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Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise once more to oppose the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence.

As I have said repeatedly, I have great respect for Ms. Gabbard's over 20 years of service to our Nation both in and out of uniform. I am, however, profoundly worried that she lacks the qualifications or judgment to be DNI.

The job of the Director of National Intelligence is not a duty to be taken lightly. The incumbent serves as the principal intelligence adviser to the President and also bears the weight of responsibility to prevent another 9/11.

The DNI must also represent the tens of thousands of intelligence professionals around the world who often toil in anonymity. They serve as America's first line of defense against terrorists, transnational criminals, and adversarial nations that wish to do us harm. She must also represent America to our allies as a trustworthy partner.

Unfortunately, through her own words and actions, Ms. Gabbard has demonstrated she is not up to the task.

She took the word of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad against the assessments of our own Department of Defense, State Department, and intelligence community when she denied that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people.

She knowingly met with a Syrian cleric who had vocally threatened to conduct suicide bomb attacks against the United States.

She sought to blame the United States and NATO--the United States and NATO--for Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine.

She publicly praised and defended Edward Snowden when he compromised our Nation's most sensitive collection sources and methods and then ran off to hide in China and Russia. Those compromises put at risk not only our intelligence but our men and women in uniform in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just last week, even with repeated inquiries from our Republican colleagues, she refused to call Snowden a traitor.

Speaking of China, when asked about TikTok at her confirmation hearing, she refused to acknowledge the threat posed by China owning a social media company that reaches 170 million Americans.

All the way up until she was nominated to be DNI, she publicly advocated for the wholesale elimination of FISA 702, a tool we use actively in the intelligence domain, a tool that contributes literally 60 percent of the information that makes up the President's Daily Brief. That Daily Brief would also fall under her responsibility should she be confirmed.

The environment facing a new DNI today is complicated and fraught with challenges. Not only have the traditional threats persisted from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, but we have seen increased threats from terrorism, cyber actors, and transnational criminal organizations.

All the while, the intelligence community itself is under attack. Some of our own senior and experienced law enforcement and intelligence professionals are being asked to take political litmus tests, and those who are seen as insufficiently loyal are being fired or forced to resign. Whole Agencies are being eliminated and funding impounded, in flagrant defiance of the Constitution, which only gives the Congress-- us here in this body--the power of the purse.

Unvetted, unqualified individuals illegally burrow into classified and sensitive information. This very action is jeopardizing our national security and violating Americans' privacy. These DOGE bros seem to have no restriction on them at all, and I have seen no evidence that Ms. Gabbard is prepared to deal with this onslaught.

Therefore, I must oppose her nomination and urge my colleagues to do the same.

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