ICYMI: On Senate Floor, Warren Warns Confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard to Head National Security Agencies is a “Dangerous Mistake”
“Every single senator, Democrat, Republican, or Independent knows that they are putting our national security at risk if they support Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation to head our nation's intelligence coordination.”
“Even if Gabbard behaved admirably as DNI, the United States would likely have less access to sensitive information because our allies just wouldn't want to take a chance on her…”
Video of Floor Speech (YouTube)
Washington, D.C. – On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, rang the alarm on the dangers of confirming Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Senator Warren called out Ms. Gabbard’s lack of qualification to be DNI and pointed to credible reports that Ms. Gabbard may put U.S. national security at risk, given her rhetoric supportive of U.S. adversaries.
Transcript: Floor Speech Opposing the Confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard, Nominee for Director of National Security
U.S. Senate Floor
February 11, 2025
As Delivered
Senator Elizabeth Warren: Thank you, Madam President. And thank you, Senator Blumenthal, for your unrelenting work to help protect our nation and in raising this issue around Tulsi Gabbard as a nominee to be the Director of National Intelligence. I appreciate your work here and I'm proud to be able to follow you in this effort.
I'm here today because Tulsi Gabbard's nomination is a national security threat. We are being confronted with a vote that could put all of us at risk. Look, everybody in the Senate understands the threat that Tulsi Gabbard poses, but I want to make sure that everyone understands the job she would have. Why do we even have a Director of National Intelligence?
The short answer is to prevent another 9/11.
The Director of National Intelligence position was born in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in New York that caused the twin towers to crash to the ground, that collapsed the Pentagon, that led to the deaths of 40 brave passengers on Flight 93. These attacks together killed almost 3,000 people and they affected millions of family members, coworkers, neighbors, and people in every state in our country and around the world.
Soon after the attacks, we asked the most obvious questions. How did this happen? Why didn't we see this coming? Why weren't we able to head it off? It rapidly became clear that our nation had major intelligence failures. We were gathering intelligence abroad and here at home, but we were not effectively integrating and coordinating foreign military and domestic intelligence, and the result of that failure was catastrophic.
That's where the DNI director comes in. The Director of National Intelligence is the keystone that holds together our intelligence community. This is the person who coordinates across agencies to make sure that each component of our intelligence system is talking with every other to make sure that what happened on 9/11 doesn't happen again. This person is the principal advisor to the President on any national security related intelligence.
The Director of National Intelligence is central to how we make decisions about where our military should be deployed, is central to how we identify our greatest national security threats, and is central to knowing what our enemy is going to do next. All of that.
Tulsi Gabbard is aggressively unqualified for this job, and making her the Director of National Intelligence will increase the risk of a national security crisis. For starters, she has no experience in the intelligence community and she has never served as a national security official in the executive branch.
Tulsi Gabbard is also disqualified to be Director of National Intelligence. Not just unqualified, but actually disqualified. His disqualifications mean that she should be kept far, far away from any part of our government intelligence system.
The problems with Tulsi Gabbard are many. She is an apologist for Vladimir Putin, routinely spreading Russian misinformation and Russian talking points about both Ukraine and Syria. She rejected our own U.S. intelligence that Assad used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. And she went to Syria to meet with Assad and with a Syrian cleric, who had threatened to activate suicide bombers within the United States and Europe.
So let me state this as clearly as I can. Tulsi Gabbard would be the number one person in charge of all of our nation's secrets. All of them. All of our intelligence. Every piece of secret information that we gather from around the world, and every secret that our allies around the world might share with us. She would know all of it, and she would have access to all of it and she would be the one who would fit it all together. Then she would be one of the people responsible for advising the President on when and where to use our military.
I am deeply concerned about Tulsi Gabbard's track record and whether she can be trusted with our secrets. But I'm not the only one who's worried. With the history that Tulsi Gabbard has, can we reasonably expect other nations to trust us with the secret information that they gather? Even if Gabbard behaved admirably as DNI, the United States would likely have less access to sensitive information because our allies just wouldn't want to take a chance on her, just wouldn't want to take a chance that information that they gathered and passed along, information that could make their own operatives at risk, for example, would not want to take a chance to pass that information along to the United States, that Tulsi Gabbard would see it, and then who knows where it goes. I am concerned that other countries would say because they don't want to take a chance on her, that it would further undercut national security if Tulsi Gabbard were confirmed as DNI.
What I'm saying tonight is not breaking news. There's nothing here that hasn't been said before. Concerns about Tulsi Gabbard have been circulating on Capitol Hill for years. Every single senator, Democrat, Republican, or Independent knows that they are putting our national security at risk if they support Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation to head our nation's intelligence coordination. Every single senator, Republican, Democrat, Independent knows the threat that Tulsi Gabbard poses. Every single senator, Republican, Democrat, or Independent knows that Tulsi Gabbard could be handing our secrets over to our staunchest adversaries.
The risks our nation faces are rising by the hour. Tulsi Gabbard at DNI. Pete Hegseth at DoD. And it's not just confirmed cabinet appointees who are putting our nation at risk.
Just look at Elon Musk and his DOGE minions at Treasury. In order for this handful of programmers to gain access to our over $6 trillion payment system, we don't know what safeguards those hackers pull down. We don't know what gates they opened, and they have apparently tried to get access to sensitive information at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and they have gained access to Medicare and Medicaid records, which, by the way, is another $1.5 trillion in payments every year. They seem to be rushing to access more large data sets across the United States government every day.
When Musk's team got into our federal databases, were the gates opened for hackers from China, from North Korea, from Iran, from Russia? What criminal gangs and black hat hackers now have access to our personal data?
I never thought we would get to this moment. My colleagues in the Senate, despite our differences, have always taken national security seriously. But at a moment when they are faced with a choice between endangering our country or bending the knee to Donald Trump, too many Republican senators are too afraid of billionaires and Trump in their own party to do what they know is right.
I want to take some time to underscore just how dangerous Tulsi Gabbard will be to our national security.
Video of Senator Warren’s full remarks can be found here.
###
Next Article Previous Article