The full senate vote was 52-48. Senator Mitch McConnell (U-DC) was the lone republican who voted against confirming Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Tulsi Gabbard is now DNI.
Additionally, the Senate voted 53-47 on the cloture vote for Robert F Kennedy Jr as nominee for Health and Human Service Secretary. With senate debate now ended, the full confirmation vote on RFK Jr could come tomorrow.
WASHINGTON – The GOP-controlled Senate on Wednesday voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard to be President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, putting the former congresswoman in charge of the sprawling U.S. intelligence community.
The 52-48 vote was largely along party lines, with nearly all Republicans present voting in favor of Gabbard. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the former longtime GOP leader who has clashed with Trump, was the only Republican who joined all Democrats in voting against her.
Gabbard’s confirmation is a win for Trump and represents yet another example of his dominance over the GOP, where few have shown a willingness to step out of line.
After Trump announced Gabbard as his DNI pick in November, Democrats — and a handful of Republicans — voiced serious concerns about her 2017 secret meeting with then-President Bashar Assad of Syria; her sympathetic comments about Russia; her past efforts to repeal a powerful government surveillance tool, known as Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702; and her previous support for Edward Snowden, a former government contractor who leaked classified information to the press about those spying programs. (More)
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is the newest office in the IC system. It was created as an outcome of the Patriot Act and the office represents the pivot point of all IC information flows.
The CIA information is supposed to enter the DNI silo from outside the USA, and the FBI information enters the DNI silo from inside the USA. The combined information is then assembled and becomes part of the National Security Information (NSI) that is available to the Dept of Homeland Security.
As we have outlined, the Obama/Holder administration weaponized these information streams and the silos that control the outcomes. The DNI became an information laundry permitting the CIA (John Brennan) to conduct domestic political operations, while the FBI partnered with their “sister agency” (CIA) and ran political targeting operations against Obama’s opposition.
Attorney General Eric Holder then created the Dept of Justice National Security Division (DOJ-NSD), filled it with legal ideologues (Weissmann, McCord, Eisen et al), and that sub-silo of the DOJ then proceeded to take the weaponized CIA/FBI information and target Americans (and some foreign adversaries).
Political attack narratives were created from within the DOJ-NSD using false pretenses like the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) and the domestic surveillance of political targets proceeded through the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act/Court (FISA/FISC). Meanwhile the FBI counterintelligence division ran cover operations for Hillary Clinton and other aligned political entities.
To ensure DOJ-NSD targeting operations were without review, the DOJ Inspector General was barred from having any oversight within the DOJ-NSD, under the justification of “national security.” From inception (’09) the DOJ-NSD was without any oversight, until President Trump changed the rules in 2017.
All of the Trump targeting operations originated from within the DOJ-NSD, including the surveillance of candidate Donald Trump through the use of the Title-1 surveillance warrant gained against CIA asset Carter Page. Nat Sec Advisor Michael Flynn was targeted using the pretense of FARA.
Throughout the Obama terms, the DNI (James Clapper) was presumably willfully blind to the activity. Clapper was a useful doofus, so it was not difficult. This is the background for the current status of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Just as we now see receipts for the USAID silo as the front for CIA activity, so too was/is the ODNI the front for domestic intelligence operations by the same CIA operators. The CIA is behind it all.
For many years the CIA had to be careful about domestic activity, always working to cloak their internal operations. However, once the ODNI office was created, they now had a legally authorized door that permitted them to expand their operations without fear of scrutiny, under the justification of “national security.”
Here is where I posit a note to moderate expectations of sunlight from the IC silos of the DNI (Gabbard) and CIA (Ratcliffe).
♦ Be really cautious about expecting any sunlight, review or inquiry to penetrate the CIA silo.
I’ve studied the construct of these IC silos for years, and I have yet to find a process (only one way) that gets any information from within the CIA dark place extracted against their will.
The CIA silo was constructed to be an information filter. Information goes in, but only one method (Presidential Daily Brief) exists for information to come out. The President authorizes directed activity within the CIA through the use of “finding memoranda,” but the CIA operates all other activity without oversight.
The CIA gets instructions via presidential finding memos, which they act upon and keep in locked files, but the CIA never discloses any information unwillingly. The CIA is a complete dark hole, with an entrance but no exit.
It is a very unique silo. No oversight (by design), no accountability (by design), no method of financial accounting (by design), and only one physical person (no delegation of authority) with power to engage over the entire agency.
It’s very complicated.
