Biden to Nominate Avril Haines for DNI

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced he intends to nominate former CIA Deputy Director Avril Haines to become the next director of national intelligence, the first woman elevated to the position.

The announcement also confirmed prior reports Biden plans to nominate former top aide and close confidante Antony Blinken as secretary of state, career foreign service officer Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the U.N. and Obama administration veteran Jake Sullivan as national security adviser.

The moves come as Biden faces increased pressure both inside and outside his transition team to appoint candidates who will appease the more progressive elements of the Democratic Party while also ensuring they could receive confirmation from a Senate that may retain its Republican majority.
In announcing the latest nominees, Biden's team acknowledged that the officials in their new positions will face a world marred by a retrenchment of U.S. leadership under the Trump administration along with growing skepticism among Americans about the value of the departments and agencies responsible for national security that President Donald Trump routinely ridiculed and undermined.

"I need a team ready on Day One to help me reclaim America's seat at the head of the table, rally the world to meet the biggest challenges we face, and advance our security, prosperity, and values," Biden said in a statement accompanying the announcement. "Their accomplishments in diplomacy are unmatched, but they also reflect the idea that we cannot meet the profound challenges of this new moment with old thinking and unchanged habits – or without diversity of background and perspective."

Haines, a veteran of the Obama administration, has extensive experience working with Biden, including her tenure as deputy chief counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2007-2008 while he as a senator from Delaware was its chairman. She worked at the White House starting in 2010 as a legal adviser to the national security adviser. In 2013, then-CIA Director John Brennan appointed her deputy director for the CIA and two years later she returned to the White House as principal deputy national security adviser – the first time a woman held either of those roles.