Hillary Clinton once called her a “Russian asset” — and that was while Tulsi Gabbard was still a Democrat.

Of all of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, none have caused so many reservations from within the Republican Party — and that’s in a field that includes a health secretary nominee who has promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, a World Wrestling Entertainment executive nominated as secretary of education and a defence secretary confirmed despite allegations of heavy drinking and aggressive behaviour toward women who said in his autobiography that he left the U.S. military after being branded an “extremist.”

Gabbard’s only national security experience is in the Hawaii National Guard, and she is well known for sympathizing with dictators and embracing conspiracy theories, as well as her devotion to a Hawaii-based offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement. Former staffers have described her as a regular consumer of Russian propaganda network RT, and Russian state channels have rejoiced publicly in the nomination of “our girlfriend” Tulsi, as one host put it, to lead the U.S. intelligence community.

Ward Elcock, former director of Canada’s national intelligence agency CSIS, told CBC News that Gabbard’s lack of any experience or qualifications for the post is the bigger issue — which could impact the quality of U.S. intelligence that Canada relies on.

“This is neither a particularly complex or particularly thoughtful person,” he said. “Nothing I’ve read about her suggests she has the background or the experience or the knowledge to take up the positions that she’s being appointed to by the Trump administration.”

Gatekeeper of U.S. intelligence

The post of director of national intelligence (DNI) was created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which revealed a lack of communication between U.S. intelligence agencies, says Wesley Wark, a historian of security and intelligence who served two terms on Canada’s advisory council on national security.

“It’s a very powerful role,” Wark said. “There’s not really any equivalent in the Canadian context.”

He said the position provides leadership to about 18 agencies and has influence over senior appointments.

“But more importantly, [the DNI] really sits at the right hand of the president in a couple of ways,” he said, pointing to Gabbard’s potential seat at the National Security Council and oversight of the president’s daily brief.

Trump is known for not reading those briefs anyway. But Wark says that Gabbard, if confirmed, “will have vast influence over not only American intelligence collection and analysis, but also over the intelligence that reaches allies such as Canada through the Five Eyes and other sharing mechanisms.”

‘Lies and smears’

Some in her own party have asked that she not be confirmed. “The Department of National Intelligence is not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer,” said Nikki Haley, who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination. 

Gabbard tried to pre-empt such criticisms in her opening statement to the Senate committee on Thursday.

“You will hear lies and smears that challenge my loyalty to and love for our country. Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone other than God, my own conscience and the Constitution of the United States — accusing me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet — not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters.”

But some of the senators found her responses unconvincing.

“Some of her responses, and non-responses, created more confusion than clarity and only deepened my concerns about her judgment,” said Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis after Thursday’s hearing.

Praise for Assad

Gabbard’s foreign connections and patterns of travel led the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to place her temporarily on a watchlist.

She vigorously defended Bashar al-Assad’s atrocity-ridden campaign in Syria’s civil war, and contradicted the findings of U.S. intelligence that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own civilian population — a finding supported by the UN.

Within hours of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Gabbard took to Twitter to blame the West for not acknowledging “Russia’s legitimate security concerns.”

She also spread Russian claims that Ukraine was developing bioweapons in cahoots with the U.S. government, and called the democratically elected government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “corrupt autocracy,” while remaining notably silent about the undemocratic government of Vladimir Putin. 

‘An absolute blow’ to the West

“From a vetting perspective, in terms of loyalty, reliability, she’s totally unsuitable in light of the views she has expressed,” says Dan Stanton, formerly of CSIS and now director of the national security program at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute.

“It’s very significant that she has these views that are completely contrary to those of the Five Eyes alliance and NATO with respect to Ukraine and Russia,” he told CBC News. “Those are views you expect to see on Twitter, not someone going before the Senate committee to have such a position and such a budget to oversee. It is really disheartening.”

Stanton added that her past entanglements could potentially leave her open to blackmail by foreign intelligence services.

“It is an absolute blow,” agrees Wark. “It suggests a willingness to listen to Russian imperial propaganda without any intent to explore the bases of that imperial propaganda at all.” He says it’s alarming this is a position the president appears to endorse with his DNI pick.

Elcock says Gabbard does indeed seem to mirror views widespread in the Trump administration, though not — until now — in the U.S. defence and intelligence establishment.

Leakers and moles

Even the Republican senators at Gabbard’s hearing seemed to have trouble digesting her support for Edward Snowden, the most prolific leaker of American secrets of the modern era.

Snowden has long argued that he was being patriotic, not disloyal, when he revealed details of illegal secret spying by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The Canadians who spoke to CBC News say that while Snowden did reveal real abuses, most of the intelligence he leaked had nothing to do with that. Since 2022, Snowden has been a Russian citizen, and has shown a marked reluctance to criticize abuses in Russia.

Gabbard refused to answer on several occasions whether she considered Snowden a “traitor,” but did say that he had broken the law.

“The insider threat, leakers, moles, have been on the increase,” said Stanton. “This leaker issue is not going away and they’re extremely damaging regardless of your political views.

“You need to safeguard against that. And if the actual director of the intelligence community has a sympathetic view of people like Snowden, that’s completely contrary to the practices of national security.” 

From Russia, Snowden expressed support for Gabbard on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, and encouraged her to throw him under the bus if it helps her nomination.

Five Eyes not dead yet

The Canadian experts consulted by CBC News all said that they expect intelligence sharing to continue on the tactical level, and the U.S. will continue to be at the centre of it as the largest collector of intelligence.

Wark says that Canada has traditionally relied heavily on U.S. intelligence agencies to “be the eyes and ears for Canada in when it comes to global security threats.”

“I think, for Canada, one of the great concerns about Gabbard is that she would be seen as an unreliable partner, that her judgments could not be trusted … a great wall of suspicion would arise between Canada and the United States,” he said.

But Stanton said whether the U.S. could be trusted with intelligence from its allies could be of even greater concern.

“Five Eyes partners, particularly the British, may be reluctant to share with the Americans,” he said.

“Canada does collect very useful intelligence,” said Stanton. “Why would we share it with American agencies if there’s a risk it’s going to be exploited for political purposes by the White House?”

Search for new partners

Elcock says that although Canada is a net beneficiary of its intelligence relationship with the U.S., that country does find what Canada provides useful.

“It is possible that [Trump appointees] do enormous damage and that as a consequence, sharing with the Americans will become much more difficult and much less an accepted way of doing business,” Elcock said.

Canada would find itself in the position of having to diversify its sources of foreign intelligence by seeking new partners, says Wark, much as it has had to do in trade.

“The candidates would include the Nordics, all of whom have pretty good intelligence services, greater intelligence sharing certainly with Germany and France. We would have to rely more on a long-established intelligence-sharing partnership with the U.K. In the Indo-Pacific, I think we would need to reach out to our ongoing partnership with Australia, and reach out to countries like Japan and South Korea for their insights into security threats in the region,” he said.

“We have grown so used to the unique kind of alliance among the Five Eyes that we’ve never felt it really necessary to expand that relationship or count on anybody else. But times are changing.”