Warner, Top Democrat on Intel Panel, Calls for Gabbard Resignation

DNI’s firings of truth-telling analysts “inexcusable,” longtime spy agencies overseer says. Five Eyes allies 'astonished.'

Warner grilled Gabbard over several issues during her nomination hearing and ultimately voted aganst her (SSCI screen grab via Raw Story).

UPDATED

Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a new interview that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard should resign and her office subjected to oversight hearings over the efforts by her and her chief of staff to alter intelligence reports about the supposed connection between the Venezuelan government and a criminal gang operating in the United States. 

“That is classic political interference,” Warner said on the SpyTalk podcast about the attempts of Gabbard and her chief of staff, Joe Kent, to change intelligence reporting to match the public statements by Trump at the White House.  “It’s inexcusable. I think that Gabbard should resign.”

A spokeswoman for Gabbard declined comment. 

Warner’s comments came during an interview in which he also praised Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian warplanes across the country—Operation “Spiderweb”—as a “holy heck” intelligence operation and a potential game changer, demonstrating to the world that “Ukraine’s still got a few tricks up its sleeve.” 

“It is one more piece of evidence that traditional warfare—who has the most tanks, guns, ships and planes—may not necessarily be a victor in one of these conflicts,” he said. “The fact that Ukraine is creating these drones, literally at the cost of a couple hundred dollars each, and has  ramped up their domestic production from two million to four million—it's jaw dropping.”

But it should also be a “wake up call” for U.S. security officials, he added, since what the Ukrainians did—smuggling cheap and relatively easy to conceal drones into Russia that were then unleashed on air bases—can potentially just as easily be done to us.

Warner noted that, in the aftermath of Spiderweb, a former national security official sent him Google Earth photos of military bases “where our planes are neatly lined up in a row”— sitting ducks for a possible drone attack from a U.S. adversary. He plans to press the Air Force and others for recommendations, but warns there may be no quick fix to protect against this new form of warfare. “The power of unmanned systems playing out real time is mind boggling to me,” he said.  

Warner ’s harsh words about Gabbard were noteworthy given that, as he himself emphasized, he has been one of the more bipartisan members of the Senate, having worked closely with his GOP colleagues on the intelligence committee for years, including on such highly charged matters as its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and any ties to the Trump campaign. 

Warner had voted against Gabbard’s nomination to be DNI, citing in particular her refusal to condemn as a “traitor” Edward Snowden, who stole and leaked thousands of top secret intelligence files and fled to Russia. 

But he made clear he was newly infuriated by reports that Gabbard recently fired Michael Collins, the acting chief of the National Intelligence Council, or NIC, and his top deputy after they produced an intelligence report that disputed the Trump administration’s claim that the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro was directing an “invasion” of the United States by the Tren de Aragua criminal gang— a controversial claim that has embroiled the White House in multiple legal disputes.  

When the NIC first produced a memo reaching the conclusion that there was no credible evidence that the Venezuelan government controlled the gang, Joe Kent, Gabbard’s chief of staff and a nominee to head the National Counterterrorism Center, sent Collins and others an email telling them to redo it. “We need to do some rewriting,” and more analytic work “so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,” Kent wrote, using the acronym for the Director of National Intelligence and the President of the United States. 

The removal of seasoned intelligence officials such as Collins and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof is already having ripple effects overseas where he fears foreign intelligence agencies will be increasingly reluctant to trust sharing secrets with the U.S., Warner said. 

“I've talked to Five Eyes partners,” Warner said, referring to the five English-speaking services with whom the U.S. routinely shares signals intelligence, “who knew these intelligence professionals who got fired for doing their job,” said Warner.“They're frankly astonished. And I do believe that we will see a lack of sharing of information with this type of activity.”

(The Five Eyes countries are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. There are already signs that relations between U.S. intelligence and the Five Eyes countries and other European spy agencies are fraying.)

“And if this was a single incident, it would still be inexcusable,” Warner added. “But remember, this builds upon the Signalgate conversations where the DNI was abroad and it was too inconvenient to get to a SCIF [a secure room for reviewing and discussing of classified matters] or get to her own aircraft and have that classified conversation about the potential attacks on the Houthis in a way that we can protect.”  

Moreover, Warner underscored, “there's not even been a public acknowledgement, for example, that all the devices that were used in Signalgate—have they been checked for malware? That seems like it's an intel 101 kind of question.

“I think there's been a private communication asking that question,” said Warner, hinting he had inquired about the scrubbing for malware in a classified setting. “But I’ve gotten no public response.” 

The key question, for Warner, is whether his GOP counterpart, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton,  chairman of the intelligence panel, will agree to oversight hearings to investigate politicization of intelligence reports. Warner said he has spoken to Cotton about it, but declined to say anything more about that.  (In yet another example of the politicization of the ODNI, The Washington Post reported Friday that Gabbard had installed one of her top aides within the Office of Inspector General, an internal watchdog that is supposed to be independent.)

“Cotton and I have a working relationship,” he said. “I'm gonna leave my conversations with him private and I am not giving up. The Senate Intelligence Committee is the last fully functioning bipartisan committee in the Congress. That has been our reputation under both Democrats or Republicans and I'm gonna keep working like hell to maintain that.” 

But, he conceded, “I got some more work to do.”

A spokesman for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. 

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