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Reporters from the United Kingdom’s Independent newspaper, Richard Hall and Andrew Feinberg, recently asked Hayden Center Director Larry Pfeiffer for his thoughts on Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration. On Tuesday, December 3, the Hayden Center hosts a talk with former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Susan Gordon at 7 p.m. at George Mason’s Mason Square in Arlington, Virginia. The in-person and livestreamed event is free but registration is required at this page.
—Buzz McClain
Larry Pfeiffer, the director of George Mason University’s Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at the Schar School of Policy and Government, said Tulsi Gabbard’s apparent susceptibility to foreign disinformation and her affinity for strongmen will give pause to American allies with whom the United States routinely shares intelligence on common threats.
Intelligence services, he explained, are notoriously territorial and tight-lipped on sources and methods—particularly when it comes to so-called human intelligence, or HUMINT, which refers to information collected by and from spies and sources within hostile governments.
Pfeiffer said foreign allies are likely already concerned about how a second Trump administration will handle intelligence, given the president-elect’s record. He also predicted that Gabbard’s confirmation as Director of National Intelligence would cause even more problems among skittish partners.
The former U.S. intelligence veteran also said Gabbard’s record of spreading foreign talking points calls into question whether she will be able to carry out the DNI’s important responsibility of briefing the president on threats to the nation.
He told the Independent: “Somebody like Tulsi Gabbard, you look at her long history of statements that seem to come out of the Kremlin’s notebook, her propensity to be influenced by their viewpoint—[it] raises questions as to whether she has the ability to present the intel community’s perspective as it is, or is she going to be one who’s going to want to discount it, influence it, color and change it, or ignore it and just present her own view?
“I think it also raises questions of judgement. You know, here’s an individual who seems very prone to misinformation, prone to conspiracy theory. That should worry anybody who’s worried about America’s national security.”
Pfeiffer, an intelligence veteran of three decades’ standing who once ran the White House Situation Room and served as chief of staff to then-CIA director General Michael Hayden, told the Independent that Gabbard’s experience in the House and her military service, while admirable, do not match the standards envisioned by the authors of the 2004 law which established the office.
“That’s national security experience … but she was a freaking military cop … operating at a largely tactical level, not that strategic, long-term national security perspective that one would expect,” he said.