Gabbard's Confirmation Hearing: Snowden Blasts Senators For Obsessing Over Him

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After Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing for Director of National Intelligence concluded, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden responded.

“The Senate Intel Committee spent nearly the entirety of its session today furiously demanding that DNI nominee Gabbard condemn me personally, a position now opposed by something like 94% of Americans. Courts have been ruling for ten years that NSA broke the law, guys. Move on.” 

Indeed, during the open portion of Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, both Republican and Democratic senators spent little time asking policy questions. They asked few questions about what Gabbard would do in her role overseeing much of the United States’ vast intelligence-industrial complex. They primarily fixated on Gabbard’s past support for Snowden. 

“Until you were nominated to be the DNI, you consistently praised the actions of Edward Snowden—somebody I believe jeopardized the security of our nation and then to flaunt that fled to Russia,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, declared. 

Warner singled out Gabbard for previously labeling him a “brave whistleblower.”

“Every member of this committee supports the rights of legal whistleblowers. But Edward Snowden isn’t a whistleblower, and in this case, I’m a lot closer to [Republican Senator Tom Cotton’s] words, where he said Snowden is ‘an egotistical, serial liar and traitor’ and ‘deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life.’” (Cotton is the chair of the committee.)

“Do you think Edward Snowden was brave?” asked Warner.

Gabbard had rehearsed an answer. She repeated some version of this response throughout the hearing each time that senators pressed her to condemn Snowden and call him a traitor. 

“Edward Snowden broke the law. I do not agree with or support [all] of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it. There would have been opportunities to come to you on this committee or seek out the [Inspector General] to release that information,” Gabbard stated. 

Snowden was an intelligence contractor and not an employee. There were minimal whistleblower protections available. He still could have been charged with violating the Espionage Act, and if he had not shared the documents he had with journalists, the information never would have sparked reform or led to courts ruling that certain mass surveillance programs were unconstitutional.

While in the House of Representatives, Gabbard introduced a resolution in 2020 to urge the Justice Department to drop the charges against Snowden. Warner was aghast and wondered if she now believed her resolution was inappropriate.

Warner also said, “I cannot imagine a Director of National Intelligence that would say that [Snowden’s] behavior [was] okay. How would we maintain the trust of the IC [intelligence community] and the contractors who work for? How would we maintain the trust of the Five Eyes partners?” (The Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.) 

Republican Senator Susan Collins continued the line of questioning started by Warner. “Edward Snowden does stand out as having done particularly grave harm to our national security by revealing top secret information, including sensitive sources and methods. That’s jeopardizing agents in the field.”

“If confirmed, would you support or recommend a pardon or any kind of clemency for Edward Snowden?” Collins asked.

Gabbard said her “responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets.” She would not “advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”

But that was not enough to assuage Collins' Snowden-centric concerns. “In 2020, you introduced the Protect Brave Whistleblowers Act, which would amend the Espionage Act to make it more difficult to prosecute individuals who reveal classified information,” she said. 

Collins mentioned that she opposed the legislation because it would enable leak to America’s adversaries. However, a summary of the bill emphasized: “Every single person convicted to date under the Espionage Act would still have been convicted had this bill been law at the time they were prosecuted.”

What the bill would have done is establish a public interest defense so that when someone accused of violating the Espionage Act was prosecuted in court, they could argue that they engaged in prohibited conduct to expose “violations of laws, rules or regulations,” or "gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.”

Bafflingly, Collins acted as if the legislation would have enabled espionage. “Do you still support providing individuals who have access to top secret information with the ability to make their own decisions regarding whether that information should be publicly disclosed, even though disclosure may cause tremendous harm to our country or our allies?” she asked.

“We cannot and should not have individual vigilantes within the intelligence community making their own decisions about how and where and when to expose our nation’s secrets,” Gabbard answered. “The intent of the legislation that you have pointed out was pointed towards ensuring due process for those who are charged under the Espionage Court in a court of law.”

