Syrian Emergency Task Force Head Mouaz Moustafa Questions Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination as National Intelligence Director
- He says that the former Hawaii Congresswoman’s response to Assad’s atrocities is a worrisome sign of how she’d serve in her new role.
Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, has major concerns about former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as director of National Intelligence. Moustafa told Politico Magazine that Gabbard’s “response to former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities is a worrisome sign of how she’d serve” in her new role where she would oversee 18 spy agencies, be responsible for preparing the president’s daily brief, and would be a top intelligence adviser to the White House. The concerns stem from various interactions with Gabbard or being in meetings with her several times, Moustafa told the magazine.
Gabbard is among Trump’s most controversial nominees, drawing criticism from Democrats and some conservatives for commentary that often echoes propaganda pushed by U.S. adversaries like Russia. A former Democratic congresswoman and the first Hindu American to serve in Congress, she became one of Trump’s most enthusiastic backers. A lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve who served in Iraq, she has been a longtime critic of the foreign policy establishment. If confirmed, she will be the first cabinet member to identify as a Hindu.
Moustafa, who has shared crucial information with the U.S. government about the war in Syria, said he isn’t sure he’d continue doing so if Gabbard is confirmed. “If Tulsi Gabbard is running our intelligence services, France, UK, Australia… if I was them, I wouldn’t share intelligence with us,” he said.
The Syrian Emergency Task Force, is a nonprofit established to respond to attacks on civilians by former dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Moustafa described in detail several of his interactions with Gabbard during his interview with Politico magazine. The first time he ran into Gabbard was 2014; she hadn’t been a congresswoman for a year yet. That was the year Gabbard first heard from “a high-level Syrian defector known as Caesar,” at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. Caesar’s face was shielded. After the hearing, all the members of the committee, except Gabbard, “sent out statements of outrage,” Moustafa said. Although he felt that the congresswoman was “extremely misinformed” and “ignorant,” he was “was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said.
So, a year later, in 2015, Moustafa took Gabbard, alongside other members of Congress to the Syria-Turkish border. She showed nothing but support for Assad, and at time questioned his involvement, Moustafa said. Then, in 2017 Gabbard went to Syria without informing the U.S. government. “She went with the help of these Assad regime tentacles in the United States, individuals that are tied to SSNP, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which is essentially the version of Nazis in Syria,” he told the magazine. She was right away taken to Bashar al-Assad and took photos with him, he added. “It was well known that she was there with him.”
All these incidents have led Moustafa to believe that Gabbard’s “aims and worldview were at odds with the U.S. mission in Syria and U.S. foreign policy more broadly.”
During Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, he wants senators to question her connections to the Assad regime. “Why did she, for so many years, defend the Assad regime,”he said. “”Why has she claimed that the United States military is training ISIS, when she serves in the military and knows that the U.S. military fights ISIS and doesn’t train them,” he added.