Avril Haines

Avril Danica Haines (born August 27, 1969) is an American attorney and intelligence official who served as the 9th Director of National Intelligence from January 21, 2021 to January 20, 2025, having previously served as Deputy National Security Advisor (2015–2017) and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2013–2015) — the first woman to hold each of those three offices. In disclosure research, Haines is cited as the first DNI to publicly commit to transparency on UAP matters, having overseen the production of the ODNI's June 2021 Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and testified in May 2022 that UAP represented a legitimate national security concern.

Early life and education

Haines was born on August 27, 1969, in New York City and grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her mother, Adrian Rappin (née Adrienne Rappaport), was a painter; her father, Thomas H. Haines, held a PhD in biochemistry from Rutgers University and helped establish the CUNY School of Medicine, where he chaired the biochemistry department. When Haines was 10, her mother developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and contracted avian tuberculosis; Haines and her father cared for her in a home ICU until her death when Haines was 15.

After graduating from Hunter College High School, Haines moved to Japan for a year to study at the Kodokan, an elite judo institute in Tokyo. In 1988 she enrolled at the University of Chicago, where she studied physics and worked repairing car engines at a Hyde Park auto shop, earning her AB in Physics in 1992. That year she entered a physics doctoral program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore but withdrew, and with her future husband David Davighi — whom she had met taking flying lessons at Princeton Airport in 1991 — purchased a seized drug-raid property in Fell's Point, Baltimore and converted it into an independent bookstore and café named Adrian's Book Cafe in honor of her late mother. The shop won Baltimore City Paper's "Best Independent Bookstore" in 1997 and drew media attention during her 2013 CIA appointment for its 1990s erotica readings. Haines served as president of the Fell's Point Business Association until 1998, then enrolled at Georgetown University Law Center, receiving her JD in 2001.

Early government service

In 2001 Haines joined the Hague Conference on Private International Law as a legal officer, and in 2002 clerked for United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Danny Julian Boggs. From 2003 to 2006 she worked in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the State Department, first in the Office of Treaty Affairs and then in the Office of Political Military Affairs; from 2007 to 2008 she served as Deputy Chief Counsel for the Majority Senate Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under then-chairman Joe Biden; and from 2008 to 2010 served as Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs at the State Department. In 2010 she was appointed to the White House Counsel's office as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs.

CIA Deputy Director (2013–2015)

On April 18, 2013, President Obama nominated Haines to serve as Legal Adviser of the Department of State, replacing Harold Hongju Koh. On June 13, 2013, Obama withdrew that nomination and instead selected Haines as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, replacing Michael Morell; she took office on August 9, 2013, the first woman to hold the position.

During the Obama administration Haines worked closely with CIA Director John Brennan to establish policy on extrajudicial targeted killings by drones and, according to Newsweek, "was sometimes called in the middle of the night to evaluate whether a suspected terrorist could be" eliminated via drone strike. Human rights groups including the ACLU criticized the resulting Obama drone policy for failing to meet international human rights standards and for enabling civilian deaths in Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. Opponents noted that Haines redacted minimum criteria for lethal targeting and that the guidelines, as published, permitted the assassination of U.S. citizens without due process.

In 2015, Haines was tasked with determining whether CIA personnel should face discipline for hacking Senate staffers' computers during the authoring of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture; she chose not to discipline them, overruling the CIA Inspector General. She was subsequently involved in redacting the same torture report for release; only 525 pages of the 6,700-page document were ultimately published.

Deputy National Security Advisor (2015–2017)

After leaving the CIA, Haines was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor in January 2015, again becoming the first woman to hold the position. In that role she convened meetings on the administration's response to the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak.

Private sector (2017–2020)

After leaving the White House, Haines held multiple positions at Columbia University: senior research scholar and deputy director for Columbia World Projects (a program addressing global challenges), then director of the program from May 2020, replacing Nicholas Lemann; and fellow at the Human Rights Institute and National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. She served as a commissioner on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, a distinguished fellow at Syracuse University's Institute for Security Policy and Law, and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Haines consulted for Palantir Technologies and was an employee of WestExec Advisors — a consulting firm founded by Antony Blinken and Michèle Flournoy whose clients included high-tech startups seeking Pentagon contracts. In late June 2020, shortly after she took over foreign policy and national security considerations for the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign transition team, references to Palantir and other corporations were removed from Haines's fellowship résumé on the Brookings Institution website.

Director of National Intelligence (2021–2025)

Nomination and confirmation

On November 23, 2020, President-elect Biden announced Haines's nomination for Director of National Intelligence, making her the first woman nominated for the post. At her January 19, 2021 confirmation hearing, Haines pledged to comply with the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 requirement that the intelligence community share its report on responsibility for Jamal Khashoggi's murder, a release the Trump administration had refused; called torture "inhumane, degrading, and unlawful"; agreed with the CIA Inspector General's apology for the Senate-computer hack; promised an "aggressive response" to China's "illegal and unfair practices"; and committed to collaborating with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to evaluate the threat posed by QAnon. The Senate confirmed her 84–10 on January 20, 2021 — the first Biden administration nominee to be confirmed — and Vice President Kamala Harris swore her in the following day.

