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Senate Holds Worldwide Threats Hearing; Markwayne Mullin Grilled in Senate Confirmation Hearing. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired March 18, 2026 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:30:00]

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Recall that the administration had taken a different interpretation on how those are used to enter private property, which is usually reserved only for judicial warrants.

This is the back-and-forth between Senator Blumenthal and Senator Markwayne Mullin on that very issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Let me ask you then a different question.

ICE has been breaking into people's homes without any judicial warrant. The sanctity of our homes is absolutely critical. I think you'd agree with that point. And it is the law that a judicial warrant is required to forcibly enter someone's home.

Kristi Noem acknowledged in her testimony in response to my questions that at least 28 break-ins have occurred. My ranking member leadership on the Subcommittee for Permanent Investigation has produced a report that shows probably many more such break-ins have occurred, the result of a memo last May from the acting director, Todd Lyons, and it's behind me now, that instructed ICE agents to break into homes.

I understand that, during your staff interview last week, you said that there would be no more such break-ins to people's homes without a judicial warrant.

If confirmed, will you commit to me and the chair and member -- ranking member of this committee and the American people that ICE will no longer instruct agents to break into people's homes without a judicial warrant?

SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK), DHS SECRETARY NOMINEE: Sir, I -- you're using the word break in to people's houses very loosely.

However, I have made it very clear to the staff, and I think when you and I spoke, that a judicial warrant will be used to go into houses, into a place of businesses, unless we're pursuing someone that enters in that place.

I have not mixed words with that, and I haven't changed my opinion about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: So there you have that response from Mullen again clarifying his position on this matter. But it's not just that. We've also heard him asked about White House-imposed quotas, ones that were set by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller last year, 3,000 daily immigration arrests, a number that federal agents have not been able to meet.

He said that he follows the policies of the president when asked about that. He's also been asked about warehouses. The administration has been quietly purchasing warehouses across the country to turn them into immigrant detention centers, which has received pushback from both Democrats and Republicans.

So you can see over the course of this hearing how these very hot topics that have been under scrutiny and have received pushback are being raised with him to see where he is different on these matters to his would-be predecessor, Kristi Noem.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: All right, Priscilla Alvarez, thanks so much.

We're going to continue to monitor this hearing and the worldwide threats hearing on this very busy Wednesday after a short break.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:37:48]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: We've been monitoring the Senate Intelligence Committee's annual worldwide threats hearing. Top members of the Trump administration, including the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, they are all there and they've all been answering the Senators' questions. They've been testifying.

BROWN: And, right now, you see here Republican Senator Jerry Moran from Kansas is asking questions. Let's listen in.

SEN. JERRY MORAN (R-KS): ... at least for a temporary period of time.

JOHN RATCLIFFE, CIA DIRECTOR: Senator, thanks for the compliment, I think.

I'll start with a couple things. What I would tell you is, the same military and intelligence professionals who delivered, not just for the administration, but for the American people, a flawless intelligence picture and flawless military operations in Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Absolute Resolve are the same folks involved with Operation Epic Fury.

And so I hope that provides you some measure of comfort with regard to how detailed, how thoughtful the approach was to the current operation. And that's why I think that to mischaracterize it, as it is being done in the media, is a disservice to the folks involved in what is a very specific campaign that is different than the two that I mentioned before.

It's why the president came out and said, this isn't over in a matter of hours, this is a four-to-six-week campaign, and that it would come at some cost, because the goal of the president and the administration is to address a 47-year problem, the most destabilizing force in the Middle East for the last 47 years, one that has frankly been watered, fed, and nurtured by policies of prior administrations that has allowed them to become the threat that they have.

So I say all of that sort of in context to understanding that we have to address that, but, at the same time, to your point on what's going on with regard to Russia and Ukraine -- and you mentioned the oil issue. Sometimes, policymakers have to take steps that, while they may benefit adversaries like Russia or China, do so because they also think it will benefit U.S. citizens, and, in this case, with respect to keeping the economy on track and keeping oil prices low.

[11:40:22]

So what I can tell you is the intelligence is thoughtfully considered. And I think that policymakers have taken that and are -- I am confident that we can walk and chew gum at the same time, pursue objectives in the Middle East and provide support with regard to the conflict in Russia and the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): Senator Bennet.

SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that.

Mr. -- Director Ratcliffe, you just described the specific campaign that the president is engaged in and the country's engaged in with respect to Iran. I think the campaign has been one, in my view, without a specific rationale for the American people.

Nineteen days into President Trump's unauthorized war with Iran, and by which I mean there has been no congressional approval, at least 13 American service members are dead and many others are injured, yet President Trump has offered no credible justification for an imminent threat, no clear goals, no strategy or timeline.

His message keeps changing, I think, in really damaging ways. President Trump said Iran's nuclear facilities had been -- quote -- "totally obliterated' in June 2025. But when he launched this latest war, he said we need to eliminate the imminent nuclear threat of those totally obliterated nuclear facilities.

President Trump has threatened to seize Iranian oil and demanded our allies reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He said that "I'm demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it's their territory. It's the place from which they get their energy."

By the way, he wasn't just asking for our allies to protect or to bail him out in the Straits of Hormuz. He was asking China to bail him out in the Straits of Hormuz. And then he said maybe we shouldn't even be here at all because we don't need it. We have a lot of oil. And he said we do not need the help of anyone.

President Trump has declared: "We've won the war. We won it in the first hour." But then he said: "We're not leaving until the job is finished." He said that there is practically nothing left to bomb, but then threatened to bomb Iran again -- quote -- "just for fun," I think words that probably have never come out of a military leader in the history of the United States of America and shouldn't come out of the mouth of a civilian leader.

President Trump said he will end the war "when I feel it, feel it in my bones. And any time I want to end it, it will end."

But, Director, the war is not ending. It is escalating, with thousands of U.S. Marines reportedly sailing toward Iran on an unclear mission, a mission that's become less clear over days, not more clear.

Our airstrikes wiped out Iran's missiles and supreme leader. Nobody here, and certainly me, is shedding a tear for him, but the Iranian people now live under martial law, and, by the way, no surprise to our intelligence agencies that that's the case, and the first of a puppet leader who's chosen by the IRGC,no surprise to anybody on the Intelligence Committee.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and is holding the global economy hostage, no surprise to anybody who knows anything about U.S. intelligence. Launching drones at our embassies and military bases, no surprise. The president's surprised. Nobody who has looked at our intelligence is surprised.

Iran's nuclear program is damaged, to be sure, but it still has a uranium stockpile. We heard today from the DNI at the very beginning of this conversation that the regime is in place and they are going to rebuild their military capabilities, the ones that we are destroying right now.

The question I think is raised, Director, about your specific engagement is whether it will become a perpetual war because what Iran will do is exactly what they have always done and which the DNI is saying they will do again.

In its briefings to the committee, the Intelligence Committee has been clear-eyed about what would happen in the Straits of Hormuz, has been clear-eyed about whether or not our military bases, our embassies, and our personnel in the region would be placed at risk and in harm's way, even though the administration did very little to protect them.

[11:45:24]

I know, Senator -- I know, Director Ratcliffe, that I -- that you warned President Trump that, if Israel assassinated the supreme leader, the IRGC would replace him with potentially a harder-line puppet. In fact, I think what was clear is that the likelihood was that it would be a hard-line puppet. Do you disagree with that characterization of the intelligence?

RATCLIFFE: To that specific question, what we knew was -- first of all, I guess I have to address up front so much of what you related in there the difference between political rhetoric vs...

BENNET: It's not political rhetoric. I'm quoting the president of the United States.

RATCLIFFE: Political rhetoric versus military...

(CROSSTALK)

BENNET: Director, I will...

(CROSSTALK)

RATCLIFFE: The difference between that military and intelligence execution, but here's the most important thing.

You mischaracterized this as saying there aren't clearly defined goals. The defined goals are very clear.

BENNET: No, I said...

RATCLIFFE: Degrade and destroy the missile inventory and drone inventory.

BENNET: Right. We've done that.

RATCLIFFE: Delay and degrade the military industrial base and factories that produce that.

(CROSSTALK)

RATCLIFFE: Degrade and destroy the IRGC navy that can control the strait. These are all defined goals that were set out specifically.

(CROSSTALK)

RATCLIFFE: The premise of the question is...

BENNET: May I have my time back, Mr. Chairman? I can't get a word in edgewise. He won't answer the question, and then he's taken a minute of my time.

COTTON: You're both big boys. You can handle it yourself.

(CROSSTALK)

BENNET: OK, well, Director, I agree that you are, and I appreciate what you're saying.

And I would -- I'm not -- my point is not what your characterization of the war is. My point is what the characterization, the commander in chief... RATCLIFFE: Your question about regime change...

BENNET: I'm not asking you anymore, Mr. Director. I'm sorry, because I'm out of time because of how you used the time.

The complete lack of clarity should matter to everybody, President Trump most of all. He is the person that got elected on the criticism that we had fought two wars in the Middle East that had lasted for 20 years. And now we're hearing the testimony is to get their ballistic missiles, to not even get to the nuclear stuff.

