Tulsi Gabbard's Guru

Summary

Podcast Summary: On the Media – "Tulsi Gabbard's Guru"
Host: Michael Loewinger
Guest: John Swain, Washington Post reporter
Date: July 15, 2026

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode of On the Media delves into the highly publicized but enigmatic relationship between Tulsi Gabbard—former Director of National Intelligence, former member of Congress, and frequent political shape-shifter—and her longtime spiritual teacher, Chris Butler, founder of the Science of Identity Foundation. Reporter John Swain discusses his investigative findings, including exclusive communications and internal memos, which reveal possible behind-the-scenes influence on Gabbard’s political trajectory and positions, especially while holding critical positions in the U.S. government.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tulsi Gabbard’s Political Arc and the Enigma (00:45–03:41)

• Tulsi Gabbard’s career has been marked by dramatic ideological shifts—liberal Democrat, Bernie Sanders ally, and eventually Trump insider.
• Commentators and colleagues have long described her as an unpredictable or unknowable figure; journalist Denby Fawcett famously wrote:

  “For as long as I have known Tulsi Gabbard, I now understand I have never known her and probably never will. So much of what she does seems to make sense only to her.” (02:45, Denby Fawcett)

2. The Science of Identity Foundation and Chris Butler (05:11–07:28)

• Chris Butler, ex-Hare Krishna and the charismatic, polarizing leader, founded the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) in Hawaii.
• SIF is an offshoot of Hare Krishna teachings, but Butler’s politics are "idiosyncratic" and don’t fit cleanly on the left/right spectrum.
  • He is anti-capitalist and environmentalist but also anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ.
  • Butler’s teachings reportedly included conspiratorial, anti-gay, and anti-Muslim content.
  • Former members depict the group as cult-like, emphasizing Butler’s absolute authority and demand for secrecy.

Notable Quote:
“Butler demands complete obedience from his devotees. He tells people who they should marry and when...they would die for him, even kill themselves.” (07:39, John Swain)

3. Initial Denials, Key Source, and Revelations (08:32–10:14)

• Gabbard has always described Butler as a spiritual advisor, not a political one, explicitly denying his influence on policy.
• Key source Rebecca Saltzberg, once a SIF member and Gabbard campaign worker, at first supported Gabbard’s narrative—then changed her story.
  • After breaking with SIF, Saltzberg accessed old emails containing detailed guidance for Gabbard, claiming Butler issued these directives.

4. The Memos and "Nine Isles" (10:01–12:30)

• "Nine Isles" was the email domain for Butler’s political communications.
• Swain obtained encrypted documents—transcripts of detailed policy and media advice sent anonymously but clearly directed at "TG," Tulsi Gabbard.
• While unattributed, Saltzberg and Swain’s analysis strongly point to Butler as the author due to voice, content, and insider knowledge.

Memorable Exchange:
“You need to be the leader in this regard. Don’t dick around.” (14:02, Butler memo via Swain)

5. Documented Political Influence (13:08–16:29)

• Memos spanned Gabbard’s early Congressional years (2011–2018), directly correlating with her legislative actions and public statements.
  • 2014: Direction on punishing countries for citizens joining ISIS—Gabbard proposed policy the next day.
  • Healthcare for veterans: Gabbard adjusted her legislative detail after Butler’s aide expressed anger at her omission.
  • CNN interview on DNC exclusion: Gabbard echoed almost verbatim the phrases from Butler’s talking points memo on Wolf Blitzer.
  • In 32 talking points documents, Gabbard used direct phrases 24 times and ideas all 32 times.

6. The Nature of the Relationship (17:17–18:24)

• The memos are not typical political staff instructions—often harsh, demeaning, and controlling, more akin to a guru/disciple dynamic than a consultant/politician one.
  • Gabbard was labeled "chickenshit" or "mealy mouthed" when failing to follow advice exactly.

7. Verification Process (18:24–20:27)

• Swain used circumstantial clues, voice analysis, comparison with 7,000 pages of Butler’s past lectures, and even AI tools to verify authorship.
• Key phrase overlaps and autobiographical details (Hawaii upbringing) further support attribution.

Notable Quote:
“Every time I found a clue or self-identification, it pointed to Butler and not to those two men [alleged by SIF].” (18:41, John Swain)

8. Syria, Anti-Interventionism, and Trump Alignment (20:50–23:56)

• Butler deeply mistrusts the CIA and U.S. "regime-change" interventions.
• Memos instructed Gabbard to oppose U.S. involvement in Syria, which became a defining position for her in Congress and as a presidential candidate.
• Butler’s rhetoric was more extreme (“CIA started the war in Syria”)—a stance Gabbard eventually echoed nearly verbatim on national TV.

