WASHINGTON: Tulsi Gabbard, a former US Representative with little intelligence experience, was confirmed as the top US spy on Wednesday (Feb 12), as Republicans lined up behind a nominee once seen as among President Donald Trump’s most controversial picks.
The Senate voted 52 to 48, mostly along party lines, to confirm Gabbard to the position overseeing the 18-agency intelligence community and acting as Trump’s top adviser on intelligence issues.
The only Republican to vote against Gabbard was Senator Mitch McConnell, the party’s former leader in the chamber. No Democrats or independents voted in favour of the nominee.
The vote was another victory for Trump as he pushed to secure quick Senate approval for all of his nominees for administration positions.
The Senate’s Republican majority leader, John Thune, held a procedural vote on Robert F Kennedy Jr, who also faced fierce opposition to his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services, immediately after the Gabbard confirmation vote.
Gabbard, a 43-year-old former Democrat, had faced bipartisan questions about past statements seen as supporting US adversaries, and lack of experience that would have prepared her to manage a US$100 billion budget. Gabbard neither worked at a spy agency nor served on an intelligence committee during her four House of Representatives terms.
She will now oversee an agency created by Congress in the aftermath of the Sep 11, 2001, attacks to coordinate the country’s sprawling intelligence apparatus, one of the most important national security positions in the US government.
“The selection of a DNI is a very big deal,” said Emily Harding, director of the Intelligence, National Security and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noting the DNI’s broad access to classified material and role as the president’s main intelligence adviser.
