Gabbard’s Critics Aren’t Interested In Fixing US Spy Agencies

President Trump’s pick to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has never been shy about sharing her criticisms of America’s surveillance state. So, it came as no surprise when some of its biggest defenders grilled her on the subject during her Thursday Senate confirmation hearing.

While testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard was repeatedly pressed by senators to offer a full-throated defense of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which intel agencies abused to spy on unsuspecting Americans and surveil Trump’s 2016 campaign.

As The Federalist’s Logan Washburn recently reported, “Section 702 of the legislation allows federal agencies to collect communications of noncitizens, outside the country, without a warrant.” It furthermore “supposedly bars the government from spying on Americans,” Washburn noted, “but the CIA was caught in 2022 using the law — which Congressional Republicans reauthorized last year — to spy on Americans.”

While serving in Congress, Gabbard co-sponsored legislation alongside Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., that sought to reform FISA and revoke the Patriot Act. She has since been all but forced to change her position on FISA, seemingly to gain support from some Republican senators.

Gabbard was asked about her evolving position on the law by the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. Yet when Gabbard attempted to answer Warner’s question about which FISA Section 702 reforms she supports, the Virginia Democrat cut her off and wouldn’t allow her to finish.

It wasn’t only Warner who drilled the Army veteran on her shifting views on FISA. GOP Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Mike Rounds of South Dakota seemingly attempted to gently bully Gabbard into defending the law.

“I want to give you an opportunity in front of this committee, to share your position, in your own words, about … how much it is needed with regard to the continuation of [FISA] 702 and your support for it,” Rounds said.

“There are a number of, of areas that we would be blind from a national security perspective without this capability. It also must exist next to having safeguards in place to ensure Americans’ civil liberties are protected,” Gabbard replied.

[READ: Top Senate Republicans Ask Bondi To Support A FISA System That Spies On Americans]

Defense of FISA was hardly the only topic Gabbard was grilled on during Thursday’s hearing. Senators also repeatedly brought up the 2013 leaking of classified information by then-National Security Agency intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

As Rachel Bovard previously wrote in these pages, Snowden unearthed the existence of the PRISM program, “a constitutionally dubious surveillance program” used by U.S. intel agencies to “gather and search through the emails, internet calls, photos, and chats of Americans without obtaining a warrant, usually through the backdoor of America’s major tech companies.”

When pressed by Warner on whether she believes what Snowden did was “brave,” Gabbard maintained Snowden “broke the law,” and that she does “not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way he in which he did it.” She subsequently noted, however, that Snowden “also … released information that exposed egregious, illegal, and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government that led to serious reforms that Congress undertook.”

Gabbard — who has previously praised Snowden for his actions — also told Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that she would not advocate for Snowden to receive a pardon if confirmed as DNI.

Those answers apparently weren’t good enough for Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Todd Young, R-Ind., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., all of whom effectively hounded Gabbard to disavow Snowden as a “traitor.”

Whatever one’s thoughts on Snowden and his actions, the committee’s obsession with the subject and its defending FISA without giving attention to the many documented abuses by America’s intel agencies are appalling. Americans have been victimized by these highly politicized agencies, many of which have clearly redirected their focus from targeting foreign adversaries to targeting Democrats’ domestic political opponents.

In addition to spying on Trump’s 2016 campaign, agencies such as the FBI were instrumental in fomenting the debunked Russia collusion hoax, spying on Catholics, targeting Trump supporters and parents at school board meetings, arresting pro-lifers, and partaking in a whole host of other egregious abuses. And who could forget the infamous letter signed by 51 former intel officials, who falsely claimed contents from Hunter Biden’s laptop exposing the Biden family’s foreign business dealings were part of a Russian “disinformation” campaign.

That so many elected senators — particularly Republican ones — would largely fail to ask Gabbard how she would reverse such politicization and prevent it from happening in the future is a disgrace. If anything, it’s a silent admission that they’re much more interested in protecting these broken agencies than reforming them.

Gabbard is absolutely right to be skeptical of the vast surveillance powers wielded by America’s intel apparatus. Any “Republican” who isn’t has no business being in public office.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood