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WASHINGTON – President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice for Director of National Intelligence, Avril D. Haines, is a politically moderate national security professional who is likely to win confirmation in a heavily divided Senate but who meets with strong criticism from the left.
The choice of Ms Haines, who would be the first woman to become the country’s top intelligence official, has raised concern among some human rights groups, who have questioned her role as the architect of the program. administration targeting terrorists with drones, some of which killed civilians. But her supporters say Ms Haines has helped put in place force-use guarantees and greater transparency for the drone program.
Ms Haines, an expert on international law, has worked for the Obama and Bush administrations in jobs for the National Security Council, the State Department and the CIA, and has one of the most interesting unclassified backgrounds of all. the best intelligence choices. She’s a trained physicist, a brown belt in judo, a pilot who nearly crashed in the North Atlantic with her future husband, and a former cafe and bookstore owner who helped revitalize Baltimore as a community activist.
“It’s clear she has eclectic interests,” said John O. Brennan, the former CIA chief who picked her to be the agency’s deputy director. “Even, you know, bohemian.
If confirmed, Ms Haines, 51, will have to rebuild an intelligence community that has been openly excoriated by President Trump for his assessment that Russia intervened on her behalf in the 2016 election and depoliticize the office of the director of the national intelligence.
While intelligence chiefs have always been non-partisan and focused on communicating the facts, the last two directors of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe and Richard Grenell, who served on an interim basis, were staunch supporters of Mr. Trump.
Ms Haines co-wrote an article in Foreign Policy this year that raised concerns about the politicization of intelligence agencies under the Trump administration.
At the Obama White House, Ms Haines served as National Security Legal Advisor from 2010, a position that helps oversee covert CIA programs, including drone strikes, and categorize Pentagon operations. She then served as Deputy Director of the CIA from 2013 to 2015, after which she returned to the White House as Deputy National Security Advisor, leading the committee of agency deputies that developed policy options for Mr. Obama in the last years of his administration.
Early in her government career, Ms Haines built a reputation for her intellect and having started working early in the day and continuing until late at night, with only a short break for her husband to deliver the having dinner.
“She’s just a beast of burden,” said John B. Bellinger III, a senior lawyer in the Bush administration who promoted Ms. Haines to a senior legal position at the State Department. “She works about 23 hours a day.”
In 2007, although on secondment from the State Department to Congress, Ms. Haines worked as a lawyer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Mr. Biden was president, a first opportunity for her to work closely with the future president-elect.
“She will be Biden’s primary advisor on intelligence matters,” Bellinger said. “Having a long-standing relationship of trust with him will make her extremely influential.”
A close study of Ms Haines’ youth might not suggest that she was destined for the high-level intelligence post. She attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate, studying physics and working as an auto mechanic. She also began taking flight lessons with an instructor she would later marry, David Davighi.
A profile of Ms Haines in Newsweek in 2013 describes how Ms Haines and Mr Davighi bought a twin-engine plane and began to rebuild it in hopes of flying it from Maine to England. They reached Atlantic Canada when the engines failed, forcing an emergency landing in Labrador.
After graduating from college, Ms Haines moved with Mr Davighi to Baltimore, where they eventually bought a bar that had been seized by the government in a drug raid and turned it into an independent bookstore and a coffee.
Years later, when Ms Haines was appointed Deputy Director of the CIA, Washington reporters had fun reporting on the occasional erotic literary parties the bookstore hosted in the mid-1990s. in which a Baltimore Sun reporter participated, Ms. Haines kicked off the reading with a fairy tale from Anne Rice and then gave the reporter a forceful defense of the “spontaneity, twists and turns” of erotic fiction.
Ownership of the bookstore led to community organizing work, which led Ms. Haines to the Georgetown University Law Center, where she learned about international legal work.
Despite being a former deputy director of the CIA, Ms. Haines does not have a long career working directly for intelligence agencies. Still, she has extensive experience overseeing secret programs, leading discussions in the White House situation room on national security issues, and translating intelligence matters for White House political leaders. .
Ms Haines had been selected to return to the State Department, chosen for the post of legal adviser, when Mr Brennan appointed her his deputy after being confirmed as head of the CIA in 2013. Mr Brennan, an officer CIA career, said he wanted a stranger to help him.
“She is by no means an ideologue,” he said. “She’s probably going to be criticized by people from different walks of life, but she has a very practical and pragmatic view.”
Some human rights organizations have expressed concern that Mr. Biden’s choice of Ms. Haines signals a return to the Obama administration’s national security policies rather than exploring more liberal alternatives. Progressive groups have long argued that the Obama administration’s counterterrorism programs amounted to extrajudicial killings and were illegal under international law.
“My concerns about him are more my concerns about the Obama administration,” said Andrea J. Prasow, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Washington. “With these cabinet choices, we are going back to the previous administration instead of making bold, forward-looking choices.”
In her confirmation to the Senate, Ms Haines will likely face questions about the drone program and how under its watch the CIA worked with lawmakers investigating the agency’s interrogation program. At the time, senators accused the CIA of breaking into the computers they used to carry out their surveillance, sparking a bitter row between lawmakers and the agency.
Some progressives have also been upset by Ms Haines’ decision to support the appointment of Gina Haspel as Mr Trump’s second CIA director. According to progressives, Ms. Haspel’s work on the CIA’s torture program should have disqualified her.
Other Liberals fear Ms. Haines may not be someone to make big changes to national security and anti-terrorism agendas.
Ms Prasow said that despite her disagreements with Ms Haines, she had a deep respect for her. While some government officials demonstrate listening, Ms. Haines has not only collaborated with human rights groups, but has also tried to incorporate criticism into her political work.
“She is one of the nicest people I have ever met, and probably the nicest person I have ever met who has worked for the US government,” said Ms. Prasow.
Obama administration veterans have said Ms. Haines’ real skill is listening and gaining buy-in from stakeholders, which is essential to making lasting changes in national security policy. In an interview with the Daily Beast last summer, Ms Haines said the focus was on the government process.
“I can understand people wondering if I am someone who can help promote big changes where they are needed,” she said. “And for what it’s worth, I think I’m exactly the right person to make such a change if it takes.”
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