Tulsi Gabbard as US intelligence chief would undermine efforts against the spread of chemical and biological weapons

The US Senate is slated to vote on Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to be the director of national intelligence this week, following last week’s party-line committee vote to support her confirmation. While Gabbard’s controversial views on Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked reams of sensitive intelligence before fleeing to Moscow, dominated media coverage of the nomination hearing, there’s another area where the hearing exposed just how dramatically out of step she is with the national security community: the use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war.

Gabbard’s confirmation would undermine one of the signature foreign policy accomplishments of President Donald Trump’s first term: countering the threat posed by chemical weapons. Following a sarin attack on the Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017, the Trump Administration launched a cruise missile strike against an airbase that US intelligence determined Assad’s forces had used to launch the chemical assault. After intelligence agencies determined that Syrian helicopters had conducted a chlorine gas attack on Douma on April 7, 2018, Trump authorized another missile strike, this time along with the United Kingdom and France, against Syrian chemical weapons facilities. Both strikes were effective at deterring further Syrian use of chemical weapons. After April 2017 the Syrian air force did not use sarin and after April 2018 Syrian helicopters stopped dropping chlorine barrel bombs.

Gabbard, however, has repeatedly claimed, including at her confirmation hearing, that the chemical attacks against Khan Sheikhoun and Douma were staged by anti-Assad groups to provoke a Western military intervention. In 2019, Gabbard, then a Democratic presidential candidate, accused Trump of launching the strikes based on flawed intelligence: “Rather than waiting for evidence, Trump acted on impulse and emotion, relying on social media posts and unverified sources originating from within territory held by al Qaeda.” In March 2021, Gabbard repeated her unfounded allegation that there is no evidence supporting the Syrian government’s responsibility for conducting the “alleged” chemical attack on Douma. She accused the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which administers the global treaty banning chemical weapons and investigated the attack, of a cover-up and claimed that Trump’s missile strikes on Syria were “unconstitutional.”

Gabbard’s claims about false-flag attacks, however, ignores intelligence put forward by the Trump Administration and France, an investigation by the United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, and multiple investigations by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. These national and international investigations based their conclusions on a compelling combination of signals intelligence, eyewitness testimony, photographs, videos, chemical forensic analyses, medical records, analyses of munition fragments, satellite imagery, and information provided by third parties. For Gabbard to accuse opposition groups, the victims of Syria’s chemical atrocities, of attacking themselves with chlorine and sarin is a grotesque perversion of the truth.

Instead of relying on reputable sources, Gabbard has repeated Russian and Syrian disinformation and discredited conspiracy theories to call into question the quality of US intelligence, Trump’s judgment, and the credibility of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. In March 2021, Gabbard signed a “statement of concern” about the organization’s investigation of the Douma attack that echoed Russian propaganda and was promoted by a group linked to Wikileaks. Gabbard has made her claims about the Syrian chemical attacks despite warnings from the US intelligence community that these types of allegations are a common feature of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns. Her reliance on these dubious sources demonstrates a dangerously poor lack of judgment for someone seeking the highest-ranking position in the intelligence community.

Gabbard’s deeply flawed position on Syria’s use of chemical weapons is still highly relevant today. With the fall of the Assad regime last December, the issue of how to secure and destroy Syria’s remaining chemical weapons is back on the international agenda. How can Gabbard be trusted to oversee intelligence on this topic if she refuses to believe that Syria used chemical weapons after it joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), that treaty banning chemical weapons, in 2013? Will she provide Trump with intelligence that undermines her strongly held position on this issue or will she twist intelligence to fit her worldview?

And there is more at stake than just the threat posed by Syria’s remaining chemical weapons. Between 2017 and 2020, the Trump Administration found Russia in violation of both the chemical weapons treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention, which bans biological weapons. Trump imposed two rounds of sanctions on Russia for using the Novichok nerve agent to poison a Russian defector. In August 2020, Trump blacklisted three Russian institutes responsible for developing chemical and biological weapons. Since then, the United States has accused Russia of using the chemical weapon chloropicrin, and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has confirmed Russia’s use of riot control agents on the battlefield in Ukraine, both of which are violations of the chemical weapons treaty. There are also disturbing signs that Russia is modernizing its biological weapon program by building a new maximum containment laboratory at a military facility.

To divert attention from its own chemical and biological weapons, Russia has made a series of unfounded and debunked allegations that the United States and Ukraine are developing and using these weapons. Gabbard came perilously close to endorsing these claims in 2022 and she did embrace other elements of Russian (and Chinese) disinformation about the allegedly nefarious and dangerous activities of US-supported public health labs in Ukraine, including those built during Trump’s first term. How can Gabbard be trusted to advise the president on issues related to the verification of Russia’s compliance with chemical and biological arms control?

During her confirmation hearing, Gabbard committed to “checking my own views at the door” and providing intelligence “that is collected, analyzed, and reported without bias, prejudice, or political influence.” Gabbard, however, has demonstrated a clear pattern of denying chemical threats posed by hostile states and inventing biological threats from our allies. Her bias in favor of the regimes of Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as her prejudice against the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the US intelligence community are clear. Her judgment on the risks presented by chemical and biological weapons cannot be trusted. This is particularly concerning since the annual threat assessment released by the current director of national intelligence in February 2024 highlighted the growing threat posed by these weapons.

Based on this track record, it is difficult to see how Gabbard can be relied upon to provide the quality of intelligence and national security advice needed by the commander in chief during these perilous times. For the Senate to confirm Gabbard would be national security malpractice.