The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has issued an assessment regarding Russian interference in the 2020 election and assured us the Chinese stayed out of it. All over Washington, heads are nodding approvingly. The nation’s “top spy” has spoken. It must be true.
Top spy? Once upon a time when the Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the Intelligence Community (IC) and that man was William Colby – a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services and countless overseas ops – that term might have meant something. Now? It is worse than meaningless.
Avril Haines is the Director of National Intelligence. Avril Haines is the former owner of an independent bookstore and coffeehouse in Baltimore, Maryland. The bookstore won the Baltimore City Paper’s “Best Independent Bookstore” award in 1997 and was known for featuring local writers, small press publications, and erotica reading nights. Tiring of life as a bookstore owner, Haines eventually enrolled in law school and graduated from Georgetown in 2001.
Haines then embarked on the familiar path of an aspiring bureaucrat and ladder climber in Washington, D.C. Her first stop was as a legal officer at the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Within a year of taking that job, however, she had moved on, taking a position as a law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Danny Julian Boggs. Again, within a year she was gone.
The next stop was the Department of State where Haines worked in the office of the Legal Adviser, first in Treaty Affairs and then in the Office of Political-Military Affairs. By 2007 Haines had parlayed that experience into a position as Deputy Chief Counsel for the Majority Senate Democrats on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. The chairman of the committee at the time, predictably enough, was Joe Biden.
Haines had made the critical connection. She was a made woman.
From 2008 to 2010 this former owner of an independent bookstore was the assistant legal adviser at the Department of State for treaty affairs.
In 2010, Haines was appointed to serve in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs at the White House.
In 2013 Haines became Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. As such she was the second most powerful person in the Agency, reporting only to the Director, John Brennan. Haines replaced Mike Morrell, infamous for his complicity in the coverup of the Benghazi disaster in this position.
A little over a year later Haines was named to be the Deputy National Security Adviser in the Obama White House. In this capacity, she worked directly for Obama’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice.
The list of individuals who have lined up over the years to laud her performance reads like a Who’s Who of individuals implicated in or close to the Spygate scandal.
“I am thrilled to welcome Avril back to the National Security Council (NSC) to serve as my principal deputy. Previously at the State Department, NSC and Central Intelligence Agency, Avril has been indispensable in implementing the Administration’s strategy to address the full range of threats and challenges to our national security… I could not be happier that Avril will help me lead the dedicated NSC staff as we continue to make our country safer and stronger and advance American leadership in the world.”
Susan Rice 2014
“I am pleased and proud about Avril Haines’ move back to the White House to serve as deputy national security advisor…On behalf of the entire Intelligence Community, I congratulate Avril on her new job.”
DNI James Clapper 2014
“The selection of Avril Haines to serve as the President’s Deputy National Security Advisor is a fitting testament to her outstanding intellect, superb judgment, substantive expertise, and total dedication to our country’s security. As much as I wish she could continue to serve as Deputy Director of CIA — a role in which she has excelled — I know that Avril is ideally suited to serve the President and our country in her new assignment. I very much look forward to continuing our partnership as we address the wide array of national security challenges America faces around the globe.”
John Brennan 2014
Haines was not simply close to all the key individuals involved in the Russian hoax and the effort to depose President Trump. She may very well be directly implicated in the scandal herself.
According to multiple press reports in 2016, the Obama White House held secret meetings related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the “fusion cell” that CIA Director Brennan had created at CIA Headquarters. The purpose of these meetings was to quarterback efforts directed at the Trump campaign centered on allegations of Russian collusion. Contrary to common practice, staff aides were prohibited from attending and closed-circuit video coverage of the meetings was shut off. Susan Rice chaired the meetings which included “principals,” – heads of agencies. Avril Haines reportedly chaired the “deputies meetings.”
The deputies meetings chaired by Haines included Director John Brennan, Central Intelligence Agency, Director James Clapper, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Director James Comey, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, United States Department of Justice, and eventually, Vice President Joe Biden.
In short, Haines was at the very center of the efforts inside the Obama Administration to push the infamous Russian dossier and to brand Donald Trump as being a pawn of Vladimir Putin. The same person we are now to take seriously regarding allegations of Russian election interference was part and parcel of the previous effort to peddle exactly the same kind of nonsensical and now conclusively disproven allegations.
Haines may be many things. She is no spy, and nobody ought to waste any time listening to her opinion on anything. She ended up at CIA as a deputy director owing to her political connections – particularly to Joe Biden – not based on any experience in the intelligence community.