9. Social Media and Micro-Management (23:56–25:10)

• Evidence included direct, actionable tweets and posts dictated by Butler’s aides and passed on to Gabbard.
• SIF’s internal code words ("he," "our friend," "S") were used in communications referencing Butler.

10. The Psychology of Obedience and Denial (25:10–26:30)

• Why would a politician as high-profile as Gabbard submit to such control?
  • Former members say disciples pledge obedience upon initiation.
  • SIF disputes this; ex-members insist obedience is expected and enforced.

11. Overlap with Trump-Era Populism (26:51–29:03)

• Butler’s memos expressed frustration that Trump was occupying the “populist” lane Butler hoped Gabbard would inhabit.
  • Noted parallels between Butler’s, Gabbard’s, and Trump’s rhetoric—particularly on Islam, “America First,” and using the National Guard in cities.

12. Impact of Reporting and Gabbard’s Resignation (29:03–30:02)

• Gabbard’s resignation as DNI came within days of Swain contacting her regarding the story, though official reasons given were unrelated.

13. Conclusions and Unanswered Questions (30:02–34:44)

• The investigation cannot decisively prove Butler’s authorship or influence but assembles strong, corroborating circumstantial and linguistic evidence.
• Gabbard’s established public message of transparency and independent thinking is cast in doubt by the behind-the-scenes script-following.
• The story is distinguished not by the existence of influence, but by the secrecy and denial, particularly because of prior allegations of cult-like control.

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Notable Quotes & Key Moments

• Denby Fawcett on Gabbard's elusiveness:
  “For as long as I have known Tulsi Gabbard, I now understand I have never known her and probably never will.”
  (02:45, quoting Fawcett)

• Chris Butler anti-LGBTQ sentiment:
  “Because they have no logic in their explanations that it’s somehow normal or that it’s clean or that it’s not sinful, that a man is having sex with a man or a woman with a woman. They must convert us by force.”
  (06:53, Chris Butler audio)

• On influence and secrecy:
  “Everything I’ve taught, all my lectures, everything will be put on you.”
  (12:30, paraphrased memo)

• John Swain on the relationship:
  “I had never known of a public official like a member of Congress being dressed down in this way and insulted and spoken to quite demeaningly like someone was basically in charge of them.”
  (17:33, John Swain)

• Swain on the switch from restraint to echoing Butler’s rhetoric:
  “She was on Stephen Colbert’s show in 2019 and basically said that, yes, back in 2011, the CIA had begun this, what she called regime change war.”
  (23:32, Tulsi on Colbert)

• On the irony of Gabbard’s populist narrative:
  “Is it not ironic that Tulsi Gabbard would potentially be influenced by shadowy forces herself?”
  (31:14, Loewinger question)

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• 00:45 – Introduction to Gabbard’s CIA/Intelligence tenure and controversy.
• 03:42 – Interview with John Swain begins.
• 05:11 – Explaining the Science of Identity Foundation.
• 07:28 – Allegations of cult-like control.
• 08:32 – Introduction of Rebecca Saltzberg as key source.
• 10:01 – Discovery of "Nine Isles" email domain.
• 13:08 – Concrete examples of Gabbard following Butler’s advice.
• 17:17 – The unusual, personal nature of the memos.
• 18:24 – Swain’s process of verifying Butler as the memo-writer.
• 20:50 – Butler’s and Gabbard’s positions on Syria and anti-intervention foreign policy.
• 23:56 – Specific examples of social media direction from Butler/aides.
• 25:10 – The disciple dynamic: why would Gabbard comply?
• 26:51 – Butler’s concern with Trump occupying Gabbard’s would-be political lane.
• 29:03 – Correlation between Swain’s reporting and Gabbard’s resignation.
• 30:02 – Reflections on the main questions of the investigation.
• 31:14 – The irony of shadowy influence.
• 33:10 – Why this kind of secret, denied influence is unique and newsworthy.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of On the Media offers a meticulously researched and captivating examination of potential spiritual—and political—influence shaping Tulsi Gabbard. The reporting reveals a web of internal memos, encrypted communications, and shifting allegiances, raising pressing questions about the transparency and independence of public officials. The story stands out not merely for the influence itself, but for the secrecy and denial surrounding it—posing significant questions about accountability in American political life.

