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      Former US officials alarmed over Tulsi Gabbard’s alleged ‘sympathy for dictators’

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      Nearly 100 former US diplomats and intelligence and national security officials have called for the Senate to hold closed-door briefings on Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence for her alleged “sympathy for dictators like Vladimir Putin and [Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad]” and other concerns.In an open letter, the officials blasted Tulsi Gabbard, a former presidential candidate and representative from Hawaii, for her lack of experience in the field of intelligence, embracing conspiracy theories regarding the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and “aligning herself with Russian and Syrian officials” after an “uncoordinated” meeting with Assad in Damascus in 2017.The letter was signed by the former deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman, the former Nato deputy secretary general Rose Gottemoeller, the former national security adviser Anthony Lake, as well as a number of other former ambassadors, intelligence and military officers, and other high-ranking members of the national security apparatus.It was addressed to the current Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and to the incoming majority leader John Thune, a Republican.In the letter, the officials called on the Senate to “fully exercise its constitutional advice and consent role … including through appropriate vetting, hearings, and regular order”. It called for Senate committees to consider “all information available” in closed sessions to review Gabbard’s qualifications to manage “the protection of our intelligence sources and methods”.Gabbard and her supporters have denounced similar attacks as a smear campaign, saying that her record of anti-interventionism in Syria and Ukraine has been misrepresented by her political enemies.In Washington, she has staked out a unique foreign policy position as a strong supporter of Israel and the “war on terror” – but also as a critic of US rivalries with countries like Russia and Iran (she strongly criticised Trump’s decision to assassinate the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani as an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war”).“When it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she told a Hawaiian newspaper in 2016. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”But many in Washington’s tightly knit foreign policy and intelligence community see Gabbard as dangerous. The concerns listed in the open letter included Gabbard’s public doubts of Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians in spite of “US intelligence reports and overwhelming public reporting” corroborating the attacks.They also noted her online posts after the Russian invasion “insinuating that US-funded labs in Ukraine were developing biological weapons and that Ukraine’s engagement with Nato posed a threat to Russian sovereignty”.Her public sympathy for Putin and Assad, the letter said, “raises questions about her judgement and fitness”.“These unfounded attacks are from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of faulty ‘intelligence’,” and who use classified government information as a “partisan weapon to smear and imply things about their political enemy”, Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Gabbard with the Trump team, told ABC News in response to the letter.Activists have told the Guardian that staffers from both parties had expressed concern during a 2018 hearing with a Syrian ex-military whistleblower that Gabbard could leak details of the person’s identity. A person with knowledge of high-level intelligence discussions said that there were concerns over Gabbard’s other contacts in the region as well. More

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      Syrian Rebels Storm Hama as Government Forces Withdraw

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      In another startling setback for President Bashar al-Assad, government forces retreated from the city of Hama after rebels advanced.Syrian rebels stormed into the city of Hama on Thursday as government forces withdrew, another stunning setback for President Bashar al-Assad.The swift advance on Hama, which was confirmed by both the rebel side and the Syrian government, comes just days after the rebels extended their control over Aleppo, a major hub in northern Syria.The sudden rebel advance has shifted the front lines in Syria’s 13-year-old civil war for the first time in years, adding a new layer of unpredictability to a conflict that has ravaged the country and created a long-term refugee crisis for many neighboring countries.Analysts have attributed the rebel’s surprise success to the cumulative attrition of the war on Mr. al-Assad’s forces and to the fact that foreign allies who have intervened powerfully on his behalf in the past — notably Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — are now preoccupied with their own crises.Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, is recovering from a war with Israel that killed many of its leaders and displaced many of its supporters. And Russia — which dispatched its military to bomb rebel areas, turning the war’s tide in favor of Mr. al-Assad years ago — has diverted its attention toward its invasion of Ukraine.The rebels behind the offensive are a combination of forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which evolved from an affiliate of Al Qaeda. But the group says it has cut ties with the global terrorist organization. Other groups backed by Turkey and based in Syrian territory just south of the Turkish border have also joined in the fight.The rebels announced on Thursday that they were entering Hama, one of Syria’s largest cities. A rebel commander, Lt. Col. Hassan Abdulghany, said in a social media statement that government forces were in “a significant state of confusion,” with soldiers and commanders abandoning their posts.The Syrian military issued its own statement, saying that its forces had withdrawn from the city after rebels broke through its defenses. More

