In 2018, the dissident Syrian codenamed Caesar testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the torture and summary executions of Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war during the brutal crackdown on those who resisted.
It was not Caesar’s first time in Washington: an ex-military photographer I will draw from 55,000 photos and other evidence He had been living in Assad’s brutal detention facilities for years before, and had been led by unknown authorities to persuade lawmakers. tough sanctions on the Assad network he threw terror into the punishment of his kingdom.
But before that, hearing the representatives in the assembly, the actors and Caesar himself suddenly became nervous: he was safe before Tulsi Gabbard to testify. Hawaii meeting in the elections, which only last year voluntarily traveled to Damascus to meet with Assad?
Could Caesar’s voice be recalled, they asked, or potentially a photo of secret testimony to the same contacts who broke the meeting with the Syrian president?
“The real concern of the Democrats was in their party and” Republicans and we and Caesar, how are we going to do this? said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syria Emergency Task Force, an activist group that previously traveled to Syria with Gabbard in 2015. They wanted to kill Caesar.
During a congressional trip in 2015, Moustafa recalled, Gabbard had asked three Syrian girls if they had narrowly survived an airstrike, launched not by Assad, but by the terrorist group Isis. Who is complaining? Isis does not have air power.
Photos from 2018 briefings show Caesar sitting in a hoodie and mask testifying before commission officials.
“I often hide” [witnesses]’Moustafa’, who had worked with Caesar and acted as his interpreter. “But I was especially careful that day in Tulsi.”
There is no evidence that Gabbard passed any information about the Syrian whistleblower to Damascus or any other country, nor does he have any evidence of a link to other intelligence agencies.
But in Washington, closely connected to foreign policy and the intelligence community, Gabbard has long been seen as dangerous; some seem to have been concerned about conspiracy theories and intimates belonging to dictators. Others, including former secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, went further, calling her “Russia’s ace.”
Those concerns have increased under Gabbard’s nomination Donald Trump at the front of the director of national intelligence, a senior cabinet-level position with access to classified materials from across 18 US intelligence agencies, and briefing information for the president’s daily briefing. The role would allow him to decline access and information at his discretion, and also direct some intelligence sharing with our partners around the world.
“It’s about her contacts” [in Syria] and that he does not share the same sympathies and values ​​as the intelligence community, said a person familiar with the discussions among senior intelligence officials. “Historically, it’s stupid.”
Gabbard and his supporters have denounced the attacks, saying that she has a history of anti-interventionism in Syria and Ukraine It has been twisted as a kind of “Cold War 2.0”.
In Washington, he has moved a unique foreign policy policy as a strong supporter of Israel and the “war on terror” – but also as a critic of US conflicts with countries such as Russia and Iran (he strongly criticized Trump’s decision to kill Iranian general Qassem Soleimani as “an unjust and violative act of war” ).
“When it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” he told a Hawaiian newspaper in 2016. “When it comes to the war against government change, I’m a dove.”
Jeremiah Scahill, US journalist and activist, on the left; he wrote that “to pretend that Gabbard somehow puts US security at greater risk than was potentially the case after 9/11 or during the long bloody history of US intervention and the resulting blowback is a lot of hype and hysteria.”
But Gabbard has often shared conspiracy theories, including shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine claiming that there were “25+ US-based biolabs in Ukraine that, if destroyed, could release & spread deadly pathogens to the US/world.” In fact, US programs dating back to the 1990s have been directed at better protecting labs that focus on infectious disease movements.
The day after Russia invaded Ukraine, he met with Kyiv in the country’s top defense government, Gabbard. he said“It is time to put aside geopolitics and embrace the spirit of God, reverence and love; for the people of Ukraine coming to the agreement, Ukraine will be a neutral country.”
And he has repeatedly criticized dictators, including Assad, suggesting that reports of 2013 and 2017 chemical weapons attacks were false, and asking the US to “join hands” with Moscow following its 2015 intervention in Syria.
Democrats and Republicans have openly questioned whether or not the establishment poses a threat to national security.
“I fear what would happen to countless numbers of Americans if someone as reckless, inexperienced, and totally untrustworthy as Gabbard were the DNI.” he wrote Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman who managed foreign affairs with Gabbard in 2018, testified with Caesar.
A person close to the intelligence community said there are continuing concerns about Gabbard’s contacts in the Middle East, echoing her controversial 2017 meeting with Assad — an encounter that Gabbard insisted she does not regret.
Those contacts may be explored during Senate confirmation hearings as early as next year, the person said.
Gabbard was briefly placed on the Transportation Administration’s security register for travel and foreign visitor accounts, CNN reported last month, but it has since been removed.
He doesn’t have an argument for intelligence, even though the native of Hawaii served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades and served in Iraq and Kuwait.
There are also concerns that his choice could affect intelligence sharing between US foreign allies, including the tightly knit Five Eyes intelligence group, which includes the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Nato and its allies in Japan and South Korea. .
“A lot of intelligence, at least on the part of the human collector, is from our partners,” said John Sipher, former deputy director of the CIA’s Russian operations, noting that cooperation is usually informal, “personality-based and trust-based.”
“It’s not going to be really difficult [information] to a place that would become more partisan and less professional … his kind: ‘Hey, it’s sensible that we want to go into the past of the CIA, because it could do us harm if it becomes public … It’s fair. don’t do it this time.”