DAVID E. SANGER, JULIAN E. BARNES2026年3月20日President Trump has taken on many ancillary roles in Washington: chairman of the Kennedy Center. The de facto chief architect of the city’s landmark properties. And now, the nation’s chief intelligence analyst.特朗普总统在华盛顿承担了许多附带角色：肯尼迪中心的主席、这座城市的地标建筑的实际首席建筑师，而现在，他又成了美国的首席情报分析师。This revelation came from Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. She had the unenviable task at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday of squaring Mr. Trump’s comments about an urgent nuclear threat from Iran with a letter from one of her trusted aides that the country posed no “imminent threat.”这一说法出自国家情报总监图尔西·加巴德。她在周三的参议院情报委员会听证会上面临棘手任务：一方面特朗普称伊朗构成“迫在眉睫核威胁”，另一方面，她信赖的一位助手又在信中称美国并不面临“迫在眉睫的威胁”，她需要给出一个合理的解释。Her answer? Only the president can decide what is an “imminent” threat. In other words, she was turning one of the key roles of the intelligence community’s 80,000 employees — to make nonpolitical judgments about threats to American security — over to Mr. Trump.她的回答是？只有总统才有权决定什么是“迫在眉睫”的威胁。换句话说，她把情报界8万名雇员的核心职责之一——对美国安全威胁作出非政治化的判断——交给了特朗普。Ms. Gabbard’s comments were necessitated by the decision of Joe Kent, her close adviser, to quit his counterterrorism position over his opposition to the war in Iran and his belief that Israel had pressured the United States into the conflict.加巴德的这番表态是由她的亲信乔·肯特决定辞去反恐部门职位所引发的。肯特反对伊朗战争，并认为美国是在以色列施压下卷入冲突的。Democrats, long critical of Mr. Kent and his penchant for conspiracy theories, jumped on his comments about the war — creating at least a short-term communications crisis for the Trump administration. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Mr. Kent wrote in a letter to Mr. Trump. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.”长期批评肯特及其阴谋论倾向的民主党人迅速抓住他对战争的评论，至少在短期内给特朗普政府制造了传播危机。“我无法昧着良心支持目前这场对伊朗的战争，”肯特在给特朗普的信中写道。“伊朗对我国并不构成迫在眉睫的威胁。”Ms. Gabbard does not quickly turn on her allies, and she showed little desire to throw Mr. Kent under the bus or attack him. But she has remained in her position by being a careful student of Mr. Trump, and knows how to stay on his good side. And critiquing the president’s view of the threat from Iran was clearly not the way to keep your job.加巴德不会轻易背弃盟友，她也基本没有表现出要抛弃肯特或攻击他的意愿。但她能保住职位，靠的是对特朗普的仔细观察和揣摩，知道如何不招惹他。而批评总统对伊朗威胁的看法显然不利于保住自己的工作。So she came up with her line that it is Mr. Trump, not the intelligence community, that determines what constitutes a threat.于是她抛出了这个说法：决定何为威胁的是特朗普总统，而不是情报界。It was Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, who pressed Ms. Gabbard the hardest on whether there was “imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime.”佐治亚州民主党参议员乔恩·奥索夫是对加巴德施压最猛烈的人，他追问伊朗政权是否构成“迫在眉睫的核威胁”。“Yes or no?” he demanded.“是或否？”他逼问道。Ms. Gabbard was ready with an answer. “It is not a responsibility of the intelligence community to determine what is or is not an imminent threat,” she said.加巴德早已准备好答案。“判断是否存在迫在眉睫威胁，并非情报界的职责，”她说。The senator, speaking over Ms. Gabbard, rejected the answer: “It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.”参议员打断她的话，反驳道：“这恰恰是你的职责——判断什么构成对美国的威胁。”