The United States Senate has confirmed Avril Danica Haines as the first female director of the US Intelligence Community [DNI]. Haines is a Jewish woman who was born in Manhattan. She spent a year at an elite Japanese Judo school, is known for her paintings, has a BA in physics, as well as a law degree from Georgetown University.
Eighty-four US Senators voted in favor and only ten opposed. Ironically, the most outspoken opponents of her nomination were left-wing organizations. Yet, not a single Democrat voted against her. All ten Senators who voted no were Republicans.
She first began working for the US State Department as a lawyer during the administration of George W Bush. She later became Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser and was briefly the Deputy Director of the CIA.
The thing she is most known for is her support for extra-judicial killings via drone bombing. She was a leading defender of drone bombings in the Obama administration, and she is widely credited with writing the official US policy for extra-judicial drone killings in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. She has even been called the person who “normalized” drone bombings. These bombings killed large numbers of innocent bystanders.
Haines also infuriated a broad spectrum of groups when she moved to have her own policies on drone bombing classified.
When Obama first appointed her to a high-level position, she was considered controversial for reading erotic literature to audiences at a book store and cafe she co-owns with her husband. Today, she is controversial for her advocacy of drone bombings and increasing the numbers of refugees brought to the USA.
She was also thrust into the forefront of the CIA torture controversy. Obama briefly made her Deputy Director of the CIA and put her in charge of determining in agents should be punished over a torture and Senate hacking scandal. Dianne Feinstein led the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. While the report was being written, the CIA hacked into a server for the US Senate to spy on the report.
Ultimately, Haines decided that no one should be punished and had a staggering 92% of the entire Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture classified!
Besides the drone bombing and CIA torture controversies, Haines is touted as having convinced Obama to steadily increase the number of alleged refugees admitted to the USA. The Daily Beast claims that Haines convinced Obama to increase the number of refugees admitted to the USA from 70k per year to 85k, and then to 110k. All while there was strong opposition from the US population. Opposition to the large-scale importation of refugees into the USA became a key issue for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and helped him win the Republican primary and then the general election.
Ironically, just two years ago, she was attacked by leading Democrats for endorsing Donald Trump’s choice for new CIA director, Gina Haspel. Critics said Haspel was at the center of the CIA torture scandal.
More recently, Samantha Powers and other members of the former Obama administration have been working to re-habilitate Haines. They allege that Obama’s drone bombing campaign would have killed even more innocent people, had it not been for her allegedly sound policies.
