INTERVIEW: Live from New Delhi: Tulsi Gabbard talks India, JFK files, and more while meeting Modi, Indian officials

THE LOWDOWN:

• Tulsi Gabbard traveled to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, high-level diplomatic sources, U.S. Embassy staff, and others.

• Gabbard confirmed President Trump’s quote from a recent Washington Reporter interview that Joe Biden did nothing to extradite Abbey Gate terrorist attack mastermind.

• Gabbard laid out what will happen with JFK, RFK files.

• President Trump’s DNI also weighed in on the attacks on Houthis as the Iranian-backed terrorists try to undermine America and Israel in the Middle East.

NEW DELHI, India — Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), was last in India roughly a decade ago as a Democratic member of Congress. Following Trump’s historic comeback campaign, Gabbard — now a Republican Cabinet member — returned to the world’s most populous country to address the prestigious Raisina Dialogue and to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, high-level diplomatic sources, U.S. Embassy staff, and others.

Gabbard spoke with the Washington Reporter at the Raisina Dialogue, where she emphasized the “longstanding relationship of trust between our two countries,” which helps America and India navigate geopolitical challenges.

“Layered on top of that is the relationship and actual, real friendship that exists between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi,” Gabbard said. “So, like with all relationships we have with different countries around the world, we'll make different decisions about what that partnership entails and what opportunities we have.”

“India is no different,” she added.

Gabbard, who was born in American Samoa and spent years living in and representing Hawai’i in Congress, is also the first Hindu member of Congress. During her confirmation battle, some Democrats zeroed in on her Hindu faith — to little success.

The DNI said she was appreciative of the “very, very warm” welcome she received with her return to India. Gabbard noted that “many of Prime Minister Modi's leadership team are people who I've gotten to know over the years, and so in many cases, in the meetings that I'm having, it's seeing old friends and having new conversations given this new role that I serve in.”

That deep trust is how Gabbard navigates India’s unusual status as both a founding member of BRICS, which is close to China and Russia, and an integral member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad of Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.), which exists primarily to counter China. The face-to-face diplomacy Gabbard conducts on trips like this helps her ensure that intelligence sharing doesn’t result in bad actors receiving good intelligence.

As Gabbard has traveled the world, she is delivering a clear message to foreign leaders: “We have a president who has made very clear that his goal and objective, his legacy that he hopes to leave behind, is to be the president of peace and to be a unifying force.”

“We've already seen in the very short period of time how he is taking decisive action to that end around conflicts that have existed for a very long time, and how he is using his position to send a strong message that peace and security and freedom and stability are mutual interests that the United States has with many, if not most, other countries in different parts of the world. I think a really clear quality characteristic that both he and Prime Minister Modi share is that they are both very practical leaders.”

“They believe in direct engagement, whether that be with friends or with those who have very adversarial positions in order to try to prevent conflict, to prevent war,” Gabbard added.

But while Trump is willing to directly engage America’s adversaries — like Iran’s Islamic leadership — he has shown a remarkable willingness to use deadly force when American interests are threatened.

“What you're seeing with the Houthis, obviously, is to deal with the very direct implications of their attacks on any maritime traffic that exists within the reach of their missiles and their increased military capability, and the impact that it has on our commerce and that exists around the global economic picture,” Gabbardsaid. “There are a lot of other countries that have been directly affected by this.”

“And once again, over the last four years of the Biden administration, while there have been some counterattacks, none of them have been to any true effect of stopping the Houthis from continuing to disrupt global commerce. This also is connected to the Houthis’ attempts to undermine the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and how they have set up their attacks against Israel from Yemen, specifically because of Israel and with our support of their war against the Islamic terrorists of Hamas.”

Closer to home, Gabbard has been able to complement White House priorities of both “radical transparency” and securing America’s borders. Trump famously tasked her with rolling out plans to declassify files relating to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Gabbard said that there “will be far more that we will do that may not be outlined in an executive order, but really goes towards achieving that objective — radical transparency — which is necessary to start to restore trust in our national security agencies and specifically in the intelligence community.”

Gabbard added that “there are a lot of [other] things that the American people deserve to know the truth about.”

“I've set up a special team within my executive office that is just starting to compile a list of all of these different areas where our aim is to declassify so that we can share the truth with the American people,” she said.

Prior to Gabbard’s Indo-Pacific trip, she joined Vice President JD Vance in visiting America’s border with Mexico. Gabbard told the Reporter that the Biden administration ignored the National Counterterrorism Center’s reports “about how there was this ISIS human trafficking network that was making money off of bringing people in from Central Asia.”

“And our counterterrorism center had identified that there were a number of individuals who were either on the known or suspected terrorist list,” Gabbard added.

While the Biden administration arrested around 150 people towards the end of Biden’s time in office, Gabbard noted that they sent almost all of them “back out into the streets of our country.”

“Why?” she asked rhetorically. “The Biden administration claimed that we don't have enough room in detention centers. I have strong feelings about this; the words ‘dereliction of duty as commander in chief’ come to mind.” Gabbard tied Biden’s weakness on terrorism to broader problems within her former political party. “Many of the Democrats in Washington don't take the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously or they are too afraid of being labeled Islamophobes to take the necessary action to keep the American people safe,” she said. “We see it in this example of how the people who they felt were serious enough of a threat to arrest were set free on our streets, and we see their lack of response, and in some cases, their condoning, of the pro-Hamas riots and protests that we saw occurring in the wake of October 7 across college campuses and in different communities across the country.”

The Biden administration’s intelligence failures aren’t limited to America’s southern border, Gabbard said, confirming what Trump told the Reporter in an interview, that his predecessor did nothing to extradite the terrorist mastermind behind the deadly Abbey Gate attack that killed 13 American servicemembers during the Biden administration’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“There was no groundwork done [to extradite Mohammad Sharifullah] because there was not a commitment to actually do the work,” Gabbard said. “The travesty came amidst this failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. It didn't surprise me that there was no groundwork done, because we had an administration, both from the top with President Biden, but also the leaders that he had in charge of this epic failure, that refused to take responsibility for it in and of itself.”

“So it didn't surprise me then that they also refused to actually do the work necessary to go after the terrorists who are responsible for that bombing.”

Gabbard’s commitment to the Gold Star families who lost their loved ones grew out of Trump’s close relationship with the families.

“I was with President Trump and many of these family members at Arlington Cemetery on the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack,” she said. “It was deeply impactful for me personally, for many reasons, but to see President Trump's really emotional connection with these families and supporting them as they honored the loss of their loved ones and those who were injured as well, was a really powerful moment that I think people felt as he spoke about this during his his speech before the Joint Session of Congress.”

“So this was obviously a priority for him coming in as president: to fulfill the promise that he made to those families,” she added.

Gabbard added that the Trump administration has more to do for the Abbey Gate Gold Star families.

“This is just the first step,” she said. “This happened as quickly as it did because of his directive, and really the collaboration and work that went into this from the CIA Director John Ratcliffe, working with the Department of Justice, working directly with the FBI, and from my organization, working with our National Counterterrorism Center to make sure that they had all of the information and intelligence that they needed for those charging documents to begin the process of this extradition from Pakistan, so that this terrorist will face justice here.”

“We obviously know that there were others who were involved, both as masterminds and as plotters, in the launching of this horrific attack, and so the fact that this initial effort was successful, should not be mistaken as ‘okay, this is done.’ It's not done.”

“President Trump knows that,” Gabbard added. “The families know that, and I know that we are unified in continuing to fulfill that promise that he made to them.

Below is a transcript of our interview with Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:

What keeps you up at night?

Tulsi Gabbard:

President Trump gave me very clear mandate, which is reflected on the mandate the American people gave him, which is to work on ending the politicization, weaponization of our intelligence community, and refocusing it back on our core national security mission. That is the foremost task in order to get the intelligence community to do what it is charged to do. As you can imagine, the level of problems and changes that we need to make in order to do that runs deep. Every day as I pull back a layer here, pull back a layer there, there is far more there that we need to root out and that we need to reform than I think most people realize. There's some of the different, more public examples of politicization and weaponization of intelligence. But really, it even gets down to the rampant leaks of classified information to the media to try to undermine the president's policy or to put a particular spin by leaking a half of a piece of information in order to try to change the narrative. But then you look at some of the things that are not often talked about, which is how intelligence that is collected from the ground then goes through analysis, and you write up the reporting that is supposed to best inform our policymakers and the president, well if you lack analytic objectivity through that process, then you essentially end up with weaponized intelligence that is being reported rather than simply an analysis of the truth. So this is a big, big problem, and one that's probably more challenging to try to change given how entrenched the Washington groupthink around foreign policy is throughout certain parts of the intelligence community.

