President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, has a history of promoting Russian propaganda, US government officials tell the New York Times. Gabbard has falsely claimed that the US funded Ukrainian biolabs, suggested the US may have been behind the Nord Stream pipeline bombing, and blamed NATO for provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they say. Gabbard lacks experience in intelligence and, reports the New York Times, “has embraced a worldview that mirrors disinformation straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook.”
But the Times also admits that “No evidence has emerged that she has ever collaborated in any way with Russia’s intelligence agencies,” and many of Gabbard’s claims are grounded in fact or are up for legitimate debate. In 2022, the Defense Department confirmed that the US has “worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance.” This work has included support for 46 Ukrainian labs and other health facilities. Like the Wuhan Institute of Virology, some labs that work on disease surveillance and detection may store and experiment with pathogens. The idea that the US has funded potentially dangerous “biolabs” in Ukraine therefore cannot simply be dismissed as Russian disinformation.
There is also evidence that the US or NATO was indeed behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. A former Polish Defense Minister attributed the sabotage to the United States. “Thank you, USA,” he wrote on X, then-Twitter, just hours after the explosion. And in 2023, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the US and Norway sabotaged the pipeline. And realist political scientist John Mearsheimer has been vocal in arguing that the aggressive expansion of NATO, as well US policies aimed at turning Ukraine into a “Western bulwark,” exacerbated tensions and led to Russia’s military action.
