https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avril_Haines
Avril Danica Haines (born August 27, 1969) is an American lawyer and senior government official who currently serves as the Director of National Intelligence in the Biden administration.[1] She is the first woman to serve in this role. Haines previously served as Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Obama administration; the first woman to hold this position.
The story of her early life appears in her father's autobiography with Mindy Lewis, A Curious Life: From Rebel Orphan to Innovative Scientist.[4][5] Her mother was a painter. Haines identifies with her mother's Jewish faith.[6][7] When Haines was 10, her mother developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and contracted avian tuberculosis; Haines and her father nursed Adrian in a home ICU until her death when Haines was 15 years old.[4][5] Her father is a biochemist and professor emeritus at City College, who helped found the CUNY School of Medicine, where he served as the chair of the biochemistry department.[8]
After graduating from Hunter College High School, Haines traveled to Japan for a year and enrolled at the Kodokan, an elite judo institute in Tokyo.[5] In 1988, Haines enrolled in the University of Chicago where she studied theoretical physics. While attending the University of Chicago, Haines worked repairing car engines at a mechanic shop in Hyde Park.[5] In 1991 Haines took up flying lessons in New Jersey, where she met her future husband, David Davighi. She later graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in physics in 1992.[9]
In 1992, Haines moved to Baltimore, and enrolled as a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University. However, later that year, Haines dropped out and with her future husband purchased a bar in Fell's Point, Baltimore, which had been seized in a drug raid;[5] they turned the location into an independent bookstore and café.[10] She named the store Adrian's Book Cafe, after her late mother; Adrian's realistic oil paintings filled the store.[10] The bookstore won City Paper's "Best Independent Bookstore" in 1997 and was known for having an unusual collection of literary offerings, local writers, and small press publications.[11] Adrian's hosted a number of literary readings, including erotica readings, which became a media focus when she was appointed by President Obama to be the Deputy Director of the CIA.[12][13] She served as the president of the Fell's Point Business Association until 1998.[14]
In 2001, Haines became a legal officer at the Hague Conference on Private International Law.[16] In 2002, she became a law clerk for United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Danny Julian Boggs.[17] From 2003 until 2006, Haines worked in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the Department of State, first in the Office of Treaty Affairs and then in the Office of Political Military Affairs.[18] From 2007 until 2008, Haines worked for the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations as Deputy Chief Counsel for the Majority Senate Democrats (under then-chairman Joe Biden).[19]
In 2015 Haines, then Deputy Director of the CIA,[33] was tasked with determining whether CIA personnel should be disciplined for hacking computers of Senate staffers authoring the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Haines chose not to discipline them, overruling the CIA Inspector General.[34] During the Democratic National Committee email leak in the middle of the 2016 presidential campaign, Haines as DNSA convened a series of meetings to discuss ways to respond to the hacking and leaks.[35] Subsequently, she was involved in the CIA project of redacting the Senate report[36] for release. In the end, only 525 pages of the 6,700 page CIA torture report were released.[37]
After serving as Deputy Director of the CIA, Haines was tapped as Deputy National Security Advisor (DNSA), the first woman to hold that position.[38][39][40]
During her years in Obama White House, Haines worked closely with John Brennan in determining administration policy on extra-judicial "targeted killings" by drones.[5] Newsweek reported Haines was sometimes called in the middle of the night to evaluate whether a suspected terrorist could be "lawfully incinerated" by a drone strike.[41]
The ACLU criticized the Obama policy on drone killings as failing to meet international human rights norms.[42] Haines was instrumental in establishing the legal framework and policy guidelines for the drone strikes, which targeted suspected terrorists in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, but also resulted, according to human rights groups, in killing innocent civilians.[43][44] An editor for In These Times said the policy guidelines "made targeted killings all over the world a normal part of US policy".[45]
Critics of Haines's drone policy guidelines said though the guidelines stipulate "direct action must be conducted lawfully and taken against lawful targets," the guidelines do not reference any international or domestic law that might permit extrajudicial killings outside an active war zone. Opponents of US drone warfare have noted that Haines redacted the minimum criteria for an individual to be "nominated" for lethal action, that the term "nominated" is a deceptive euphemism for targeting people for assassination, and that the drone guidelines allow for the assassination of US citizens without due process.[46]
After leaving the White House, Haines was appointed to multiple posts at Columbia University. She is a senior research scholar and deputy director for the Columbia World Projects, a program designed to bring to bear academic scholarship on some of the most basic and fundamental challenges the world is facing, and was designated the program's next director in May 2020, replacing Nicholas Lemann.[47][48] Haines is also a fellow at the Human Rights Institute and National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School.[49]
Haines has been a member of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.[50] She is also a distinguished fellow at the Institute for Security Policy and Law, Syracuse University.[51]
Haines has consulted for Palantir Technologies,[36] a data-mining firm accused of assisting the Trump administration with immigrant detention programs,[52] and was an employee of WestExec Advisors,[53] a consulting firm with a secretive client list that includes high-tech start-ups seeking Pentagon contracts.[54] The firm was founded by Antony Blinken, Biden's Secretary of State, and Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon adviser.[54]
When questioned about the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol building, Haines said it was the primary responsibility of the FBI, not the intelligence community, to investigate domestic threats, though she also committed to collaborating with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to evaluate the public threat of QAnon, a conspiracy theory promoted by some supporters of President Trump.[63]
On January 20, 2021, Haines was confirmed by the Senate in an 84–10 vote.[64] She was the first nominee to be confirmed by the Senate, and was sworn in the next day by Vice President Kamala Harris.[65]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/21/avril-haines-confirmed-by-us-senate-as-first-female-national-intelligence-chief
Haines, a former CIA deputy director, will become a core member of Biden’s security team, overseeing the agencies that make up the nation’s intelligence community. She succeeds John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican and Trump loyalist who was widely regarded as having too little experience for the position.
Praising Haines, Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who will chair the intelligence committee in the new Senate, said: “After being deliberately undermined for four years, the intelligence community deserves a strong, Senate-confirmed leader to lead and reinvigorate it.”
Marco Rubio, the acting outgoing Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement: “Our adversaries will not stand by and wait for the new administration to staff critical positions, and I am pleased my Senate colleagues joined me in swiftly confirming director Haines to this important post.”
Ron Wyden, a committee Democrat who has regularly criticised spy agency activities, said he voted for Haines after her response to questions, including how spy agencies treat whistleblowers and concerns he raised about how the CIA had spied on committee officials when they were working on a report detailing the agency’s use of harsh interrogation techniques, which critics described as torture.
During an intelligence committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Haines said the United States should take an “aggressive stance” toward the threat posed by an aggressive and assertive China.
She also told the panel Biden has indicated the United States should find a way to impose costs on cyber attackers for the recent SolarWinds hack, attributed to Russia, on US government agencies and businesses. Russia has denied responsibility.
> she also committed to collaborating with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to evaluate the public threat of QAnon
https://ballotpedia.org/Confirmation_process_for_Avril_Haines_for_director_of_national_intelligence
Ten Republican senators voted against her confirmation:[2]
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho)