After DNI hid high-level intelligence for nearly eight months, complaint regarding grave abuse of power must reach Congress
WASHINGTON, DC Feb. 4, 2026 — WhistleblowerAid.org Chief Counsel Andrew P. Bakaj has advised Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard he will offer an unclassified briefing to Congress on Monday if Gabbard fails to provide security guidance for a whistleblower to go to the congressional intelligence committees on a highly classified disclosure that Gabbard buried for nearly eight months.
An unnamed whistleblower represented by WhistleblowerAid.org has been prevented from contacting congressional intelligence committees about their legal disclosure. Specifically, Director Gabbard has failed to provide the mechanisms through which the whistleblower can meet with Congress to discuss the revelations, securely, as required by law.
In a new letter sent on Feb. 3, 2026 to Gabbard, Bakaj wrote, “We are providing you with formal notice that, should your office fail to provide us with security guidance on contacting the Congressional Intelligence Committees by Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, that on Monday, Feb. 9, 2026, I, as counsel, will contact the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to provide them an unclassified briefing on Ms. Gabbard’s conduct and the underlying intelligence concerns.”
Whistleblower Aid called on Congress on Feb. 2 to open an investigation into Gabbard for hiding high-level intelligence for nearly eight months and attempting to bury the whistleblower’s disclosure, the reporting of which is required by law.
“The law requires that Director Gabbard provide the whistleblower with security guidance on contacting the congressional intelligence committees. We cannot wait another eight months. Come Monday, I will be contacting the committees directly. Our national security is on the line and this is an Urgent Concern.” Bakaj said.
The whistleblower, consistent with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, asked in June that their disclosure be transmitted to Congress. Since then, Gabbard has stonewalled and thwarted its release because she is the subject of that complaint.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has sought to justify its inaction with numerous claims, including by asserting executive privilege, which generally refers to the power of the president to withhold confidential information or private discussions from Congress.
“Congress must exercise its legally mandated oversight of the US Intelligence Community,” Bakaj said. “That is what the American people elected them to do and what US law requires of them.”
US Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and one of a handful of congressional leaders authorized to receive a highly classified disclosure, was sharply critical of Gabbard’s stonewalling, which he described as “in direct contradiction to what Gabbard testified during her confirmation hearings, that she would protect whistleblowers and share the information in a timely manner.”
UPDATE: Our whistleblower client is willing to speak — with appropriate protections —to the Gang of Eight and their cleared staff to provide additional details about the complaint, address questions about credibility and concerns over politicization, and answer questions that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and DNI Tulsi Gabbard have refused to address.
We all want the truth.
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Whistleblower Aid provides pro bono legal, advocacy, and communications support to government and private sector whistleblowers acting in the public interest. The organization’s lawyers have represented some of the most consequential national security and Big Tech whistleblowers in history, including Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, the anonymous intelligence community whistleblower whose disclosures led to the first impeachment of President Trump, and others.