Transcript

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[Michael Lowinger]

to the on the Media midweek podcast. I'm Michael Oinger. This week the Atlantic Shane Harris had some breaking news. It turns out that the rank and file employees at the CIA are increasingly concerned that the objectivity of the agency is being undermined by political infl influence. The story cites an annual survey in which respondents pointed specifically to the actions of former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. During her time in office, Gabbard fired two career officers who found that Venezuela was not directing the criminal gang trend Iragua. She also revoked the security clearances of dozens of national security officers, some of whom had worked on the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. And then, at the end of June, Tulsi Gabbard resigned. As Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard presided over the nation's top intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the NSA and the intelligence branch of the FBI. Her tenure was brief but embattled. In addition to advising the President on things like Iran's nuclear capabilities, Gabbard regularly released tranches of declassified documents in reports with headlines like New Evidence Uncovers Obama Directed creation of False Intelligence Report used to launch years long Coup to undermine President Trump and the American people On

[Tulsi Gabbard]

my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I'm releasing never before seen communications and documents that expose exactly how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the intelligence community to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus's lab leak origins and his role in directing US Funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives.

[Michael Lowinger]

The journalist Denby Fawcett, who has covered Tulsi Gabbard's political career for over 20 years, wrote in 2019 that quote, for as long as I have known Tulsi Gabbard, I now understand I have never known her and probably never will. So much of what she does seems to make sense only to her. But last month, a remarkable story from Washington Post reporter John Swain brought us one step closer to understanding the enigma that is Tulsi Gabbard. His investigation helps explain why, for instance, Gabbard has shape shifted over the years from liberal Democrat to Bernie Sanders ally to Trump insider, why she's flip flopped on same sex marriage and war with Iran. As Swain uncovered, Gabbard's public Persona may have been shaped and reshaped in part by a mysterious guru and his followers. John, welcome to the show.

[John Swain]

Thanks for having me.

[Michael Lowinger]

Tell us about how you got interested in this wild story.

[John Swain]

I'd always been interested in Tulsi Gabbard because she has been such an unusual political figure. She's gone from being a socially conservative Democrat to a liberal Democrat and a Bernie Sanders ally to eventually being a MAGA Republican and Donald Trump appointee. And I'd been interested in some stories over the years in magazines like the New Yorker and New York Magazine and in some Hawaii publications about this faith group that she grew up in, the Science of Identity Foundation. But none of them had really gotten to the bottom of whether it mattered and whether Chris Butler, the founder, had any influence on her politics. She had always said he was her spiritual teacher, guru, but there just seemed to be this lingering question of what exactly was their relationship. And so when she was nominated by Trump to be Director of National Intelligence, I thought I'd give it a go.

[Michael Lowinger]

And to be clear, Tulsi Gabbard has definitively rejected any claims that Chris Butler has had any influence on her politics. She had this exchange with one of your Washington Post colleagues back in 2019. For clarity purposes, Chris Butler, how would you describe.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

He's one of my spiritual teachers.

[Michael Lowinger]

One of your spiritual. What does that mean?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

One who provides spiritual guidance.

[Michael Lowinger]

Has he been a mentor politically or is it just spiritually?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

No, no, not at all.

[Michael Lowinger]

Talk about the Science of Identity foundation and Chris Butler. What are their beliefs?

[John Swain]

Chris Butler in the late 60s dropped out of the University of Hawaii and fell in with the Hare Krishna movement, which was just then beginning. And he quickly accumulated a group of followers, devotees. He was charismatic and good looking and a good speaker, and that grew into this organization that he called the Science of Identity Foundation. And spiritually, it is a sort of offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement and it's interested in chanting and yoga and diet and morals.

[Chris Butler]

So what is your essence? You are the life force, the spirit soul, only temporarily in the body, using the body. Aham Brahmasmi. I Am Brahman. I am Spirit. I am not matter.

[John Swain]

Chris Butler himself has a really unusual politics. It doesn't really fit on the left right spectrum. He's very much into environmentalism and anti capitalism, but he's against abortion and against same sex marriage and homosexuality. So lectures that Chris Butler gave to his followers in the 80s and 90s that I saw were very anti gay people, very anti Muslims. And former members I actually spoke with recalled that when they went to schools associated with the Science of Identity foundation, they would be expected to listen to recordings of Chris Butler's lectures. And several of them actually noted their surprise as they sort of thought back about how explicit and kind of disgusted Chris Butler's lectures were when talking about gay people.

