By Jonathan Landay and Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee on Thursday 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 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. He did not cite specific evidence.
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 Tuesday, during a Fox News interview on Wednesday and at a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
Although Gabbard announced the task force on Tuesday, it appeared to have been working as early as January based on public announcements of projects she said it handled.
Gabbard said on Tuesday that DIG aims to restore “transparency and accountability” to U.S. intelligence agencies in line with executive orders by Trump.
It also is “investigating weaponization, rooting out deep-seeded politicization, exposing unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence, and declassifying information that serves a public interest,” she said.
Gabbard on Tuesday said in a Fox News interview that DIG comprised “some of the most talented intelligence officers.”
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 has said DIG’s work included declassifications of files such as on the origins of COVID, announced in late January, and on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy released in mid-March.
She said in a cabinet meeting on Thursday that staff were working intensively to prepare for 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.
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.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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