Will Tulsi Gabbard Release the Report Before She Leaves Office?  ODNI Director Tulsi Gabbard. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Tulsi Gabbard is set to depart her post as Director of National Intelligence on June 30 to care for her ailing husband. Before she leaves, Director Gabbard has a golden opportunity to advance government transparency by releasing a secret opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) detailing what Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has described as “violations of Americans’ constitutional rights” involving Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Inexplicably, the Justice Department notified Congress in April that it is appealing the release of this crucial opinion describing how the FBI and other agencies violated laws or procedures governing Section 702. Congress enacted this authority to facilitate the surveillance of foreign threats abroad, but in recent years the FBI has also used it to gain warrantless access to the communications of millions of Americans. On May 1, Sen. Wyden secured commitments from the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee – Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) – to declassify this important opinion detailing how the FBI and other agencies violated laws and procedures regulating Section 702. Yet the Trump administration continues to block the release of this information in the midst of an intense surveillance debate, as Congress has struggled for weeks to reauthorize Section 702. Releasing the opinion would help lawmakers determine whether the FBI is still conducting warrantless “backdoor” searches of Americans’ communications despite the guardrails Congress enacted during the 2024 reauthorization. What might kinds of violations may have occurred? Liza Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice reports that the FBI used an “advanced filtering function” to “search for U.S. persons’ communications using terms associated with those persons.” Although such searches plainly met the statutory definition of a query, “the FBI did not treat the searches as queries and therefore did not track or count them.” The existence of a querying tool that allegedly operated outside statutory constraints raises broader concerns. If one such tool escaped oversight, could similar tools exist at other agencies – or elsewhere within the FBI – that have not yet been detected by internal auditors or disclosed to Congress? Charlie Savage of The New York Times has reported that a source told him a digital filtering system designed to help analysts refine query results focused on foreigners was also generating results that the secret court deemed warrantless “queries” of Americans’ communications. Beyond confirming these reports, the administration should answer questions, starting with:
The Justice Department’s resistance is particularly troubling because it defies the public requests of both the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to release this information. At the same time, the administration and House Speaker Mike Johnson have resisted votes on reform amendments while pushing to reauthorize Section 702 without meaningful additional safeguards. Withholding this information from Congress and the American people during an active reauthorization debate displays a troubling disregard for the transparency and oversight a democracy requires. During her confirmation hearing, Tulsi Gabbard pledged to restore trust in the intelligence community through greater transparency and accountability. This is her opportunity to fulfill that promise. Doing so may displease some within the intelligence establishment, but it would demonstrate a commitment to the principles she pledged to uphold – and ensure that her tenure concludes with an act of meaningful transparency. Comments are closed.
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