[Chris Butler]

Because they have no logic in their explanations that it's somehow normal or that it's clean or that it's not sinful, that a man is having sex with a man or a woman with a woman. They must convert us by force.

[John Swain]

And he also has, from reading his lectures, quite sort of wild conspiratorial views on other things, including sometimes the intelligence services and intelligence agencies. So that was the kind of environment and the kind of teachings that were going on in this group when Tulsi Gabb parents became members in the early 80s.

[Michael Lowinger]

Okay, so he has these sort of idiosyncratic beliefs. But why then do some former members say that he is a cult leader?

[John Swain]

Former members say that actually behind the scenes there's a more troubling side to the organization, and that is that Chris Butler demands complete obedience from his devotees. He demands complete secrecy. They have to serve him and work for free in his kitchens and provide him with all sorts of things, and that he controls major life decisions, that he tells people who they should marry and when and things like that. And so this is very much not what's publicly stated by the organization. And they definitely dispute characterizations of a cult.

[Michael Lowinger]

Some former members reportedly had said that they would die for him right back

[John Swain]

at the start of his sort of guru ship. There were reports in the Hawaii press about that kind of thing. And yes, indeed, a couple of devotees said they would do anything for him. And a reporter said, even kill yourselves. And they said yes.

[Michael Lowinger]

The main source in your piece is a woman named Rebecca Saltzberg. You first spoke to her back in 2024. She was a member of the Science of Identity foundation and worked on several of Tulsi Gabbard's congressional campaigns. When you first spoke to her, Salzburg told you that Gabbard's ideas and political path were 100% her own, and that they were not shaped at all by her guru, Chris Butler. Then nine months later, Salzberg got back in touch with you, and her story had changed. What did she say?

[John Swain]

She said that she hadn't really told me the full story last time and that things were more complicated, that she had fallen out badly with Science of Identity foundation over quite separate issues of the way they handled allegations of abuse within the organization. But I think that and her disenchantment with Tulsi Gabbard moving far to the right politically had led her to sort of come forward and correct the record, to correct what she'd told me before, and that was that Chris Butler was involved. According to Rebecca, we talked, we messaged for a couple of weeks, and something that I asked her prompted her to check an old email account. And in that email account, she found dozens of documents containing guidance for Tulsi Gabbard when she was in Congress. And according to Rebecca, these documented the guidance and the directives that Chris Butler gave Gabbard.

[Michael Lowinger]

Yeah. The question you asked her was, do you know what Nine Isles is? What is Nine Isles? And what did this lead unlock for you?

[John Swain]

That's right. So about nine months earlier, deep within a company document that was related to someone I thought was in the Science of Identity foundation, and connected to Gabbard was an email address, and it was nineisles. Com. And when I asked Rebecca, she said, well, yes, that's the email domain used by Chris Butler's office to send out these political memos. She said, in fact, I got lots of emails from 9isles addresses when I was working for Tulsi Gabbard and when I was working on projects for Chris Butler. So I obviously asked, well, do you still have them? And she thought she had deleted most of them. She said she wanted to be rid of that period of her life, but also, as we've all experienced, needed to clear some space in her inbox. But she fortunately, did have some still in there.

[Michael Lowinger]

And so you gain access to this massive trove of emails. What did you find exactly?

[John Swain]

These documents were quite strange. They were, first of all encrypted, so they had to be decrypted. And Rebecca gave me the key that was needed. Needed to do that. But they were emailed from this anonymous address with pretty much no comment attached to them, and they were unattributed in the document themselves. There was no title saying who was talking. They were essentially transcripts, it seemed, of someone talking, sometimes talking to Tulsi Gabbard sometimes saying things that Tulsi Gabbard should do. It was clear that it was Tulsi Gabbard who was on the receiving end, because often there would be references to TG and to things that made it clear that it was her, you know, speeches she was planning to give or committees she was on. But the speaker giving those directives and sometimes giving very harsh criticism was unnamed. And when I asked Rebecca, who is the speaker, she was kind of amused that I would even ask and said, well, it's Chris Butler. Obviously, he is the only one who could have talked to Tulsi Gabbard that way. He's the only one who tells any of them what to do.

[Michael Lowinger]

If it was, in fact, Chris Butler, and you make a pretty compelling case in the piece that it was him, why wouldn't he use his name? It's his organization. He's calling the shots. Why the internal anonymity?

