The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, a former Congresswoman, as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who oversees the country’s 18-member intelligence community, including the CIA and the NSA.
Gabbard, 43, was confirmed in a 52-48 vote largely along party lines, with only Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican majority leader voting against her. Gabbard is now the 18th member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet to be confirmed. Among the pending are Kash Patel, nominee to head the FBI; and Robert F Kennedy Jr, nominee to head the health and human services.
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Gabbard is now the second former co-chair of the Congressional India Caucus in the Trump cabinet, along with Mike Waltz, the National Security Adviser. Gabbard co-chaired the caucus in her previous avatar as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives, representing Hawaii.
Gabbard’s was an endangered nomination from the start, with several Republicans expressing dismay and opposition over her past positions and actions, which included supporting Syria’s deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad and Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked massive amount of classified documents and fled the country first to China and then, finally, to Russia, where he remains. Her critics had also cited her lack of experience in intelligence matters.
Her confirmation hearing was replete with angry harangues from Democratic senators and some testy exchanges, especially over her persistent refusal to call Snowden a traitor. Instead, she conceited and stuck with that position, that he had broken the law and that as the DNI she would strive to prevent a repeat of this kind of leakage by establishing and bolstering whistleblower channels.
The Directorate of National Intelligence is one of the government agencies created in the aftermath of the intelligence failure to prevent the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. It oversees the intelligence community which comprises the CIA, nine agencies of the Department of Defence including the National Security Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency; and seven elements from other departments such as the FBI, which is housed in the Department of Justice.
The other agency birthed by the 9/11 attacks is the Department of Homeland Security, which brings together agencies that monitor and regulate the presence of foreigners on American soil.