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet lost control of his rage. “We’re not here to be a rubber stamp for the President of the United States. So let me ask you again, do you believe as the chairman of this committee believes, as the vast majority of members of our intelligence agencies believe, that Edward Snowden was a traitor to the United States of America?”

“This is when the rubber hits the road,” Bennet fumed, as Gabbard stuck to her prepared response on Snowden. “This is not a moment for social media. It’s not a moment to propagate theories, conspiracy theories or attacks on journalism in the United States. This is when you need to answer the questions of the people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation.”

Except it was a moment for social media. Bennet’s staff edited and shared a video compilation of him lashing out at Gabbard a few hours after it happened.

Republican Senator Todd Young and Independent Senator Angus King raised a House intelligence report that was compiled to discredit Snowden. It described him as a “serial exaggerator” and “fabricator” to distract from the importance of what he revealed.  

“When we find Americans, whether private citizens or contractors or uniformed personnel have shared sensitive designs about military technology or plans to a foreign government, however well intentioned, we rightfully throw the book at them,” Young said. “Snowden did just that, yet you have argued—and many times—that he should be pardoned.”

But Snowden never provided any information to the Chinese government, the Russian government, or any other foreign government. 

Republican Senator James Lankford was rather cordial when questioning Gabbard. Still, he repeated lies:

When Edward Snowden got mad at his employer that he didn’t get the promotion that he wanted and started harvesting information, and then found some things that he didn’t like on it, and then kept going, and then released them to media and went to China, and then went from China to Russia and became a Russian citizen and continued to be able to layer out intelligence unrelated to the civil liberties of any American, and then said I have more and can release him any time I want…

Snowden did not take any documents with him when he fled Hong Kong. He gave all the files that he had to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewan MacAskill, and he only remained in Moscow because the U.S. State Department revoked his passport and stranded him. So he never taunted the U.S. government with the prospect of releasing information any time that he wanted.

Bennet made one more feeble attempt to nail Gabbard by saying Snowden “did not honor his oath to the Constitution, which is what you just said was the most important duty, most important obligation you had in this role.” However, he did uphold his oath. What he violated was an oath of secrecy that he was expected to uphold in order to retain his membership access to the national security state. 

Young held up a copy of a post from Snowden about the confirmation hearing. “He’s indicated that Tulsi Gabbard should indicate that I harmed national security. This may be the rare instance in which I agree with Mr. Snowden.” 

Except Young did not read the entire post, and there’s a good reason. His staff overlooked its wonderful facetiousness. “Tulsi Gabbard will be required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation today. I encourage her to do so. Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff. In D.C., that's what passes for the pledge of allegiance.”

For what it’s worth, Gabbard attempted to engage senators on how to prevent the next Snowden from disclosing classified information. She insisted that intelligence agencies should first and foremost cease any unlawful or unconstitutional programs. There should also be security clearance reform that further restricts who has access to information. 

Gabbard asserted that every single person working for a U.S. intelligence agency should be aware of their rights as whistleblowers. A direct hotline to her office should be established. And then, she added, “If people choose to step outside of those legal channels to raise any concerns about programs or actions that exist within the intelligence community that are classified, there will be no excuse to do so, and they should be charged and prosecuted under the law.”

It is troubling that Gabbard effectively endorsed prosecuting individuals with the Espionage Act if they do not go through “legal” or “proper channels,” as if agency leadership does not and has not retaliated against whistleblowers when they follow the rules. That said, her suggestions were largely ignored.

Gabbard stood her ground and never attacked Snowden as she was egged on by senators. It may have cost her a chance to be the DNI. 

As for Snowden, who President Donald Trump still has not pardoned, he eloquently wrote in 2020, “When a crooked politician calls me traitor, ask yourself: who did I betray? The courts have ruled repeatedly that the programs I revealed were unlawful, and likely unconstitutional—a violation of your rights.”

“If this is treason, what they call loyalty is a crime.”