[John Swain]

So the answer to that question kind of appears in the documents themselves. Sometimes it comes across very clearly that he and Tulsi Gabbard are aware of how it might look if she was known to be the disciple of this eccentric guru that, as he put it in one document, everything I've taught, all my lectures, everything will be put on you. And so, according to Rebecca, that's one of the reasons why he wanted complete secrecy around this, why there was no attribution in case these documents ever did become public, so that they could basically be deniable.

[Michael Lowinger]

These documents, they span the years of 2011 to 2018, during which Tulsi served her first two terms in Congress. After getting this trove of documents, you began the arduous process of trying to figure out how the advice Tulsi Gabbard was receiving from this advisor may have affected her behavior while she was in office. Can you give some examples of moments when you found Gabbard appearing to do exactly what she had been told to do?

[John Swain]

I found a memo from 2014 in which this speaker was telling her that the US needed to essentially punish countries whose citizens had been going out to the Middle east and fighting for Islamic State. Your listeners will probably remember that was an issue at the time. And the speaker thought that countries such as that should lose their benefits that the State Department gives them in terms of visitors to the US not needing visas. And he said that Tulsi Gabbard should propose this. And the speaker says, get it started in the morning. You need to be the leader in this regard. Don't dick around. And what I found when I compared the date of that to what Tulsi Gabbard was doing around that time was that she indeed released a statement the following day calling for this policy. And a week after that, she introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to do it.

[Michael Lowinger]

You have also written about Gabbard's proposal to improve medical care for veterans, which appeared to align with another directive that she got from this anonymous advisor.

[John Swain]

That's right. Also in 2014, there was a crisis in veterans health care. There were backlogs, and veterans were not getting care as quickly as they should have been. And this unnamed speaker, this advisor to Tulsi Gabbard, was saying that she needed to propose a new policy that meant veterans could get care anywhere and be reimbursed by the government. And they shouldn't have to get approval first. They could just go in, get treated, and get reimbursed. And the speaker tells Tulsi, actually put forward legislation, get it done. And in the following weeks, Tulsi Gabbard wrote an op ed in the Honolulu Star Advertiser calling for this policy. But she actually omitted this detail that preapproval shouldn't be necessary. I got hold of an email in which Chris Butler's top aide said, quote, he was pissed. She didn't say that they should get private care without preapproval. And then a month later, Tulsi Gabbard introduces a bill in the House that does include that detail.

[Michael Lowinger]

So that's yet more evidence that the unnamed person in the transcript was likely Chris Butler. In a memo from October 2015 labeled CNN Wolf Blitzer talking points final. She received advice on how to respond to the fact that she had been asked by Democratic leadership not to attend a presidential debate. The advisor in that transcript said, it's not a boo hoo. I don't get to go to the party situation, Wolf. That's the line being delivered to her. And here's what Tulsi said during the interview she ended up having with Wolf Blitzer.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

But really, Wolf, that's really the issue here. The issue here is not about me saying, boo hoo, I'm gonna miss the party.

[John Swain]

The issue, my colleague Aaron Shaffer and I kind of painstakingly went through 32 of these documents that were specifically marked as talking points for interviews that Tulsi Gabbard was due to give. And we went through the videos and the transcripts and found that 24 times she used phrases from these documents almost verbatim, and the other eight times, she used ideas from them, if not the actual and throughout this trove of documents, there's a real concern and preoccupation with how she appears on tv, whether she's sort of smiling, whether she's doing a strange sort of tick with her eyes that the advisor gets angry about. And all of that really seems to be part of a plan to raise her national profile and have her run for president one day.

[Michael Lowinger]

You note in the piece that the advisor describes her as chickenshit or mealy mouthed. What was going through your mind as you're sort of seeing this behind the scenes shaping of a public official?

[John Swain]

I think what struck me was that this seemed to be a very unusual advisor politician relationship. You know, politicians obviously have advisors. They have informal people that they trust to give them tips and talking points. But I had never known of a public official like a member of Congress being dressed down in this way and insulted and spoken to quite demeaningly like someone was basically in charge of them. And as you said, she's insulted for things she's said in statements, for appearances she's made on tv. It's suggested to her that she apologized to cable news anchors for having been bad on their shows and even sometimes for allowing criticism from commenters to stay unanswered. On her Facebook page, she's sort of yelled at, if you like, by this advisor.