In fact, while the president has broad authority to interpret intelligence any way he deems proper, Mr. Ossoff was right: At the National Intelligence University, which trains the intelligence agencies’ future leaders, there is a large body of literature about the art and science of providing warning (although Ms. Gabbard has ordered the university merged with another government school).事实上，虽然总统拥有广泛的权力，可以按自己认为合适的方式解读情报，但奥索夫是对的：在培训情报机构未来领导者的国家情报大学，有大量关于预警艺术与科学的文献（尽管加巴德已下令将该大学并入另一所政府学校）。John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director who has no love lost for Mr. Kent, chose a different tactic in answering questions about the threat posed by Iran.对肯特并无好感的中央情报局局长约翰·拉特克利夫在回答有关伊朗威胁的问题时选择了不同的策略。中央情报局局长约翰·拉特克利夫在周三的听证会上。 Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times“I think Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time and posed an immediate threat at this time,” Mr. Ratcliffe said.“我认为伊朗长期以来一直是美国的持续威胁，现在也构成了直接威胁，”拉特克利夫说。Mr. Ratcliffe, far more adept than his predecessors at facing congressional questioning and still staying on Mr. Trump’s good side, also said that Iran was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, “one that has frankly been watered, fed and nurtured by policies of prior administrations” that “allowed them to become the threat that they are.”拉特克利夫比前任们更擅长面对国会质询，同时还能保住特朗普对他的好感。他还表示，伊朗是中东的破坏性力量，“坦白说，前几届政府的政策浇水、施肥、培育了他们，才让他们成为如今的威胁”。Intelligence officials took pains at a hearing on Wednesday to avoid answering direct questions about what intelligence they provided to the president before the decision to strike as well as direct assessments of how the war was going.在周三的听证会上，情报官员们极力避免直接回答在打击决定前向总统提供了什么情报，以及对战争进展的直接评估。But Ms. Gabbard offered the smallest bit of insight in her opening statement when she said that the Iranian leadership had been “largely degraded” by U.S. and Israeli attacks but that the government “appears to be intact.”但加巴德在开场陈述中还是透露了一点信息：她表示伊朗领导层已被美国和以色列的攻击“大幅削弱”，但政府“似乎未受影响”。Still, there were some noticeable differences between what Ms. Gabbard read aloud and what she submitted to lawmakers.不过，她宣读的内容与提交给议员的书面版本之间存在一些明显差异。In her statement, Ms. Gabbard said Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was “obliterated” in strikes last year, echoing Mr. Trump. There have been “no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” her written statement said.在声明中，加巴德说伊朗的核浓缩项目已在去年的打击中“被摧毁”，与特朗普的说法一致。书面陈述称，“此后没有出现任何试图重建浓缩能力的努力。”In her oral testimony, Ms. Gabbard said something quite different. Intelligence agencies assessed that before the current war, she said, “Iran was trying to recover from the severe damage to its nuclear infrastructure.”但在口头证词中，加巴德说了截然不同的话。她表示，情报机构评估认为，在当前战争之前，“伊朗一直在试图从核基础设施的严重破坏中恢复。”Called out on the discrepancy by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, Ms. Gabbard said she had truncated her comments because they were running long. Mr. Warner snapped back that she “chose to omit the parts that contradict the president.”弗吉尼亚州民主党人、委员会资深民主党人马克·沃纳参议员指出这一矛盾后，加巴德解释说，她因为时间过长而缩短了发言。沃纳反击道，她“故意省略了那些与总统说法相矛盾的部分”。House lawmakers will have their own opportunity to ask questions Thursday, when the intelligence chiefs appear before them.众议院议员将于周四获得自己的提问机会，届时各情报部门负责人会前来接受他们的质询。David E. Sanger报道特朗普政府和一系列国家安全问题。他在时报任职超过40年，著有四本关于美国国家安全挑战的书。Julian E. Barnes为《纽约时报》报道美国情报机构和国际安全事务。他撰写安全相关议题已有20余年。翻译：经雷点击查看本文英文版。