Trump’s intelligence director nominee denies meeting Hezbollah official

Tulsi Gabbard said she did talk in 2017 with the head of Lebanese intelligence, who was close to the terror group.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

In the runup to her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of Intelligence, denied meeting with a senior Hezbollah official during a trip to Syria in 2017.

A New York Times report on Wednesday revealed that during her visit, which she made in her position as a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, she met with then-dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown last month by Islamist rebels.

Citing “current and former officials briefed on the intelligence,” the report said that soon afterward, the Americans intercepted a phone call in which one Hezbollah member told another that Gabbard had met with someone he called in Arabic “the boss” or “the big guy.”

Some intelligence personnel thought this was a reference to a high-ranking member of the Iranian terror proxy, while others thought the person may have been a Lebanese government official with close ties to Hezbollah, said the report.

Gabbard repudiated the idea that she had met directly with a member of the terror organization but conceded that she did meet with several Lebanese officials during the trip, including the country’s then-intelligence chief, who was considered close to the group that had been a powerful and longtime agent of Iran within the Lebanese government.

Hezbollah’s influence has since been considerably diminished; the IDF decimated the terror group’s leadership and destroyed most of its armaments and offensive military capabilities late last year. It also weakened its patron in airstrikes that took out most of Iran’s air defenses after Tehran launched hundreds of missiles at Israel, which were almost all intercepted and did little harm.

Gabbard confidantes noted that she had disclosed the identities of all the people she met with on her trip “and they said the intelligence in question was misinterpreted,” the report said.

Although, like Trump, she is essentially an isolationist with little interest in getting involved in “counterproductive wars of regime change,” she has also described herself as a hawk “when it comes to the war against terrorists,” calling Islamic extremists “the real enemy” of the U.S.

Although not always so, she has recently been a firm supporter of Israel, labeling Hamas an Islamist terrorist organization that “needs to be defeated militarily and ideologically” immediately after October 7.

She was opposed to a UN ceasefire resolution last year, saying, “We have to be realists about the threat that continues to exist for the people of Israel. So as long as Hamas is in power, the people of Israel will not be secure and cannot live in peace.”

As director of national intelligence, Gabbard would head of the entire U.S. intelligence community, acting as the principal adviser to the president, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security.

In terms of relevant experience for the position, she has no intelligence background but is a lieutenant colonel in the army reserves with top-secret security clearance who served in places such as Iraq and Kuwait.

The 43-year-old Democrat-turned-Republican became an enthusiastic Trump supporter two years ago.