indeed.

The Author is a retired career officer of the Intelligence Community.

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