By Eireann Van Natta, Daily Caller News Foundation | December 16, 2024
Numerous officials that signed a letter opposing Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence (DNI) are tied to groups targeting “election misinformation,” left-wing organizations, intelligence agencies and defense contractors.
Certain members of Foreign Policy for America, the group behind the letter, are linked to entities from Lockheed Martin to George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Nearly 100 national security officials published a letter calling for a “thorough vetting” of Gabbard, and it was addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and soon-to-be Majority Leader John Thune.
Former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman criticized Gabbard’s views on the Russia-Ukraine war, former head of U.S. counterintelligence Joel Brenner blasted the nomination as “an insult to our intelligence agencies,” and former Senior CIA officer Melvin Gamble said her nomination “should worry any American who cares about keeping our country safe.”
But these very same people are part of the cohort of intelligence officials President-elect Donald Trump has signaled he wants to remove from power.
“This is a perfect example of why President Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard for this position,” Gabbard’s transition spokeswoman Alexa Henning told the Daily Caller.
“These unfounded attacks are from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of faulty ‘intelligence,’ including the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. These intel officials continue to use classification as a partisan weapon to smear and imply things about their political enemy without putting the facts out.”
Much of the group’s criticism levied at Gabbard centered around her 2017 meeting with then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Much of that criticism has been absent for Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who also met with Assad in 2007.
Sherman, for her part, previously criticized Trump for attempting to remove U.S. troops from Syria in 2018.
Asaad fled the country and escaped to Russia after the oppositional coalition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overthrew his regime last week. HTS is considered a terrorist organization by many of the world’s governments, including the United States. The group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, was previously a leader of an al-Qaeda affiliate in the country.
Before she criticized Gabbard for speaking with a foreign dictator, Sherman negotiated with terrorists on behalf of the Obama administration. She was his Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and played a key role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. The Obama administration unfroze nearly $2 billion in assets for the Iranian regime in 2016.
Rose Gottemoeller, Joel Brenner, and Brian P. McKeon all served in the Obama administration and slammed Gabbard’s nomination. President Obama launched a CIA program in 2013 aimed at removing Assad, but it was ultimately a failure, and Trump ended the program in 2017.
Gabbard called Assad a “brutal dictator” in an interview with CNN in 2019, and has defended the meeting as a means of preventing America from being involved in foreign entanglements.
“He’s a brutal dictator. Just like Saddam Hussein. Just like Gaddafi in Libya,” Gabbard told CNN.
Some of the officials opposing Gabbard’s nomination are affiliated with organizations focused on combating “disinformation” in elections. Sherman currently serves as a senior fellows at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, John Tien, also signed the letter and is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center.
The Belfer Center was involved in the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency’s (CISA) training seminars on election “disinformation,” according to a CISA “Disinformation in 2020” YouTube video. The CISA relied on the Center’s “Defending Digital Democracy Project” (D3P), which is led by former Army intelligence officer Eric Rosenbach, and Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney’s former campaign managers.
The Belfer Center also partnered with The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and The International Republican Institute (IRI) to tackle “misinformation in elections,” both of which are funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), according to USA Spending.
USAID, which has been accused of being a CIA front, has multiple alumni who signed the letter, including Donald Sampler and Dr. Eric Rudenshiold. Additionally, the Executive Director of Foreign Policy for America, Andrew Albertson, worked in the USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI).
Multiple Foreign Policy for America members are also tied to Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, which recently held a discussion with never-Trump neoconservative Bill Kristol. In September 2024, it had an event on “free and fair elections” about “threats of foreign interference, disinformation, [and] political violence.”
Former Chief of Staff of the Commission Security and Cooperation in Europe, Alex T. Johnson, signed the letter and was senior policy advisor for Europe and Eurasia at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations until February 2019.
Aside from ties to left-wing organizations combating “disinformation,” some of the members are linked to defense contractors or groups funded by them.
The Woodrow Wilson Center received funding from Lockheed Martin in 2023. Ambassadors Anthony Stephen Harrington and Kenneth S. Yalowitz are both fellows and signed the letter opposing Gabbard’s nomination. John D. Butler, another official listed on the letter, was previously on the board of Lockheed Martin.
Rose Gottemoeller, who stated Gabbard has “serious red flags,” is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for National Peace’s nuclear program. Carnegie received funding from Boeing and Soros’s Open Society Foundations, according to its 2023 report.
Former Ambassador Kenneth S. Yalowitz and former Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Annie Pforzheimer, who signed the letter, are both members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR is funded by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in addition to Blackrock, various banks, and tech giants like Google, according its list of corporate members.
Another official, former Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brian P. McKeon, is Senior Director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Classified documents from then-Vice President Joe Biden were discovered at the Penn Biden Center office in 2022.
Last Monday, however, hundreds of veterans endorsed Gabbard’s nomination and lauded her military service.
“As a Member of Congress and as a civilian, Tulsi has been a stalwart advocate for veterans’ health concerning toxic exposures and cancer care as a result of our fellow veterans’ military service. Tulsi’s life exemplifies a rare blend of selflessness, courage, and leadership—qualities desperately needed to reform and strengthen our intelligence community,” their letter reads.
Eireann Van Natta is an Intelligence state reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation
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