Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “surprised” that Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard refused to call former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a “traitor” after being repeatedly pressed on the question at a Thursday hearing.
“I was surprised because that doesn’t seem like a hard question on that. It wasn’t intended to be a trick question by any means,” Lankford said.
The Oklahoma senator said it should have been an “easy question” to say it’s “universally accepted when you steal a million pages of top-secret documents and you hand it to the Russians, that’s a traitorous act.”
Gabbard declined in response to at least four different questions to call Snowden a “traitor.”
She was asked twice about the topic by Lankford and twice by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
When pressed by Lankford, Gabbard answered that her “heart” is with “my commitment to our Constitution and our nation’s security.”
Gabbard said she’s committed if confirmed to making sure there’s not another Snowden-type leak by taking four actions: Making sure “there are no unconstitutional [surveillance] programs;” limiting access to secrets through security clearance reform; doing more to educate intelligence personnel about “legal whistleblower challenges;” and opening a direct line to her “should anyone have concerns.”
Lankford asked again whether Snowden was a traitor “at the time when he took America’s secrets, released them in public and then ran to China and became a Russian citizen?”
Gabbard sidestepped the question.
“Senator, I’m focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again,” she said.
