Consider This from NPR - Post-Trump, New U.S. Intel Chief Seeks To Rebuild Trust — And Fight Domestic Terror

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has taken over after a turbulent time. Former President Donald Trump was frequently at odds with the American intelligence community, including some of his hand-picked intel chiefs. In her first interview after a month on the job, Haines tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly "it has been a challenging time" for the U.S. intel community. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Four years ago, when he claimed, without providing evidence, that the American intelligence community leaked the infamous Steele dossier, Donald Trump said this. I think it's a disgrace. And I say that, and I say that. And that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do. I think it's a disgrace. Three years ago, the president stood next to Vladimir Putin and suggested he believed him over the American intelligence community when it came to Russia's 2016 election interference. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. And two years ago, the president suggested America's intelligence leaders were wrong about Iran, ISIS, Russia, North Korea. The president calling the intelligence officials he hired passive and naive, suggesting in a tweet today

they go back to school after they publicly contradicted him. Now, after four years of a commander-in-chief who at times undermined and attacked the intelligence community, there's a new person in charge. I think it has been a challenging time, particularly for the office of the director of national intelligence. Consider this. Avril Haines oversees all 18 American intelligence agencies. She's the first woman to serve in that role, and she has a long, long list of things to do. Rebuilding trust and morale in those agencies, that's one of them. There's just been a lot of

concern about the degree to which, you know, analysis has been politicized. The new director of national intelligence in her first interview since taking the job. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It is Monday, March 1st. Support for NPR and the following message come from Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates, who sets out a plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is available now wherever books are sold. This message comes from NPR sponsor Dispatch Coffee. Sourcing, roasting, and delivering quality and traceable coffee at a fair price. Try their flexible monthly subscription. Shipping is free. Go to dispatchcoffee.ca slash consider to get 50% off your first order.

We are still in the middle of this pandemic. And right now, having science news you can trust, from variants to vaccines, is essential. NPR Shortwave has your back. About 10 minutes every weekday, listen and subscribe to Shortwave, the daily science podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. director of national intelligence, for a little over a month and seconds before our interview was scheduled to start. 2 p.m. in the east and there is a whole lot going on right now. An out of breath press staffer appeared and handed us a document that a whole lot of people had been waiting for. Just declassified a report asserting that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of Washington Post journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi. The report from U.S. intelligence was short.

It was direct. At the very top, the first words, declassified by D.N.I. Haynes, who moments later stepped into the room. And began her first interview as director of national intelligence. We do assess that the operation to capture or kill Jamal Khashoggi was in fact approved by Mohammed bin Salman. And we provide our assessment, and then we also identify other individuals that participated in the events. Does it feel like you just dropped a bomb into U.S.-Saudi relations?

I mean, obviously, it's going to be challenging. And, you know, it's among a number of things that are challenging. Here's the backstory. It had long been suspected that Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi's de facto leader, ordered the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. A Saudi hit team had arrived a few hours ahead of him. His remains were believed to be driven off in black vans shortly after.

The murder was brutal and brazen. Khashoggi was a columnist for the Washington Post, and at the time, he was based in Virginia. In fact, his office was not far from where I sat down to interview D.N.I. Haynes. But for years, her predecessors in the Trump administration stalled on releasing a public version of the intelligence findings on Khashoggi's murder, while the Trump White House pursued ever closer ties with Saudi Arabia. Did your office come under any political pressure in completing this, in declassifying it? Were you challenged to soften the finding in any way? None whatsoever.

And I mean, I think that will be clear by virtue of the report's contents, in a sense. Another reason this report is significant, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been close allies for decades. Now U.S. intelligence has flatly assessed that the Saudi crown prince, 35 years old, heir apparent to his aging father, that he has blood on his hands. What does it do to your relationship as the head of U.S. intelligence, your relationship with your counterparts in Saudi Arabia,

that your office has put out a report fingering their crown prince as a killer? Well, I think, you know, the fact that the crown prince approved that operation, and, you know, we rather have assessed that, is also likely not to be a surprise. And, you know, I am sure it is not going to make things easier, but I think it's also fair I am sure it is not going to make things easier. But I think it's also fair to say that it is not unexpected. And I hope we are able to continue to do work where it makes sense for us to do work and to continue to communicate as we have.

Also this past week, the State Department announced a, quote, Khashoggi ban that placed visa restrictions on 76 Saudis believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas. Now, those measures did not directly target the crown prince, which has drawn criticism even from within Biden's own party. But in declassifying the assessment that he ordered Khashoggi's murder, the Biden administration is signaling a tougher stance against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia than the Biden administration is signaling a tougher stance against the Kingdom of Saudi

