Tulsi Gabbard to downsize national intelligence office, adding to broader offensive

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Donald Trump’s second term has clearly been challenging for U.S. intelligence agencies. It’s getting worse all the time.

Tulsi Gabbard isn’t just dramatically downsizing the national intelligence office, she’s also the gutting the Foreign Malign Influence Center.

What does it do? It’s the office responsible for monitoring foreign adversaries that try to manipulate U.S. elections. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-08-21T20:34:53.992Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/tulsi-gabbard-downsize-national-intelligence-office-adding-broader-off-rcna226349

And then, of course, there’s the downsizing. NBC News reported:

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said today that her office will oversee a 40% reduction in ‘missions, functions and personnel’ by the end of the fiscal year, framing the move as an attempt to make the ‘bloated’ agency more ‘agile, effective and efficient.’ ... A news release indicated the cuts will save taxpayers more than $700 million annually.

The New York Times published a related report noting as part of the reorganization of Gabbard’s team, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is “shrinking the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which tracked efforts by adversarial countries to manipulate U.S. elections.”

The timing is remarkable: On the heels of Gabbard pushing a bizarre conspiracy theory about Russian efforts to manipulate a U.S. election, the DNI has decided the United States should deprioritize an intelligence office responsible for monitoring foreign adversaries targeting U.S. elections.

What’s more, Gabbard’s announcement follows related efforts within the intelligence community, including an announcement about a “major downsizing” at the CIA.......

The Washington Post reported in May that current and former U.S. officials have warned of “a counterintelligence risk, noting that having thousands of potentially disgruntled intelligence personnel out of work presents a ripe recruiting target for adversary nations’ spy services.”

Even before Trump was sworn in for his first term, he routinely and publicly derided U.S. intelligence agencies, questioning their findings and value. Once in the White House, the Republican’s animosity toward his own country’s intelligence community seemed to intensify: Trump has demonstrated an unfortunate habit of belittling, disregarding, contradicting and occasionally even feuding with U.S. spy agencies.

In his second term, he and his team appear to be going even further.

[Lovie777]

1. Backfire..................

[struggle4progress]

2. Gabbard's Ex-Staffers Expose Her as a Russian Stooge

Hafiz Rashid
Thu, December 5, 2024 at 12:10 PM EST

Tulsi Gabbard’s ex-aides say that the former congresswoman, whom Donald Trump has nominated as the next director of national intelligence, used to regularly consume Russian state media.

ABC News, citing interviews with three of her former staffers, reported Thursday that Gabbard regularly read and shared articles from RT (formerly Russia Today), a state-run media outlet, even after being advised that RT wasn’t a credible source.

Gabbard has defended Russia at least since she represented Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district. In 2017, she sent a memo to her staff with her views on foreign policy, blaming the U.S. and NATO for provoking Russia and complaining about America’s “hostility towards Putin” ...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-own-ex-staffers-171010292.html

[struggle4progress]

3. Gabbard's Russia Views 'Dangerous'

Published Dec 06, 2024 at 9:06 AM EST
Updated Dec 06, 2024 at 7:56 PM EST

By Ewan Palmer
News Reporter

Tulsi Gabbard's supportive views on Russia make her a "dangerous" pick by President-elect Donald Trump for director of national intelligence, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO has said.

Ivo Daalder, who served in the Barack Obama administration, made the remarks while discussing a 2017 memo in which Gabbard reportedly criticized the U.S. and NATO following Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, a territory still internationally recognized as part of Ukraine.

In the memo, obtained by ABC News, Gabbard is said to have stated that U.S. and Western "hostility" toward Russian President Vladimir Putin led to the annexation of Crimea. She also apparently condemned sanctions she had previously supported, writing: "Russian people are a proud people and they don't want the U.S. and our allies trying to control them and their government." Newsweek has not independently verified the contents of the memo ...

https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-russia-views-memo-crimea-rt-nato-1996579

[struggle4progress]

4. Gabbard's history with Russia more concerning than you think

One expert says her views are ‘so wildly fringe that her potential appointment as DNI is genuinely alarming’, Richard Hall and Andrew Feinberg write

Tuesday 04 February 2025 21:12 GMT

In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies ...

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

It was a revealing insight into Gabbard’s conspiratorial views of the conflict, and it shocked Moustafa to silence. He knew, as even the young children did, that Isis did not have jets to launch airstrikes. It was such an absurd question that he chose not to translate it because he didn’t want to upset the girls, the eldest of whom was 12.

“From that point on, I’m sorry to say I was inaccurate in my translations of anything she said,” Moustafa told The Independent. “It was more like: How do I get these girls away from this devil?” ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tulsi-gabbard-russian-connection-dni-trump-syria-b2692244.html

[struggle4progress]

5. Gabbard on Russia and Ukraine

July 10, 2025
Simon Saradzhyan, Angelina Flood

... she was accused of failing to immediately denounce the launch of Russia’s full-blown invasion into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and of repeating Russia’s arguments for this invasion. Weeks before the invasion, Gabbard claimed “Biden can very easily prevent a war with Russia by guaranteeing that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.” That same year Gabbard also took heat for claiming that she was "deeply concerned" over claims about biological weapons in Ukraine, endorsing Russian claims that the U.S. and Ukraine were involved in dangerous biological research before the war. She has also repeatedly claimed that Ukraine is not a democracy.

For these and other opinions, she has been described by some of her political rivals and some of the U.S. media as: a “darling of Russia's state media," the "favorite of Russia’s state media," "parroting false Russian propaganda," a "Russia apologist," a "Russian asset," "the favorite of the Russians" and "treasonous.” Unfazed, Gabbard pursued her political career, occasionally firing back with counteroffensives like a defamation lawsuit against Hillary Clinton in 2020 that alleged the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee "lied" about the Hawaii congresswoman's ties to Russia during a 2019 interview (she later dropped that suit). She also refused to be pressed into a full reversal of her position on Edward Snowden ...

https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/tulsi-gabbard-russia-and-ukraine

[GreenWave]

6. By deleting one word in the title, the master plan is revealed:

Tulsi Gabbard to downsize national intelligence,, adding to broader offensive