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      Conspiracy theories and cosying up to dictators: why intelligence experts are spooked by Tulsi Gabbard

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      In 2018, a Syrian dissident codenamed Caesar was set to testify before the House foreign affairs committee about the torture and summary executions that had become a signature of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on opposition during Syria’s civil war.It was not Caesar’s first time in Washington: the ex-military photographer had smuggled out 55,000 photographs and other evidence of life in Assad’s brutal detention facilities years earlier, and had campaigned anonymously to convince US lawmakers to pass tough sanctions on Assad’s network as punishment for his reign of terror.But ahead of that hearing, staffers on the committee, activists and Caesar himself, suddenly became nervous: was it safe to hold the testimony in front of Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman on the committee who just a year earlier had traveled to Damascus of her own volition to meet with Assad?Could she record Caesar’s voice, they asked, or potentially send a photograph of the secret witness back to the same contacts who had brokered her meeting with the Syrian president?View image in fullscreen“There was genuine concern by Democrats in her own party, and Republicans and us and Caesar, about how were we going to do this?” said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an activist group, who had previously traveled with Gabbard in Syria in 2015. “With the member sitting on this committee that we believe would give any intelligence she has to Assad, Russia and Iran, all of which would have wanted to kill Caesar.”During a congressional trip in 2015, Moustafa recalled, Gabbard had asked three young Syrian girls whether the airstrike they had narrowly survived may not have been launched by Assad, but rather by the terrorist group Isis. The one problem? Isis did not have an air force.Photographs from the 2018 briefing showed a heavily disguised Caesar sitting in a hoodie and mask giving testimony before the House committee.“I often disguise [witnesses],” said Moustafa, who had worked closely with Caesar and served as his translator. “But that day I was especially wary of Tulsi.”There is no evidence that Gabbard sought to pass any information about the Syrian whistleblower to Damascus or any other country, nor that she has any documented connection to other intelligence agencies.But within Washington foreign policy circles and the tightly knit intelligence community, Gabbard has long been seen as dangerous; some have worried that she seems inclined toward conspiracy theories and cosying up to dictators. Others, including the former secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have gone further, calling her a “Russian asset”.Those concerns have been heightened by Gabbard’s nomination under Donald Trump to the post of director of national intelligence, a senior cabinet-level position with access to classified materials from across the 18 US intelligence agencies, and shaping that information for the president’s daily briefing. The role would allow her to access and declassify information at her discretion, and also direct some intelligence-sharing with US allies around the world.“There is real concern about her contacts [in Syria] and that she does not share the same sympathies and values as the intelligence community,” said a person familiar with discussions among senior intelligence officials. “She is historically unfit.”View image in fullscreenGabbard and her supporters have denounced those attacks as a smear, saying that her history of anti-interventionism in Syria and Ukraine has been misrepresented as a kind of “cold war 2.0”.In Washington, she has staked out a unique foreign policy position as a strong supporter of Israel and the “war on terror” – but also as a critic of US rivalries with countries like Russia and Iran (she strongly criticised Trump’s decision to assassinate the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani as an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war”).“When it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she told a Hawaiian newspaper in 2016. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”Jeremy Scahill, the leftwing US journalist and activist, wrote that to “pretend that Gabbard somehow poses a more grave danger to US security than those in power after 9/11 or throughout the long bloody history of US interventions and the resulting blowback is a lot of hype and hysteria”.But Gabbard has repeatedly shared conspiracy theories, including claiming shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine that there are “25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world”. In fact, the US program stemming back to the 1990s is directed at better securing labs which focus on infectious disease outbreaks.Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, with Kyiv engaged in a desperate defense of the country’s sovereignty, Gabbard said: “It’s time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love, for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country.”View image in fullscreenAnd she has repeatedly supported dictators, including Assad, suggesting that reports of the 2013 and 2017 chemical weapons attacks were false, and calling for the US to “join hands” with Moscow following its 2015 intervention in Syria.Establishment Democrats and Republicans have openly questioned whether or not she poses a threat to national security.“I worry what might happen to untold numbers of American assets if someone as reckless, inexperienced, and outright disloyal as Gabbard were DNI,” wrote Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman who served on the foreign affairs committee with Gabbard in 2018 when Caesar testified.The person close to the intelligence community said that there were continuing concerns about Gabbard’s contacts in the Middle East, stemming back to the controversial 2017 meeting with Assad – an encounter that Gabbard has insisted she does not regret.Those contacts may be explored during a Senate confirmation hearing early next year, the person said.Gabbard was briefly placed on a Transportation Security Administration watchlist because of her overseas travel patterns and foreign connections, CNN reported last month, but was later removed.She does not have a background in intelligence, although the Hawaii native served in the army national guard for more than two decades, and has deployed to Iraq and Kuwait.Moreover, there are concerns that her choice could affect intelligence sharing among US foreign allies, including the tightly knit Five Eyes intelligence group that includes the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Nato and allies in Japan and South Korea.“Much of the intelligence we get, at least from the human collector side, is from our partners,” said John Sipher, formerly deputy director of the CIA’s Russia operations, noting that the cooperation was usually informal, “personality- and trust-based”.“They’re going to be really hesitant to pass [information] to a place that that is becoming more partisan and less professional … they would be making their own checklist: ‘Hey, this sensitive thing that we would in the past have passed to the CIA that could do us damage if it becomes public … Let’s just not do that this time.’” More