We're going to have to be in a perpetual war with Iran. And I don't think that's where the American people are on this. This is a serious threat. This is a serious threat to us and to Israel. The question is how to handle it.

And President Trump said, we are not the policemen of the world. He ran on that. And now he's turned us into the world's policemen, into its jury, into its judge, into its executioner.

And just because we have the most advanced military in the world, it doesn't mean that we should be in a perpetual war all around the world.

COTTON: The senator's time has expired.

Senator Bennet, your time has expired.

BENNET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

COTTON: Senator Rounds.

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R-SD): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BLITZER: All right. I want to bring in Beth Sanner once again, the former deputy director of the office of the national intelligence community.

What did you think?

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I think that -- I thought that Ratcliffe did a very good job in doing what he...;

BLITZER: The CIA director.

SANNER: The CIA director did a very good job in doing what he should do. And I think that he is right that the U.S. military has executed on its mission and is executing ahead of time and that the people advising are there.

The bigger question is not whether the advisers there on striking X, Y, and Z are there, but did we actually understand our adversary going into this? And I think that that's the part of the intelligence community that did not get to the president or did not get through to him, because we have so many assumptions in this war that are based on our misreading that the Iranian regime would collapse if we strike them, that they are going to capitulate, instead of actually escalating and retaliating.

And I think that the lack of preparation for that we saw on the ground, we didn't warn the Gulf, we didn't prepare our embassies,WE didn't start evacuating our citizens until many days into this, suggest to me that they had a view of the Iranian regime that was not in congruence with what the intelligence community has been saying and would be saying.

BROWN: And Cedric Leighton, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was asked about that, what she briefed the president on. Did she brief him on the fact that Iran would very likely go after Gulf countries and would basically essentially shut down the Strait of Hormuz to the U.S. and its allies?

[11:50:13]

And she largely dodged those questions on how she prepared the president and this administration for the war.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, she sure did, Pamela.

She kind of hid between, I guess, her interpretation of executive privilege. But, in this particular case, I think it would be really important for her and the members of the intelligence community to at least give us an idea of what the president was briefed on.

And as Beth was outlining there, I think quite well, is the fact that we really have a problem in the intelligence community and also operationally when we mirror-image an adversary. What we're doing is, we're looking at them as if it would be us in their shoes.

But the problem is, is that we are not capable of really transforming ourselves very well, especially in a country -- to a country like Iran, where we think like they think. And they have difficulty assessing us as well.

So, given all of that dynamic, it becomes really very difficult from an intelligence perspective to get the picture right, and then also to conduct the predictive analysis that is necessary in order to actually figure out what they're going to do. But to long term, observers of this, Pamela, it's very clear -- was very clear that the Iranians were going to conduct aggressive action.

And once you eliminated the supreme leader, when the Israelis did that, it became very natural for the Iranians to really lash out in very harsh ways that were within their capabilities, such as threatening the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, such as attacking the areas around the Persian Gulf on the western side, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and all of those.

Because it is -- for them, it becomes really critical to conduct economic warfare for the Iranians. And they're doing that by really decimating the economic viability or trying to decimate the economic viability of those Gulf states. BROWN: Much has been made about Iran, Beth, by this administration

and the threat that it posed to the United States. We have been hearing talk about this in this hearing as well from the administration officials.

But as you hear them lay out what the worldwide threats are, which country do you think actually poses the biggest threat to the United States in this moment?

SANNER: China.

And I think that the problem here is that we are moving forces, we're moving air defenses from South Korea, from Japan, and we're actually -- China is celebrating that. And the risk here is that we have been so successful in the 90 percent solution so far against the Iranian military, but that 10 percent is really hard, that 5 percent, that 1 percent.

And it will only take a handful of drones or mines that will continue to disrupt. And if that's the case, we could see U.S. forces redeployed the Middle East for a very, very long time.

BLITZER: I have covered these hearings, these worldwide threat hearings from the intelligence community with members of the Senate, before the Senate Intelligence -- for many years.

And correct me if I'm wrong, because you used to work in that department. They were almost always very polite and very nice, and they would just ask serious questions. This time, it's getting a little testy.

SANNER: It is much more politicized than it used to be. The Senate Select Committee is actually still much more bipartisan than any other place, I think you would find, on Capitol Hill.

But it still -- it lays out that, right now, there are real differences in opinion about threats, about basic facts. And that causes these problems, right? Iran, absolutely a threat to the United States. An imminent threat? No.

And so that is like we're all dancing on the edge of -- on the heads of pins here, but, nonetheless, this creates real problems as people try to figure out.

