CNN
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Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, has expressed support for a key government watchdog agency that she once sought to dismantle.
The switch comes amid uncertainty over Gabbard’s path to confirmation, even though she has been meeting with senators on both sides of the aisle in recent weeks to win support.
In a new statement to CNN on Friday, Gabbard said she would support Section 702 of FISA, the intelligence-gathering tool passed by Congress after September 11, 2001, if confirmed as President Trump’s spy director. , marking a dramatic change from previous attempts to repeal the article. Comments that raise deep concerns for authorities and domestic surveillance.
“Section 702, unlike other FISA authorities, is critical to gathering foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons abroad. This unique ability cannot be duplicated and is a violation of Americans’ civil liberties. They must be protected to protect the nation while ensuring the security of our people,” Gabbard said in a statement to CNN.
“My previous concerns about FISA were based on insufficient civil liberties protections, particularly regarding the FBI’s abuse of warrantless search powers against American citizens. , significant FISA reforms have been enacted since my time in Congress. If confirmed as DNI, I will defend the Fourth Amendment rights of the American people while maintaining important national security measures like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people. “Maybe,” she added.
Gabbard also spoke with current Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Friday, the sources said, but she declined to provide further details about what was discussed.
The meeting comes as Senate Republicans are pushing to hold confirmation hearings for Gabbard before Trump takes office, but the Intelligence Committee has yet to receive key documents on the nomination, including an FBI background check. Democrats are resisting setting a date for next week. Two sources familiar with the matter previously told CNN.
President Trump chose Gabbard to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence because of her relative lack of experience in the intelligence community and the war in Syria and Ukraine, which many national security officials see as Russian propaganda. He publicly adopted a position on the issue, which immediately drew scrutiny.
But perhaps most at odds with the agency she may soon be tasked with leading is her distrust of broad government oversight authorities and her desire to expose some of the intelligence community’s most secretive secrets. and her support for those who do.
If Gabbard is confirmed, she would be the most prominent anti-surveillance official to lead the intelligence community since 9/11. Her previous hostility toward what she described as “the national security state and its warmongering friends” and her eagerness to use the Espionage Act and other tools to punish its enemies led to her The question has arisen as to whether Japan will try to restructure its rules. American intelligence agencies have been collecting, searching, and using information for decades.
In December 2020, just before leaving Congress, Gabbard introduced a bill to repeal the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Like her other legislative efforts on the spy issue, it failed.
But Gabbard’s disdain for the government’s surveillance powers, and her sense of distress that Americans are being lied to about those authorities, has led her to believe that even as Gabbard has transitioned from Democratic lawmaker and presidential candidate to Cabinet nominee, is one of the country’s most consistent national security positions. In the new Trump administration.
In 2017, when President Trump was challenging the credibility of the FBI’s investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer warned him: “They are the ones fighting the intelligence services. They have six ways to fight back against you starting Sunday.”
Gabbard, then a Democrat, wrote in her memoir that she heard “horrifying messages.” “The intelligence agencies and the national security state are so powerful and accountable to no one that even the president of the United States should not dare criticize them.”
Punchbowl first reported Gabbard’s statement regarding FISA Section 702.