[Michael Lowinger]

You went through an incredible amount of work trying to verify this claim that you got from your source, Rebecca Saltzberg, that that unnamed advisor or advisors was in fact Chris Butler. How did you investigate that claim from the start?

[John Swain]

I noticed that in some of these documents, occasionally, even though they were unattributed, occasionally the speaker would give a little clue as to who they were saying, for example, I'm your guru and you're my disciple. And Tulsi Gabbard was on record saying Chris Butler was her guru, her spiritual guru. The 19 documents in all, out of hundreds, where the speaker did self identify, it always seemed to point to Chris Butler. The group itself in their comment to us, claimed that it was other people, that it was Tulsi Gabbard's father, in some cases, that it was a man named Sunil Khamenei and others, he's been known as Butler's right hand man and was known to have advised Tulsi Gabbard. So, you know, his involvement would have been less controversial. But every time I found a clue or a self identification, it pointed to Butler and not to those two men. And I tried other things as well. I used artificial intelligence at one point to just analyze these documents, just to see what it could find using statistical models to analyze the words that were used. And the verdict really was that this was probably only one speaker, not several, and that it was much more likely to be Chris Butler than those other two men. I had a 7,000 page archive of Chris Butler's known statements and public lectures to compare with these comments and found several similarities. There was a non word, a sort of misused word, duplicit instead of duplicitous that appeared both in one of the memos to Tosi Gabbard and in nine of Chris Butler's own lectures.

[Michael Lowinger]

And as you say, there were other circumstantial clues like policy advice where the speaker starts reminiscing about their experience of being a teenager working in Hawaii, which also points to Chris Butler.

[John Swain]

That's right. Chris Butler was raised in Hawaii and has spoken of his youth in Hawaii. And the two other men that the group pointed to, Mike Gabbard, Toz's father, he's actually Samoan, and Sunil Khamenei was raised in Hong Kong. For the most part, these things and other circumstantial clues just reinforced Rebecca's claim that it was Butler and not anyone else.

[Michael Lowinger]

Syria was another subject that came up in many of the memos that you got ahold of. This was during the Syrian civil war when the Bashar Al Assad regime tried to brutally crush a popular uprising leading to a 14 year conflict. The person behind those memos said, quote, the CIA is the one that started this thing. You found it striking that such deep suspicion of US intelligence appeared to have been fed to someone who would later coordinate the nation's top intelligence agencies, including the CIA. Tell me about Chris Butler's stance on Syria and Assad and how that may have influenced Gabbard's positions.

[John Swain]

Chris Butler throughout his lectures is unmistakably sort of anti US intervention overseas. He was the son of a radical left wing physician who was, when he was a child, his father was a prominent anti Vietnam War activist and was sort of known for his politics. And Butler suspected that his home when he was growing up was bugged. He said that the CIA and other agencies were trying to control people with mind control and that they were also trying to infiltrate the Hare Krishna movement. Chris Butler thought that the sort of agitation for a war with Iran was wrong and that US intervention in Syria during that civil war was wrong as well. And we see in these memos a steady stream of advice, often very forceful, to Tulsi Gabbard to oppose U.S. intervention overseas. And Tulsi Gabbard is known for having sort of carved out that policy position herself when she was in Congress. It was one of her biggest, you might say, signature stances that the US intervention in Syria was wrong and that the US should stop interfering overseas.

[Michael Lowinger]

In the memos, the advisor is saying things like the CIA is the one that started this war in Syria, which is a more extreme position and theory than what we see from Tulsi Gabbard.

[John Swain]

It's interesting. This is an example of where for several years Tulsi Gabbard seems to be a bit more restrained than the advice that she was receiving. She, at that time, and in the kind of following months and years would say that the CIA had been wrong to arm Syrian rebels and to interfere and to, to get involved and to make this situation worse. But I found that actually toward the end of her time in Congress, in 2019, when she was running for president, she did go just about as far as that slightly wild claim from the advisor. She was on Stephen Colbert's show in 2019 and basically said that, yes, back in 2011, the CIA had begun this, what she called regime change war.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

There are two things we need to address in Syria. One is a regime change war that was first launched by the United States in 2011, covertly led by the CIA.

[John Swain]

It's a pretty left field statement given that it was a civil war that everyone knows the US did then intervene to prop up some people in it. But to claim that the CIA actually started it is something else.

