A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees have demanded Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, appear before them to explain why she was part of the FBI raid at a Georgia election center. Gabbard was at the site in Fulton County as FBI agents executed a warrant to seize all county ballots from the 2020 election. President Trump has often falsely claimed that he won in 200, and Fulton County has been the target of repeated baseless fraud claims.
Now, the warrant says the search was related to the counting of fraudulent ballots. We wanted to know more about why a director of national intelligence would be at a seizure like that, so we called up retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair. He served as director of national intelligence in the Obama administration. Admiral, so when you saw that Tulsi Gabbard was there, what'd you think? You've held that same job.
DENNIS BLAIR: Yeah. I had no idea what she was doing. There are no Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean secrets in Fulton County. And it just is - seemed entirely bizarre to me.
MARTÍNEZ: Did you think, or maybe, like, go in your head a little bit and say, why would she be there? Like, what would be the reason why she would be there?
BLAIR: No. I mostly thought the other direction. I can't think a - of a time when the intelligence community has been busier. It's - there are crises boiling all around the globe. The intelligence community has task forces, I'm sure, going, at least five or six of them that I can think of - Russia, China, Iran, Gaza, Venezuela, Ukraine. And the DNI's job as the manager of this huge, complicated organization is to make sure that the IC is working well to get the best possible intelligence in a very stressing time. And that's what the DNI should be doing, not walking around some, you know, county office down in the middle of Georgia.
MARTÍNEZ: So being in Georgia might not be within the scope of the director's typical authority.
BLAIR: Well, even if you take what the administration said at face value, the job of the DNI is foreign intelligence or national intelligence - trying to steal secrets from our enemies that are trying to do us harm, and there's a lot of that going on right now. And a issue that is largely handled by the FBI, an FBI raid, investigation of an American organization like a voting organization in Georgia, is not in the DNI's purview.
MARTÍNEZ: Does this raise concerns to you, Admiral, in terms of what this job may entail within this administration?
BLAIR: Yes. I think it's - the administration has no idea what this job should do, which is to manage the tremendous but disparate capabilities of the intelligence community to provide the best possible intelligence not only to the president. That's just the tip of the iceberg. But the intelligence community supports all of the top national security officials, all the way down to the tactical level of the crews that are out on ships in Iran, the diplomats that are dealing with Gaza. And that's what its job is, and that's what we should be reading about, not traipsing around some U.S. election organizations.
MARTÍNEZ: So it sounds like the focus of the job is not spent well being in Georgia as it would be in other places around the world at this time.
BLAIR: I mean, you know, the admiral's job is to be in his headquarters, running the different parts of the big organization so that it's doing its job, and not to be out with some tactical patrol of questionable DNI's duties. So I'm just disappointed in the misuse of the intelligence leadership at a time when we really need it, when the country is going through a great deal of crisis and questions overseas.
MARTÍNEZ: Admiral Dennis Blair is a former director of national intelligence. Admiral, thank you.
BLAIR: So long.
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