Washington Reporter:

What changes have you already needed to make from how the DNI was structured with Biden to be able to work with the Trump administration more broadly to work on those goals?

Tulsi Gabbard:

We have an ongoing assessment of the structure. The ODNI itself has become a far more bloated bureaucracy than what it was intended to be. We are looking at everything and asking the questions of ‘why does this exist? What objective is it getting after that serves our national security interests?’ And if there's not an answer to how it gets after that mission, then it's something that probably doesn't need to exist.

Washington Reporter:

We're in India. What brings you here, and what is your view on how this country is going to be playing a role in the next four years, especially vis a vis China?

Tulsi Gabbard:

The region as a whole is critical, and it gets talked about sometimes, but really not with the focus that it deserves. I grew up in Hawaii, and I was born in American Samoa; I've spent a lot of time in different countries across Asia and the Pacific, and so I bring a pretty personal and deep understanding to the complexities and the new ones that exist out here. And so it was a very intentional choice to come here; the reason for the trip is to come and attend this Raisina Dialogue conference in India, given India's important role within the Indo-Pacific, but also because of the strong ties between our two countries and the many, many areas across all different sectors for strengthening that partnership. I obviously stopped in Hawaii on the way out here. We have a lot of intelligence assets there as well. One of the big impacts that come from being present at conferences like this is to make sure that especially as intelligence directors, we have those open lines of communication that must be robust even in the midst of, and maybe especially in the midst of, the political disagreements that can happen between countries.

Washington Reporter:

You were the first Hindu member of Congress; what's the reception been like for you in India? This is your first trip to India in this job, and you were just interviewing with Indian media. What's the reception been?

Tulsi Gabbard:

It's been very, very warm, and I'm grateful for the warm welcome. The last time I was here was about 10 years ago, as a member of Congress, serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee and Armed Services Committee at that time. Many of Prime Minister Modi's leadership team are people who I've gotten to know over the years, and so in many cases, in the meetings that I'm having, it's seeing old friends and having new conversations given this new role that I serve in.

Washington Reporter:

India is both a founding member of BRICS and a member of the Quad; you're the Director of National Intelligence. How do you work with India in that role to make sure that when you're doing intel sharing, it's not going to people and countries who shouldn't be getting it?

Tulsi Gabbard:

There's a longstanding relationship of trust between our two countries, and that's really most important. Layered on top of that is the relationship and actual, real friendship that exists between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi. So like with all relationships we have with different countries around the world, we'll make different decisions about what that partnership entails and and what opportunities we have. And India is no different, but it is really built on the foundation of a very, very long standing relationship, and, quite frankly, a very practical understanding of India's own policies and choices as it relates to how they are developing relationships with other countries, given their own founding documents.

Washington Reporter:

You've already been meeting with other world leaders on this trip. What is your message from America as far as how things are different between March and just two months ago?

Tulsi Gabbard:

We have a president who has made very clear that his goal and objective, his legacy that he hopes to leave behind, is to be the president of peace and to be a unifying force. We've already seen in the very short period of time how he is taking decisive action to that end around conflicts that have existed for a very long time, and how he is using his position to send a strong message that peace and security and freedom and stability are mutual interests that the United States has with many, if not most, other countries in in different parts of the world. I think a really clear quality characteristic that both he and Prime Minister Modi share is that they are both very practical leaders. They believe in direct engagement, whether that be with friends or with those who have very adversarial positions in order to try to prevent conflict, to prevent war, and to resolve issues where they exist and to maximize opportunities where they exist. It's a very clear-eyed view of the world which is distinct from what has long been the establishment foreign policy view in Washington, which is making decisions not that are in the best interest of the American people, but based on some version of the world that they believe exists but is not rooted in reality.

Washington Reporter:

During President Trump's joint address to Congress, he made the announcement that he had extradited the terrorist mastermind behind the Abbey Gate suicide attack. I called him last weekend because and I asked him, ‘did Biden leave you anything to work off of to extradite this guy?’ And he said, ‘no, he did nothing except destroy our country for four years.’ How did this happen, and what was the role of DNI and getting this terrorist over to Dulles Airport?