[Michael Lowinger]

You also found in that trove of documents a literal directive to tweet from Gabbard's account about the plight of Kurdish fighters in Kobane. Shortly after Gabbard appears to receive this directive, she posts that tweet verbatim.

[John Swain]

That's right. This was actually an unusual example in that it was sent directly and unencrypted to Tulsi Gabbard's personal email account. And she gets an email from a woman that we understand to have been Chris Butler's top aide, subject in caps, important to do, and then must tweet around 9am and it had language that the aide said was approved. And Tulsi Gabbard's account posts it verbatim. And another email says that she should send follow up tweets that tag senior administration officials because, quote, he'd like them to see the video. And he is not mentioned as usual. When this advisor is being discussed by his circle, it's always he or sometimes our friend or s, which we know to be a nickname within the organization for Chris Butler. And sure enough, Tulsi Gabbard did go ahead and send follow up tweets tagging senior people in the administration with this video of victims in Syria.

[Michael Lowinger]

I understand that Tulsi Gabbard has denied that Chris Butler played this advisor role in her life. He's done the same. Did you uncover any clues as to why Tulsi Gabbard would want to go along with this kind of behavior? Aren't politicians kind of egotistical? And, you know, don't many of them have a kind of I always know right attitude about their behavior? Why would a public official want to be directed and pushed around like this?

[John Swain]

Well, I'd love to talk to Tulsi Gabbard about this question. She didn't respond to my questions, and I don't know. I don't know her mind. But Rebecca and others who have experience of Chris Butler point out that when they are initiated by Butler as disciples, as his disciples, they essentially pledge allegiance to him and obedience to him, and that they will follow what he says. And again, this is something that the Science of Identity foundation disputes. They say that's not how the guru relationship actually works, and people are free to make their own minds up. But that's certainly the explanation I get from Rebecca and former members that in all aspects of their life, they ultimately had to answer to Chris Butler and do what he said. And so Tulsi Gabbard, in her job, it just happened to be that she was a politician and she knew to do what he told her to do.

[Michael Lowinger]

You note that in the memos that you received, the unnamed speaker was very interested in Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016. And that person believed that Trump, albeit imperfectly, was kind of occupying Tulsi Gabbard's potential lane.

[John Swain]

Chris Butler, in his lectures and public remarks, has been critical of Islam and has shown himself to be pretty hostile to Muslims. And when Donald Trump ran for President President in 2016, this was after the massacre in an Orlando nightclub. He gave what was a sort of high profile speech about the risk of immigration of what he called, quote, islamic extremists.

[Michael Lowinger]

If we want to protect the quality of life for all Americans, women and children, gay and straight, Jews and Christians and all people, then we need to tell the truth about radical Islam and we need to do it now.

[John Swain]

And this unnamed advisor, who our source says is Chris Butler, sees this speech and tells Tulsi Gabbard, like, this is annoying because this is right up your alley. He told her, it's too bad you're not running. It's all falling into place but for the wrong guy. Now Trump is going to be the one, and he's a total idiot. There's this frustration that Donald Trump might be tapping into this sort of populist, not politically correct stance that this advisor hoped that Tulsi would be the one to sort of take to the national stage.

[Michael Lowinger]

The advisor basically says, this could have been you.

[John Swain]

That's right. And this unnamed advisor also takes a keen interest in people around Trump and who's influencing him. People that are now more familiar than they were at the time, like Stephen Miller and Michael Flynn. He, in memos, even before Donald Trump was running for president, said that the government needed to think, quote, america first, which, you know, we all know now, is something that Donald Trump has pushed very hard. In another memo about the crime problem in some inner cities, this advisor called for occupying them with a national guard, which Donald Trump obviously did more recently. And so this adviser, I should say one thing that comes through in the memos is they're a keen viewer of Fox News. And we know that is also true of Donald Trump. And there's definitely overlap in the politics of this advisor, who maybe Chris Butler and Trump. And so. So it does help make sense, I think, of why Tulsi Gabbard made this shift from Democrat to Maga Republican.

[Michael Lowinger]

On May 22, Fox News reported that Tulsi Gabbard would be stepping down from her role as Director of National Intelligence. The timing was a little suspect given that two days earlier you had emailed her, her press secretary and her chief of staff saying that you are moving ahead with this story and asking her for comment on a number of questions. Do you think that your story had anything to do with her resignation?

