The decision is a victory for the peace group Code Pink, which spearheaded the Stop Morell movement, and it\u2019s a great thing for all Americans.\u00a0 Now, though, we have to turn our attention to\u00a0Biden\u2019s nominee to be director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Haines is certainly qualified on paper to lead the Intelligence Community.\u00a0A longtime Biden aide, she has the president-elect\u2019s confidence.\u00a0But that\u2019s not good enough.\u00a0Haines is exactly the kind of person who\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0<\/i>be in a position of authority in intelligence.\u00a0She is the kind of neoliberal intelligence apologist whom so many of us have opposed for so many years.\u00a0 Don\u2019t just take my word for it, though.\u00a0 Look at\u00a0her record<\/a>.<\/p>\n Haines first began working for Biden when she served as deputy general counsel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was its chairman.\u00a0 When Biden became vice president in 2009, Haines moved to the State Department, where she was the assistant legal adviser for treaty affairs.\u00a0 After only a year, she moved to the White House, where she became deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs, the National Security Council\u2019s chief attorney.<\/p>\n That\u2019s quite a position.\u00a0What it means was that her job was to legally justify President Barack Obama\u2019s decisions on such intelligence issues as drone strikes and whether to release the CIA Torture Report.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>She served there under CIA Director John Brennan.\u00a0 Obama apparently liked the job she did for him because in 2013, he named Haines deputy director of the CIA (DD\/CIA).<\/p>\n Haines was the first woman to be named DD\/CIA, and she served again under Brennan, who proved time and again that he was no fan of\u00a0congressional oversight<\/a>.\u00a0Haines\u2019s attitude was similar to Brennan\u2019s:\u00a0The CIA was going to do what it was going to do, and she would make no apologies for it.<\/strong><\/p>\n There were three controversial areas where Haines made a name for herself and for which she should have to answer in a confirmation hearing:\u00a0The CIA\u2019s refusal to release the Senate Torture Report and the decision to hack into the Senate Intelligence Committee\u2019s computer system; the CIA\u2019s decision to not punish those officers who carried out the hack and who killed and tortured prisoners beyond even what the Justice Department said was permissible; and\u00a0the government\u2019s drone program, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were killed<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Haines’\u00a0Torture Cover-Up<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n You may recall that in December 2014, the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a\u00a0heavily redacted version<\/a>\u00a0of the executive summary of the committee\u2019s torture report, the result of years of investigation using primary-source CIA documents.\u00a0The executive summary was about 525 pages long, just a fraction of the nearly 6,000-page complete report.\u00a0And the release of the 525 pages was the result of protracted negotiations between the committee and the CIA.<\/p>\n In the end, the public heard a few details of what the CIA\u2019s prisoners underwent at secret prisons around the world.\u00a0But the full story was never made public.\u00a0It likely never will be.\u00a0And that\u2019s thanks to Avril Haines.<\/strong><\/p>\n Earlier that year, then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor in a very unusual display and accused CIA Director Brennan of spying on her committee\u2019s staff members.\u00a0Specifically, Feinstein said that CIA officers had hacked into the Senate\u2019s computers to see what it was that committee investigators were focusing on.<\/p>\n The hacking was unprecedented, and Feinstein referred it to the Justice Department for prosecution.\u00a0 Attorney General Eric Holder, however, chose not to pursue the case.\u00a0 Brennan took responsibility for ordering the hacking and he made no apologies for it.\u00a0But his top aide, his assistant, his legal adviser through the episode was Avril Haines.\u00a0She has never explained her decisions in support of the hack.<\/strong><\/p>\n Furthermore, it was Haines who\u00a0overruled the CIA\u2019s inspector general<\/a>\u00a0and who decided not to punish those CIA officers who hacked into the committee\u2019s computers, or those CIA officers who had gone over and above what the Justice Department had authorized in its \u201cEnhanced Interrogation Techniques\u201d program, killing and maiming prisoners.<\/p>\n In the end, not only were no CIA officers punished, but the leaders and most prominent officers in the torture program were promoted, in some cases into some of the most sought-after positions in the CIA.\u00a0\u00a0I know this to be true.\u00a0I worked for them.<\/strong><\/p>\n Haines and Drones<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/haines.jpg?itok=atr0UY2p\")
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