Tulsi Gabbard:

I was with President Trump and many of these family members at Arlington Cemetery on the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack. It was deeply impactful for me personally, for many reasons, but to see President Trump's really emotional connection with these families and supporting them as they honored the loss of their loved ones and and those who were injured as well, was a really powerful moment that I think people felt as he spoke about this during his his speech before the Joint Session of Congress. So this was obviously a priority for him coming in as president: to fulfill the promise that he made to those families, and this is just the first step of that. This happened as quickly as it did because of his directive, and really the collaboration and work that went into this from the CIA Director John Ratcliffe, working with the Department of Justice, working directly with the FBI, and from my organization, working with our National Counterterrorism Center to make sure that they had all of the information and intelligence that they needed for those charging documents to begin the process of this extradition from Pakistan, so that this terrorist will face justice here; we obviously know that there were others who were involved, both as masterminds and as plotters, in the launching of this horrific attack, and so the fact that this initial effort was successful, should not be mistaken as ‘okay, this is done.’ It's not done. President Trump knows that. The families know that, and I know that we are unified in continuing to fulfill that promise that he made to them.

Washington Reporter:

Was it your experience as well that you opened a book on this and there was nothing there, or had some amount of groundwork been laid there?

Tulsi Gabbard:

There was no groundwork done, because there was not a commitment to actually do the work. The travesty came amidst this failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. It didn't surprise me that there was no groundwork done, because we had an administration, both from the top with President Biden, but also the leaders that he had in charge of this epic failure, that refused to take responsibility for it in and of itself. So it didn't surprise me then that they also refused to actually do the work necessary to go after the terrorists who are responsible for that bombing.

Washington Reporter:

President Trump posted videos from the Department of the Navy of the strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and President Trump's been very forthright in issuing ultimatums to both the Houthis themselves and to the Iranians who are paying for them. What do you see as coming next with his maximum pressure strategy campaign against Iran?

Tulsi Gabbard:

Well, you've also seen the letter that President Trump sent the Ayatollah. Once again, it cannot be overstated how important it is that we have a president who is so committed to peace in that he is focused on these direct engagements. I don't know when the last direct outreach to the Ayatollah in Iran happened by a previous president. So there are multiple efforts ongoing. The goal is peace and security. What you're seeing with with the Houthis, obviously, is to deal with the very direct implications of their attacks on any maritime traffic that exists within the reach of their missiles and their increased military capability, and the impact that it has on our commerce and that exists around the global economic picture. There are a lot of other countries that have been directly affected by this. And once again, over the last four years the Biden administration, while there have been some counter attacks, none of them have been to any true effect of stopping the Houthis from continuing to disrupt global commerce. This also is connected to the Houthis’ attempts to undermine the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and how they have set up their attacks against Israel from Yemen, specifically because of Israel and with our support of their war against the Islamic terrorists of Hamas.

Washington Reporter:

People don't think of border security as a priority of DNI, especially after the Biden administration was so weak on border security. You were just at the southern border. The DNI’s National Counterterrorism Center found an ISIS smuggling ring. Can you talk about how your office is going to work on securing the border? We've seen the border crossing numbers plummet, but how do you make sure that stays the same?

Tulsi Gabbard:

To the first thing that you mentioned about this ISIS trafficking ring: basically, it was one of the things that the National Counterterrorism Center and the great folks who work there brought to my attention very quickly after I came in as director; they had reported all of this to the Biden administration previously about how there was this ISIS human trafficking network that was making money off of bringing people in from Central Asia and our counterterrorism center had identified that there were a number of individuals who were either on the known or suspected terrorist list, or who were one ping away and they were not on the list but they had a very immediate and direct connection to someone who was. They had provided this information to the Biden administration. And even though there was some action taken in 2024 where the Biden administration went out and arrested, I think it was around 140 or 150 people, and they put out a very serious statement about concern they had with these known and suspected terrorists, but they were so concerned about them that very shortly thereafter, that only six or eight of those who they had arrested, rather detained or deported, the rest they sent back out into the streets of our country. Why? The Biden administration claimed that we don't have enough room in detention centers, or whatever other excuse they made. I have strong feelings about this; the words ‘dereliction of duty as commander in chief’ come to mind. But also, we have to look at what has been the trend of the Biden administration. Many of the Democrats in Washington don't take the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously or they are too afraid of being labeled Islamophobes to take the necessary action to keep the American people safe. So we see it in this example of how the people who they felt were serious enough of a threat to arrest were set free on our streets, and we see their lack of response and in some cases, their condoning of the pro-Hamas riots and protests that we saw occurring in the wake of October 7 across college campuses and in different different communities across the country. This is something that, obviously, President Trump takes very seriously. It directly ties into his focus on securing our border. But also, as he has said many times, that with over 20 million people that the Biden administration allowed into our borders, these are people who have not been properly vetted, and we don't know to the extent of which we have more of these Islamist terrorists or more of those who seek to do us harm here. We're working very closely with the Department of Homeland Security, getting the FBI to go and find those that the Biden administration set free on our streets who have associate associations with ISIS, known or suspected terrorists, or who are already on that terror list that we have in the National Counterterrorism Center.

