Avril Haines (27 August 1969-) was the United States Director of National Intelligence from 20 January 2021, succeeding John Lee Ratcliffe.
Biography[]
Avril Haines was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York in 1969, and she was raised in her mother's Jewish faith. She moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1992 and opened an independent bookstore and cafe in the city's Fell's Point neighborhood. Haines became a legal officer in the Hague in 2001 and later worked for the State Department, rising to be Deputy CIA Director from 2013 to 2015, as Deputy National Security Advisor from 2015 to 2017, and as Director of National Intelligence from 2021. At her confirmation hearing on 19 January 2021, Haines said that it was the primary responsibility of the FBI to investigate domestic terrorism, but that the intelligence community would continue to cooperate with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to evaluate the public threat of the QAnon conspiracy theory.