BROWN: Just very quickly, in the I.C., how is imminent typically defined, right? Because you heard Tulsi Gabbard there say that, if Tehran would have chosen to follow the path and create an ICBM...

SANNER: Yes.

BROWN: ... they could have done it by 2035.

(CROSSTALK)

SANNER: And then Ratcliffe said the same thing, right?

BROWN: Exactly.

SANNER: So what they're saying is, yes, we have known about the space launch vehicle program for a long time. That was not an imminent threat. When the president said that they were two weeks from a bomb, a nuclear weapon, that is not true.

[11:55:01]

So the imminency part of this is the part that's in question. However, they are right that Iran did try to kill the president of the United States twice. So it does depend on how you define it. No one ever talks about that.

BROWN: Yes.

SANNER: They talk about nuclear. They talk about a missile threat that are literally a decade away at this point after the Midnight Hammer strike and where we were on an ICBM.

So it's very hard to make this case. And they're just trying to find words that won't make the president mad.

BLITZER: All right, we're going to -- I want to get back to this hearing. It's an important hearing, the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senator Kelly is now asking some serious questions. Let's listen in.

SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): ... has tried to make a pivot to Asia in its national defense strategy in order to confront significant threats from China.

For years, administrations of both parties have identified China as the top threat facing our country and worked to build relationships across Asia and deter Chinese aggression. At the same time, we have bolstered our European allies and asked them to contribute more to their defense to deter Russia.

Directors Gabbard and Ratcliffe, would you agree that China and Russia are our primary geopolitical rivals?

Director Gabbard.

FMR. REP. TULSI GABBARD (HI): Yes, they are our primary strategic competitors.

KELLY: Thank you.

Director Ratcliffe?

RATCLIFFE: I would agree with that, although I don't think they're equal in terms of the threats that they pose.

KELLY: Understand. Thank you.

So that brings us to the war with Iran. So this has created one of the largest ever supply shocks to the global oil supply, which has sent gas prices skyrocketing for Americans. But not everybody is losing.

Directors Gabbard and Ratcliffe, is it accurate that Russia has gained billions of dollars in additional oil revenue due to price spikes as a result of the war and loosens sanctions?

Director Gabbard.

GABBARD: That is what has been reported. I defer to the director of -- secretary of treasury and energy on that front for details.

KELLY: Director Ratcliffe.

RATCLIFFE: Yes, I'm not an economist, not going to try and do those calculations. But as I talked about earlier, sometimes, there are decisions made that will benefit adversaries at the same time policymakers think that it will benefit the American people.

KELLY: Sanctions -- clear, I think we'd all agree that sanctions were loosened, and that means more money into the coffers of Vladimir Putin.

Would you agree that, if he has more funding, he is likely to put that to his war effort against Ukraine?

Director Gabbard.

GABBARD: I would defer to an actual intelligence assessment on what they would believe his intentions are.

KELLY: Director Ratcliffe?

RATCLIFFE: Yes, I wouldn't speculate on that.

KELLY: Wouldn't speculate? OK. OK.

And is it accurate that China is continuing to receive preferential oil flows from Iran, despite the conflict, as Iran allows its own tankers to transit the strait?

Director Gabbard.

I'm going to go back and forth between the two of you.

GABBARD: There has been some reporting of China, India and other countries being able to move their tankers through the strait. However, it is unclear the volume or the measure of that.

KELLY: OK, so it sounds like it's accurate. Thank you.

I'm going to move on.

Director Gabbard, you tweeted yesterday that President Trump concluded there was an imminent threat and made a decision to attack Iran after carefully reviewing all the information before him. I think that the country deserves to know what the information was. I'm going to ask a series of questions and just want to yes or no. We

don't need any explanation, just yes or no, starting with, were you asked -- I'm not asking if you did brief this. Were you asked to brief on whether Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz?

GABBARD: I'm not going to comment on what the president did or didn't ask me on any topic.

KELLY: I'm not even -- I'm not asking if you briefed it. I'm just asking if there was a request by the White House.

GABBARD: I understand.

KELLY: Director Ratcliffe, were you asked to brief on whether Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz?

RATCLIFFE: The briefings to the president and the White House typically don't come at the request of the White House. So, typically, when we get intelligence that we want the president to be aware of, the intelligence community brings that to the president.

KELLY: Did you produce the analysis for the Straits of Hormuz?

RATCLIFFE: There has been and continues to be analysis with respect to that.

KELLY: Were you asked to brief on how our adversaries and allies would respond to the war in Iran?

[12:00:09]

I imagine I will get the same answer.