Washington Reporter:

Before you were sworn in, President Trump already said that you will be in charge of declassifying files on the JFK, RFK, MLK, assassinations. What does that mean? Are you concerned for your safety? What is the role of DNI in this declassification executive order that you've been tasked with? What can people expect to see from that? Are you going to be tasked with declassifying other documents, like ones about Area 51?

Tulsi Gabbard:

President Trump’s administration is one of radical transparency, and we see this every day when he welcomes to the media into the Oval Office. The executive order about declassification of these particular three gets after that objective. There will be far more that we will do that may not be outlined in an executive order, but really go towards achieving that objective — radical transparency — which is necessary to start to restore trust in our national security agencies and specifically in the intelligence community. So I can't say that we're going to have jurisdiction over every single one, but there are a lot of things that the American people deserve to know the truth about. I've set up a special team within my executive office that is just starting to compile a list of all of these different areas where our aim is to declassify so that we can share the truth with the American people, which is exactly what President Trump is doing here.

Washington Reporter:

You don't have to say what's in them now. But did you have a theory of the JFK case prior to coming into this?

Tulsi Gabbard:

No.

Washington Reporter:

You're the only person I know who doesn’t have one!

Tulsi Gabbard:

I've very intentionally remained open minded and not focused on not prejudging any conclusions, without actually being able to see for myself the truth of the information and intelligence that we have available. This is a little bit in jest, but not really because this is the way that I'm approaching my whole job: as we are faced with intelligence reporting on any issue, any countries, actions or any threats that we face. It's important to me that I'm coming in with an open mind. Obviously, there are experiences that have informed my view of the world, but it's critical that if we have intelligence reporting that comes in and maybe challenges an assumption that I may have had before, that I remain open minded to make sure that my own experiences don't color or bias the reporting the president will receive. There will be an announcement on the JFK files release coming very soon. The MLK and RFK files will likely take longer because these are files that have not yet been digitized. They have not been reviewed. So this is going to require more time than the JFK files, almost all of which have been digitized. There are some that have not been, that are sit within NARA. So you can anticipate there will be a few tranches of releases for the JFK files, specifically because of the ones that are already digitized and need to be redacted. And then there are others that are either under grand jury seals or are on microfilms in storage somewhere.

Washington Reporter:

You came out very strong against these illegal leaks happening from within DNI; we saw Tom Homan talking about these leaks within ICE. Is this a thing that is prevalent throughout the administration? You want radical transparency, but can you explain why these leaks are so damaging to American national interest?

Tulsi Gabbard:

I just listed just a few of the most recent ones that I've become aware of and that we're investigating. But this is a much bigger issue that's been going on for a very long time, not only during this administration, but through both Democrat and Republican administrations. How do they undermine our national security? They come from people who believe that they have more power than those who have been elected into office by the American people. Why are they putting these leaks out? The objective is to undermine a specific policy that's being pushed by the president, or it's to change a narrative around a specific issue in order to bring about an outcome that has nothing to do with what the president is seeking to achieve. And it's illegal. It is illegal to have these unauthorized releases of classified information. It's a very dangerous thing, and we've seen this over President Trump's first campaign, his first term in office, four years in between, and then even now. How this intelligence has been weaponized. People break the law because they've not been held accountable, and the most dangerous threat to our republic is that we have unelected people who sit within our government who believe that they don't answer to the American people and that they are more powerful than those who are duly elected by the American people. That's there danger here, ultimately.

Washington Reporter:

Thank you so much for chatting, Director Gabbard.