¶ Avril Haines
Avril Danica Haines is an American lawyer and intelligence official based in Washington, D.C. She serves as Director of National Intelligence in the Biden Administration.[1]
Haines is a deputy director of Columbia World Projects and a lecturer at Columbia Law School. She also serves on the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI)'s Bio Advisory Group, the board of trustees for the Vodafone Foundation, the advisory board for Foreign Policy for America, the advisory council for Refugees International,[2] and the board of directors for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).[3]
Haines previously served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2013-2015, and then Assistant to President Barack Obama and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor from 2015-2017, leading the Deputies Committee of the United States National Security Council (NSC). She was a member of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.[1:1]
She has worked as a research scholar at Columbia University, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory,[1:2] a distinguished professor of national security at Syracuse University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.[2:1]
In the private sector, Haines has worked as a consultant for Palantir Technologies[4] and Fairfax National Security Solutions[2:2] and a principal at WestExec Advisors,[5] an international advisor for Tikehau Capital,[2:3] and as a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF)'s Global Future Council on Geopolitics,[6] the American Bar Association (ABA)'s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, the Encryption Working Group of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), the advisory council and governance board of National Security Action, the advisory council of Network 20/20, the honorary advisory committee for the Leadership Council for Women in National Security (LCWINS), and as co-chair of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide advisory group.[2:4]
She has received additional speaking, advisory and consulting fees from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Open Philanthropy, RAND Corporation and Uber.[3:1]
¶ History
Haines received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.[1:3]
¶ Career
In early August 2017, CIA director John Brennan called Haines to inform her of an intelligence report alleging Russian President Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on the United States' election infrastructure during the 2016 United States presidential election to sway the election away from Hillary Clinton and towards Donald Trump.[7]
¶ COVID-19
Haines participated in Event 201, a pandemic preparedness tabletop exercise that took place on October 18, 2019 in New York City, simulating the public-private response to a fictitious coronavirus pandemic outbreak.[5:1] During the exercise, Haines emphasized to fellow panelists the need to counter criticism of the official pandemic response by “flood[ing] the zone with trusted sources” of media and cultural influencers “in order to try to amplify the message that’s coming through.”[8]
In the lead-up to the 2020 United States presidential election, Haines was tapped by Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden as an advisor and to lead his national security and foreign policy team. Several days later, Haines' biography on the Brookings Institution website was scrubbed, removing her role as an advisor to Palantir Technologies and other affiliations.[4:1] Haines had received at least $180,000 from Palantir as of filing her federal financial disclosure in December 2020.[9][3:2]
Following Biden's victory, Haines participated on the Biden-Harris Transition Team's National Security and Foreign Policy Team. She was sworn in as Director of National Intelligence on January 21, 2021.[1:4]
On May 2, 2024, Haines testified to the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Russia remains “the most active foreign threat to our elections.” She claimed Russia's “goals in such influence operations tend to include eroding trust in US democratic institutions, exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the United States, and degrading Western support to Ukraine.” She warned that artificial intelligence and deepfakes would be part of this effort, and that China and Iran were also of concern in this area.[10]
¶ External links
¶ Further reading
- January 1, 2021: “Why Senators Must Reject Avril Haines for Intelligence” by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd, published by CounterPunch
Avril Haines. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Retrieved March 8, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220308234931/https://www.dni.gov/index.php/who-we-are/leadership/director-of-national-intelligence ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Avril Haines. Brookings Institution. Retrieved May 9, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20200509024324/https:/www.brookings.edu/experts/avril-haines/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Haines, A. (2020, December). Executive Branch Personnel - Public Financial Disclosure Report (OGE Form 278e). U.S. Office of Government Ethics. https://web.archive.org/web/20210101002113/https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/00CB412D4BCCFDF58525864F00810563/$FILE/Haines, Avril final 278.pdf ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Hussain, M. (2020, June 26). Controversial Data-Mining Firm Palantir Vanishes From Biden Adviser’s Biography After She Joins Campaign. The Intercept. http://archive.today/2020.12.05-154108/https://theintercept.com/2020/06/26/biden-adviser-avril-haines-palantir/ ↩︎ ↩︎
Event 201. Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Retrieved December 27, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20241227231213/https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/tabletop-exercises/event-201-pandemic-tabletop-exercise#players ↩︎ ↩︎
Network of Global Future Councils 2018-2019 (p. 35). (2019, September). World Economic Forum. https://web.archive.org/web/20200415125927/http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_2018_2019_Network_of_Global_Future Councils_Report.pdf ↩︎
Miller, G., Nakashima, E., & Entous, A. (2017, June 23). Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/ ↩︎
Loffredo, J., & Blumenthal, M. (2021, October 26). “Cloak and dagger” military-intelligence outfit at center of US digital vaccine passport push. The Grayzone. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/26/cloak-dagger-military-intelligence-digital-vaccine-passport/ ↩︎
Vogel, K. P., & Lipton, E. (2021, January 2). Washington Has Been Lucrative for Some on Biden’s Team. The New York Times. http://archive.today/2021.01.02-012136/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/us/politics/yellen-speaking-fees-disclosure.html ↩︎
Corn, D. (2024, May 24). Here come the Russians, again. Mother Jones. https://web.archive.org/web/20240526113551/https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/05/here-come-the-russians-again/ ↩︎