Is Tulsi Gabbard’s Task Force DIG Targeting Trump’s Foes?

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee on April 10 said he suspected a task force formed by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was pursuing a “witch hunt” for intelligence officers it deems disloyal to President Donald Trump.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said in an interview with Reuters that Gabbard’s office did not brief him on the Director’s Initiative Group (DIG) as her predecessors would have done.

“This seems to be just a pass for a witch hunt and that’s going to further undermine our national security,” said Warner.

Gabbard’s spokesperson, Olivia Coleman, said Gabbard had been “crystal clear” about DIG and provided extensive information publicly about the group including in an announcement of the task force on  April 8, during a Fox News interview on  April 9, and at a cabinet meeting on April 10.

Although Gabbard announced the task force on  April 8, it appeared to have been working as early as January based on public announcements of projects she said it handled, Reuters said.

Gabbard said on April 8 that DIG is “investigating weaponization, rooting out deep-seated politicization, exposing unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence, and declassifying information that serves a public interest.”

Trump has promised to overhaul U.S. spy agencies, vowing to “clean out corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus” that he charges were “weaponized” against him.

Gabbard said in a cabinet meeting on April 10 that staff were working intensively to prepare to release files on the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Gabbard told Fox News that the task force is also looking into the “Russia collusion hoax,” the term Trump uses to denounce intelligence findings that Moscow employed cyber operations to influence the 2016 presidential vote in his favor, Reuters noted.

A July 2018 bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report confirmed those findings. The panel at that time was chaired by Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s secretary of state.

Warner said there was a need for a review into the expansion of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence since it was created in 2005 to oversee the 18-agency U.S. intelligence community.