Former Senate Intelligence Committee chief investigator Daniel J. Jones publicly criticized Haines's confirmation, citing her 2015 decision not to discipline the CIA hackers of Senate computers.

UAP Preliminary Assessment and testimony

Under Haines, the ODNI in June 2021 published the congressionally mandated Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the first unclassified U.S. government report on UAP in over fifty years. In May 10, 2022 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on worldwide threats, Haines reportedly drew a jurisdictional line for UAP analysis: "The truth is, if it's something outside the atmosphere, then it's in the domain of the [ODNI]; if it's something that is — could be a threat to our military or civilian aircraft, then it's in the domain of AARO and the DoD." She committed to briefing Congress fully on UAP matters and supported the creation of AARO. In a November 2022 appearance at a Reagan National Defense Forum panel, Haines discussed the government's UAP reporting challenge and the need for de-stigmatization of military reporting, acknowledging a persistent analytic gap between what pilots observe and what existing sensor systems record.

In May 2022 Haines also warned against Russia and China's efforts to "try to make inroads with partners of ours across the world," citing Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

UAPTF transition and Grusch complaint (2023)

As DNI, Haines oversaw the transition of the UAP Task Force to AARO and provided the security framework within which David Grusch's Inspector General complaint was processed. Grusch allegedly filed his complaint through the classified whistleblower mechanism, which is overseen by the ODNI's Inspector General — making Haines's office structurally connected to the chain of events leading to Grusch's July 2023 congressional testimony, though the specific handling of the complaint was independent of the DNI's policy office.

Grusch stated publicly on the Joe Rogan Experience that under Template:USC, the DNI has statutory authority to receive all intelligence-related information from every federal agency, and directly challenged Haines — by name — to account for alleged UAP retrieval programs, reportedly asserting: "Avril Haines, if she's not briefed, like she's supposed to be briefed, all intelligence in the country… Well, ma'am, if you don't know what I'm talking about, we have a problem because you're not being briefed by the CIA director and some other agencies." Ross Coulthart, in a 2023 appearance on Theories of Everything, argued that the media had failed to pursue Haines with the core question Grusch's allegations demanded: "What about Avril Haines the Director of National Intelligence? Grusch makes the direct allegation in my interview that he personally provided a copy of his complaint to the DNI, to Avril Haines. Why has nobody gone to her and said… He's alleging there are aliens, there's a non-human intelligence. He's alleging you've recovered non-human technology and bodies. He's alleging that people have been murdered to cover up this secret."

Alleged access to close-encounter data

Jason Jorjani, drawing on unnamed inside sources, has reportedly described Haines as having been specifically read into what he called "the full range of close encounter data — not just UFOs, but also the beings associated with them, archaeological sites and discoveries associated with them and so forth, not just on Earth, but across the solar system," and as having allegedly participated in designing a "selective long term disclosure plan." Jorjani raised the question of whether this access derived from the DNI position itself or from Haines's own clearance history, noting that her successor Tulsi Gabbard may or may not have received the same briefings upon taking office.

Ashton Forbes has argued that the post-9/11 restructuring of the intelligence community effectively transferred coordination of the alleged UFO cover-up from the CIA directorship to the DNI role, making Haines — as both former Deputy CIA Director and DNI — the logical locus of purported institutional oversight of non-human intelligence programs during the Biden years.

Alleged ties to censorship infrastructure

Mike Benz has highlighted Haines's attendance at Event 201, the October 2019 pandemic preparedness simulation convened by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in the final months before the COVID-19 pandemic. Benz cited her presence at that conference as alleged evidence of her integration into what he characterized as a cross-institutional censorship and pandemic-response planning network.

Awards and honors as DNI

Haines was awarded the Australian Intelligence Medal as part of the 2024 King's Birthday Honours by the Government of Australia for "distinguished service to the National Intelligence Community", and in November 2024 received the NATO Parliamentary Assembly's Women for Peace and Security Award.

Disclosure politics

Jorjani has reportedly assessed that the organized UFO disclosure network — including To the Stars Academy, Christopher Mellon, and the figures who drove the 2017 New York Times AATIP story — was built in coordination with the John Podesta network and the assumption that Hillary Clinton would be elected in 2016 as a "disclosure president," allegedly leaving the network without a clear path when Donald Trump won instead. Haines, as a product of the Obama-era intelligence structure and a CIA-DNI continuity figure, is placed within this political-intelligence alignment in disclosure research.

See also

• Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
• UAP disclosure
• Kirsten Gillibrand

References