Tulsi Gabbard Says CIA “Swamp” is Worse than Expected
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday that corruption within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is “worse” than she previously anticipated.
Speaking on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham asked Gabbard how “swampy” the intelligence community is “on a scale of one to ten.”
“I knew it was bad coming in. It’s worse than I thought in a lot of different ways,” Gabbard responded. “I’d love to come back and talk to you as we pull back the layers of getting rid of the weaponization within the intelligence community, the politicization and those who are frankly trying to shape intelligence according to their own view or their own agenda. Rather than just providing our policymakers and the president with that unbiased, accurate, timely intelligence that they need to make their decisions.”
She also criticized the Biden administration for its handling of national security threats, specifically referencing a case where known or suspected terrorists with links to ISIS were released into the United States.
“This example that we just talked about, where the Biden administration released these known or suspected terrorists or those with links to ISIS terrorists back into our country, you look at the dereliction of duty of that. But you also recognize this is one form of that politicization, where the Biden administration was so afraid of being labeled Islamophobes, they took this pro-Islamist bent in endangering our own national security that we see in that example,” she said.
Gabbard’s comments follow an August report from the House Judiciary Committee, which found that between fiscal years 2021 and 2023, Border Patrol agents encountered more than 250 illegal migrants at the southern border who were on the terrorist watchlist. The Department of Homeland Security reportedly released an estimated 99 of those individuals into the country.
“But we’ve also seen with the pro-Hamas rallies on streets across the country and the riots. So we see now with President Trump, he and I and others in the national security team are focusing our resources back where they belong, on keeping the American people safe and getting rid of those who seek to do us harm,” Gabbard added.
Prior to Gabbard’s confirmation on February 12, the CIA had offered payouts to employees as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the agency’s size and eliminate corruption and inefficiency. Additionally, reports indicate that the CIA has dismissed several employees hired under the Biden administration as part of an effort to reshape the intelligence community.
