Whistleblowing Tulsi Gabbard in a Post-Truth World
I want to live in a world where revealing the truth about the crimes of government officials and politicians shifts constellations of power. A world of accountability. In my lifetime, we have never lived in that world.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a whistleblower claims Tulsi Gabbard—Trump’s bizarro Director of National Intelligence—has been engaged in “wrongdoing.” Sigh.
The complaint “is said to be locked in a safe. Disclosure of its contents could cause ‘grave damage to national security.’” That’s why it was filed eight months ago but Congress has not seen what the complaint is.
Gabbard—a pro-Trump, anti-gay, anti-trans, former Democrat who has an absurd record of supporting the militarism and domestic repression of autocrats from Israel to Syria to Russia to Turkey to India to Saudi Arabia—courted many controversies before even becoming the DNI:1
Well-documented ties to Putin’s government in Russia;
A history of adopting the rhetorical arguments of authoritarian governments;
Close ties to Hindu extremists and a religious cult leader;
An inexplicable secret meeting with Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad in 2017; and
Promoted conspiracy theories about Assad not using chemical weapons in Syria when we know he did.
Since becoming DNI, multiple senators have accused her of lying to Congress. And last week, going faaaar outside the scope of her duties, Gabbard visited an election center in Georgia (do you think the 2026 mid-terms are going to be conducted fairly, assuming they happen?).
What we already know about Tulsi Gabbard is that, yes, she is lathered in “wrongdoing.” But she’s still the DNI anyway because there is no accountability for the crimes of our ruling class. Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” strategy is making it hard to even track which new crime against humanity is happening each day. Each hour.
But unaccountability is not new; Biden appointees are going around as recently as this week bragging about how much they “helped” Israel militarily since October 7, 2023, and we have news that the State Department buried USAID reporting that Israel was rendering Gaza into an “apocalyptic wasteland” in 2024, to which the US responded by accelerating the wastelanding. Nobody but peace protestors went to jail for the Iraq war. The Epstein shit matters precisely because it’s the ultimate test of whether there can be any actual accountability in this world short of a revolution. It’s not looking good.
As it happens, on my other show, The Bang-Bang Podcast, our latest episode is about Three Days of the Condor (1975) starring Robert Redford. The film’s fashionable dripped-in-tweed protagonist is a CIA analyst (stationed in New York?) whose coworkers get executed, putting him on the run from what turns out to be rogue CIA bureaucrat-hitmen. Eventually, he uncovers an outlandish conspiracy for oil; lots of philosophical questions get raised along the way. What made Three Days of the Condor quaint—and germane to the whistleblower accusing Tulsi Gabbard—is that the movie presents a world in which exposing the truth about our government’s misdeeds could turn public opinion, thereby holding corrupt officials accountable for things like extrajudicial murder and regime change to steal natural resources.
The film ends with Redford whistleblowing on the CIA’s murder-for-oil plot, leaving its 1975 audience with a sense that the truth will set us free. Maybe that was naive even in the 1970s. After all, Kissinger’s name still adorns many offices in Washington and the bulk of his war crimes took place in the years just prior to this movie’s release.
But I couldn’t help feel a sense of earnestness, perhaps even optimism, about the world that Three Days of the Condor existed in. That’s a feeling I don’t have as we live through imperial decline and all that attends it. Those who make policy should be terrified of the people, not scornful or dismissive of them. If power is not accountable, then decline will just keep accelerating, propelled by those with power exploiting the shit out of it at our expense.
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This article has a decent summary of Gabbard’s controversies.
Speaking as someone just old enough to remember Watergate, you're right: there once was a time when accountability was actually a 'thing'. No, things weren't perfect...but politicians did occasionally know and acknowledge shame and even accept responsibility.
I think it began to change when the Iran-Contra investigation turned into an Ollie North lovefest. Then the Ethics In Government Act - and the Office of Special Counsel - expired in 1999, just in time for 9/11. Bush passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006. That was a real gut punch for me (even though it was partly undone by the Supreme Court). It's been downhill all the way since at an increasingly rapid speed.