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      Syria Fighting Worsens Already Dire Conditions in Idlib and Aleppo

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      Years of war and a powerful earthquake had led to crushing poverty, displacement and breakdowns in services. But over the last several days, the region’s misery deepened.Hospitals have been ripped apart by airstrikes. Nearly 50,000 people have fled their homes, and tens of thousands lack running water. Civilians are being laid out in body bags on hospital floors after shells struck their neighborhoods.Scenes from the bloodiest days of Syria’s civil war, which had lain largely dormant for several years, are now repeating themselves in the country’s northwest as pro-government forces try to beat back a surprise rebel offensive, according to aid workers, a war monitor and the United Nations, who warned of a rapidly worsening humanitarian situation.Conditions were already dire for civilians in the area: Years of war and a powerful February 2023 earthquake had led to crushing poverty, displacement and breakdowns in services. But over the last several days, the region’s misery deepened as Russian and Syrian fighter jets have repeatedly struck Idlib and Aleppo in northwestern Syria and rebels fought to capture more territory.The United Nations said more than 50 airstrikes had hit Idlib Province in northwestern Syria on Sunday and Monday. Four health facilities, four schools and two camps housing people displaced from earlier phases of the conflict suffered damage, it said.Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, said in a briefing Monday night that a strike on a water station had also cut off access for at least 40,000 people. And the Norwegian Refugee Council, which provides aid in the region, said its humanitarian workers were reporting that bakeries and shops had shut down in Aleppo, leading to food shortages.Damage at a camp for displaced people north of Idlib on Monday. The United Nations said two such camps suffered damage in recent days.Ghaith Alsayed/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Syria’s Rebels Struck When Assad’s Allies Were Weakened and Distracted

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      Diminished support for the Syrian government from Iran, Hezbollah and Russia enabled opposition forces to take the initiative and seize new territory.For years, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was able to beat back opposition fighters with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Now, with those allies weakened or distracted by their own conflicts, rebels have seized the opportunity to shift the balance of power.The rebel fighters spent months training and preparing for a surprise offensive, but even they may not have predicted how quickly they would advance. On Saturday, the rebels said they had captured almost all of Aleppo, one of Syria’s biggest cities, and they now control a broad stretch of land in the west and northwest of the country, according to the rebels and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor.The timing of the assault and its success, analysts say, reveal the vulnerabilities of Mr. al-Assad’s once formidable coalition.The Syrian civil war started 13 years ago when peaceful anti-government protests were met with brutal crackdowns, escalating into a conflict between forces loyal to Mr. al-Assad and rebels. Over time, the combatants drew support and foreign fighters from regional and international powers.Iran, Hezbollah and Russia all sent help to the Syrian military. Hezbollah and Iranian-backed fighters battled alongside Syrian forces, Russia and Iran sent military advisers, and Russia carried out intense airstrikes on rebel-held territory.But today, Iran has been weakened by Israeli airstrikes, battlefield losses by its proxy forces — the so-called axis of resistance — and an economic crisis at home. Hezbollah, one of those proxy forces, has been battered and diminished after 13 months of war with Israel and the killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. And Russia is now nearing the end of its third year of a war of attrition with Ukraine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Syria Rebels Take Aleppo Airport and Attack Hama, Officials and a Monitor Say