[John Swain]

So I really don't know. Beyond the timing coincidence that you mentioned, there had been lots of rumors and reports that she might be on the way out. She had this opposition to war with Iran going back years, and Donald Trump took the US to war with Iran. She had been publicly sort of slapped down by Trump on other things. And when she did announce that she was going, she said that sadly, her husband had been diagnosed with cancer and she needed to support him. It's interesting that the timing lined up like that. I honestly don't know and I would love to know, and we would have really liked to have interviewed her, but she declined.

[Michael Lowinger]

There are two questions that you ask yourself in this piece. Had a reclusive guru been secretly trying to steer Tulsi Gabbard's actions as a public official? And could that shed light on the improbable arc traced by one of the most unconventional, enigmatic shape shifters in modern American politics? So what answers did you come to by the end of your reporting?

[John Swain]

I think on the first, we present a large amount of evidence pointing to Chris Butler being the unnamed advisor. We can't say decisively because the group denies it and the memos are unattributed. And on the second, I am more confident in being able to say that I think whoever this person was advising, whether it was Chris Butler or his right hand man, the eccentric politics, the shifting positions, the unusual stances on various different things that this advice contained does match Tulsi Gabbard's own shape shifting in many ways. And so I think it does help us understand why she was such an unusual member of Congress and DNI and might continue to be if she returns to politics after this.

[Michael Lowinger]

Tulsi Gabbard came to align herself with a political movement that alleged that the people in Washington were not who they say they are, that they were not acting transparently for the American people, and that webs of conflicts of interest had rendered the political status quo rotten. Is it not ironic that Tulsi Gabbard would potentially be influenced by shadowy forces herself?

[John Swain]

I think you could see an irony there. But the thing is, the memos show that this unnamed advisor, possibly Chris Butler and apparently Tulsi Gabbard herself, believed that together they were doing that. That indeed people in Washington, the establishment in Washington, was captured by corporate interests and the military kind of industrial interests, and that she was a true, what they call servant leader, serving the people and being an independent thinker. But I think it's clear, yeah, that these memos definitely raise questions about how much of an independent thinker she really was, because she seems to have been given scripts and policies to propose and things to do and things to say, and she seems to have done them.

[Michael Lowinger]

A lot of politicians have been accused of having someone behind the scenes influence them, like spouses or senior advisors or religious leaders. I'm thinking of the role that Nancy Reagan was said to have played during Reagan's presidency, or Vice President Dick Cheney during George W. Bush's presidency, or concerns that John F. Kennedy would listen to the Pope over the American people because he was Catholic. This fear or suspicion that someone unelected is pulling the strings is not in and of itself new or unique to Tulsi Gabbard. Why is this story in your mind different why did you feel it was so important to spend years working on it?

[John Swain]

I think those examples you give, they all have different factors that make them different from this story. So Dick Cheney was the duly elected Vice president of the country. I think everyone expects presidential spouses to be giving the president private counsel at times. But the difference here is that Tulsi Gabbard explicitly denied that this person was influencing her politics because there was concern. And so if he is or if he was, that contradicts what she said publicly. And I think the fact that these allegations by former members of his group have been made about how he treats people, how he expects people to give him complete obedience and secrecy and to kind of protect the fact of his influence from public view, that made me determined to find whether he really was influencing her and whether this was a secret that she was keeping from people. And her elevation to Director of National Intelligence overseeing some of the most powerful agencies in the government, I think made that question even more important.

[Michael Lowinger]

Obviously, there's a lot we don't know about Gabbard's relationship with Chris Butler, especially during her time as Director of National Intelligence. Are there any other big questions you'd still like answered?

[John Swain]

I think the big question I would like answered by Tulsi Gabbard and by Chris Butler's group, the science of our Intelligence foundation, is having now read our piece, presumably, and having now seen the sort of weight of evidence that we present, is it still their position that Chris Butler didn't advise Tulsi Gabbard on politics and in fact, that these memos were from other people, or do they want to correct anything that they said to us?

[Michael Lowinger]

Well, I really hope you one day score an interview with him or get closer to answering that question, because this was just such tremendous and enthralling reporting. John, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[John Swain]

Thanks for having me.

[Michael Lowinger]

John Swain is an investigative reporter at the Washington Post. His latest piece is titled Tulsi Gabbard, Her Guru and the Mysterious Messages that Helped Shape Her Political Career. Thanks for listening to the midweek podcast. Be sure to listen to the Big show on Friday, but in the meantime, you should check us out on Instagram and Tick Tock. Just search on the media. I'm Michael Lowinger.