WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris, vying for the most powerful job in Washington, has already distinguished herself as a cunning operator on one of the most powerful and secretive bodies overseeing the government.

The two years Harris has spent on the Senate Intelligence Committee have earned her the praise of her colleagues — Republicans included. They also shed light on some of the qualities that might define her presidency.

Harris, who has used her skills as a prosecutor to climb the ranks of the establishment, has used those same skills to great effect on the committee, according to her Senate colleagues — setting herself apart as an incisive interrogator. Behind the closed doors of the committee, she is mostly a bipartisan actor, focused on information gathering rather than scoring political points, senators told BuzzFeed News.

Other Senate committees, whose hearings play out on national television more often, have given Harris more publicity before a presidential run. But serving on the Intelligence Committee — which oversees the nation’s spy agencies and is privy to highly classified information — is not without its benefits for someone seeking a national role, said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee.

"The things you learn in this committee — I can't think of a committee that potentially would better prepare you for a national role, because you get to see so much," he said.

Despite being a relative rookie, Harris has been influential at key times in the committee’s high-profile investigation into Russian interference in the last presidential election. In one closed-door interview with a witness, Warner recalled, Harris captured the attention of the seasoned committee staff who were leading the questioning, offering pointers on how they should proceed. Not only did Democratic investigators turn to Harris for advice — Republicans did, too, he said.

“She’s been able to give great guidance sometimes to the staff. She brings a level of experience — I’ve never been a prosecutor,” said Warner, who recently described the interaction to BuzzFeed News.

“She was directing the staff,” Warner said, adding that “both the majority and the minority staff are listening to kind of, ‘Well, here’s maybe how you’ve got to do it.’” He said the staff, who work on a mostly bipartisan basis, took the “suggestions” and “pointers” Harris provided into consideration. “They respected her background,” he said.

Warner declined to provide any more details about the exchange because, like much of the committee’s work, it took place in a secure space on Capitol Hill. Senators were generally present only for interviews with notable witnesses later in the committee’s Russia investigation. A spokesperson for Republicans on the committee declined to comment on the interaction.

Harris has been, at times, a polarizing figure in the Senate, where she hasn’t hesitated to tangle publicly with Trump administration officials, especially in televised hearings. But Republicans overwhelmingly praise her performance on the Intelligence Committee, which is charged in part with assessing the country’s most sensitive covert operations abroad, authorizing government spending on intelligence activities, and taking powerful American officials to task when they disobey the law.

North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the committee chair, called Harris a “quick study” and commended her work. “She’s very effective,” he said.

At a moment when the race for the Democratic nomination is divided between people who want to respect Washington’s institutions and those who would blow them up, Harris's comfort operating inside them could provide a look at how she might run the powerful agencies she currently helps oversee.

Since she announced her campaign in January, very little of Harris’s decades as a public servant have gone unscrutinized; her record as a prosecutor and district attorney in San Francisco, and later as California’s attorney general, has been aired and picked apart, sometimes case by case.

Yet little is known about the more than two years Harris has spent on the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose work is largely classified and involves regular, private briefings where senators can spend hours per week questioning senior officials from the intelligence community — everyone from the head of the CIA to top military brass.

BuzzFeed News spoke with more than a half dozen of the Intelligence Committee’s 15 members to understand how Harris has conducted her work on the most tight-lipped committee in Congress — one that has in recent years investigated some of the country’s biggest scandals, such as the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program and the Benghazi attack.