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      Forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad have captured the Aleppo airport and are attacking the western city of Hama, according to local officials and a Britain-based war monitor.Rebel forces advanced in Syria on Sunday amid fierce fighting, capturing the airport of the major city of Aleppo and attacking the outskirts of the western city of Hama, according to local officials and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Government troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were trying to repel them, they said.The rebels had captured much of Aleppo a day earlier in a surprise offensive. They now control a broad swath of land across the provinces of Hama, Idlib and Aleppo, in the west and northwest of Syria, according to information from local officials and the Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor.The New York Times also observed rebels in control of parts of Hama Province as well as neighborhoods in the east of the city of Aleppo and parts of the countryside beyond it that government forces had held only days earlier.Government troops were battling to defend the city of Hama from being overrun, according to the Observatory. Syrian government warplanes were also bombing territory that was now held by the rebels, causing civilian casualties, the monitor said.It said that government forces were receiving support from Russian fighter jets, which were striking targets across the countryside near Hama and Idlib province.Russia, which is allied with Mr. Assad, has repeatedly come to his aid since early in the civil war that broke out in 2011, after protests over Mr. Assad’s autocratic rule drew a swift and bloody military crackdown. Mr. al-Assad has also counted on military and political support from Iran. More

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      Rebels Seize Control Over Most of Syria’s Largest City

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      The rapid advance on Aleppo came just four days into a surprise rebel offensive that is the most intense escalation in years in the country’s civil war.Rebels had seized most of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, on Saturday, according to a war monitoring group and to fighters who were combing the streets in search of any remaining pockets of government forces.The rebels said they had faced little resistance on the ground in Aleppo. But Syrian government warplanes responded with airstrikes on the city for the first time since 2016, according to the war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.The city of Aleppo came to a near standstill on Saturday, with many residents staying indoors for fear of what the sudden flip in control might mean, witnesses said. Others did venture out into quiet streets, welcoming the antigovernment fighters and hugging them. Some of the rebels tried to reassure city residents and sent out at least one van to distribute bread.The rapid advance on Aleppo came just four days into a surprise rebel offensive launched on Wednesday against the autocratic regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The development is both the most serious challenge to Mr. al-Assad’s rule and the most intense escalation in years in a civil war that had been mostly dormant.The timing of the assault has raised questions about whether the rebels are exploiting weaknesses across an alliance that has Iran at the center and includes groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Syrian regime.In Aleppo on Saturday, well-armed rebel fighters dressed in camouflage patrolled streets still lined with the ubiquitous posters of Mr. al-Assad. The opposition forces said that although they were in control of nearly the entire city, they had not yet solidified their hold on it. More

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      Lebanese Residents of Baalbek Return to a Bombed-Out City

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      Tens of thousands of people who had fled the city of Baalbek returned to bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings and many of the dead still buried under the rubble.Hammers clanged against brick and metal as the residents of Baalbek set to work repairing their homes, desperate to restart their lives again.A day after a cease-fire ended Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades, tens of thousands of people who fled the violence had already returned on Thursday to the hard-hit city in the country’s east.Teenage girls snapped selfies in front of the ancient Roman temples. Excited young men on motorcycles performed doughnuts in the street, their back tires spinning up dust and shards of glass.But after weeks of pounding Israeli airstrikes, the scars were not easy to ignore: bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings, trees snapped like twigs. And many of the dead were still buried under the rubble, residents said.“I’m an old woman. I’m not affiliated with anyone. What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Amar, 79, as she swept debris from the front of her house, one of the few still standing on her street.“I’ve been crying all day,” she said.“What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Ammar, 79, at her home in Baalbek.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More