Arabia than the Trump administration took. The Khashoggi report was just one part of our conversation with Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who, as we said, now faces the task of rebuilding trust, rebuilding morale in the American intelligence community. As DNI, she's responsible for synthesizing mountains of intelligence and coordinating the work of big agencies like the CIA, the FBI, as well as lesser known intelligence arms of the Treasury Department. Then there's Coast Guard Intelligence, the National Reconnaissance Office, which runs spy satellites. In short, Haynes has a lot to do. In the last administration,

five different men rotated through her job in the space of four years. Haynes is no stranger to the intel community or to the president. She worked with Joe Biden in the Senate when he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and she followed him to the White House in the Obama administration, where she worked on the National Security Council and as deputy director of the CIA. We spoke about the turbulence and the turnover of these last four years, and what she hopes to change about the way that American intelligence operates. If I asked you, Director Haynes, for a word to describe the state of morale in the intelligence community that you inherited, what would it be? I don't know about in a word. I think it has been a challenging time, particularly for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. I mean, as you say, there was a lot of turnover during the last administration

and sort of a, I think, a sense more generally that intelligence analysis wasn't necessarily being appreciated in the same way that it normally had been in the past. But, you know, I think there's just been a lot of concern about the degree to which, you know, analysis has been politicized. And, and I think, in your view, was it, was intelligence politicized? I think there was, it certainly looked to me from the outside. And again, it's always hard to tell exactly what's happening, you know, on the inside, but it looked to me from the outside as if there were political pressures being put on the intelligence community and ultimately sometimes, you know, political

leaders putting it aside in a way that was quite dismissive of what the intelligence community provides. And, you know, from my perspective, I've seen just how hard analysts work to make sure that what they're putting forward is in fact, you know, credible and legitimate and looked at from every possible perspective in order to make sure that it is, you know, useful, frankly, for policymakers and something that they can rely on in those moments when they're not sure what's, you know, the right information. What are the consequences of that? Does the bad blood just go away?

Clearly not, right? I mean, I think this is one of those things where it is so much about the culture of the institutions that gets damaged in those moments. And it's one of the hardest things to kind of course correct on in a way. I mean, I think there's, you know, saying to the intelligence community, I want analysis that is not politicized or policy biased, right? I want you to know that I'm not going to be in any way retaliating against you if you don't tell me what I want to hear. And you have now a president who very much wants to hear what you have to say, regardless of whether or not it's consistent with his particular policy views or any of those things, right? And I think part of the challenge is that you have to really then follow through by showing people that you do in fact mean that. It's not just words.

And part of it I'm finding is, you know, just the insatiable demand that he has for intelligence and people starting to see that he cares, that he's reading these materials, that, you know, he's asking questions. He wants to know, how do you think about it this way? Is there something else that I should be thinking about? That type of thing, which in a very natural human way, I think, gives people a sense of, you know, just the morale goes up, right? People care about what I'm doing and therefore I feel better about my job. And that is a part of, I think, what's happening during this period. But it's going to take some time. January 6th. I know

you were not yet running things. The congressional hearings these past few days that have been looking into what happened have been focused on intelligence failures, on intelligence that should have been shared and was not. One striking example, the FBI Norfolk office apparently emailed a report the night before saying there might well be violence on the Capitol and against lawmakers. The leaders of Capitol Police say they never saw that. Can you shed any light on what went wrong? I don't have enough of a sense of it at this stage. And I think, you know,

I'm obviously watching the hearings. I'm also learning as much as I can to ensure that we're well-postured moving forward. We have an assignment that you've undoubtedly heard about on domestic terrorism, and we're doing our own report to try to manage, you know, provide a perspective on what the nature and the scope of the threat is at this stage. But I couldn't speak with authority about what happened. It must feel so familiar to somebody who lived through 9-11, which then there was all the fallout over, then it was the CIA and the FBI not sharing intelligence. It makes you wonder, how are we still not doing this?

Yeah. I mean, it is, first of all, the events themselves were so tragic and jarring, I think, for the American people, I know for myself, and just watching what happened in this assault on our own democracy. But it's also one of these things where, you know, like, it takes time to unpack exactly what happened and how to actually address these things more effectively in the future. And I think we'll try to take our time in figuring that out so that we get it right in the next time.

But I, yeah, I wish I could say that I think that we're ever going to get to a stage where we're not figuring things out and, you know, managing new issues and problems and trying to address them effectively. But this will undoubtedly give us another opportunity to get better. Last question. And this is one that I truly look forward to the day when I no longer have to ask it, but you were the first woman to serve as director of national intelligence. It's a big of me that doesn't even notice it, you know, that's sort of like just living my life and working on things and recognizing that I'm so lucky as to have so many colleagues and a boss who doesn't look at me through that lens, right? And that makes an enormous difference, you know, to my work. But then there's also the sort of out-of-body experience of recognizing that this is what the third job I've had where I've been the first woman in government in a position. And I recognize just, first of all, how many people, how many women have come before me, have paved the way for me to be able to do this, but also how important it is to talk about it,

just as you do. Because I think, you know, despite the fact that you don't want to be able to do this, but also how important it is to talk about it just as you do. Because I think, you know, despite the fact that you don't want to be asking these questions in a sense, you really realize it's useful to have role models and, you know, the folks that I did, people who look like you, who make you realize that this is something, you know, you could do too. And I cannot tell you how inspiring it is to see some of the young women across the intelligence community who are just extraordinarily talented and, you us, she will commit to public testimony before Congress, something intelligence leaders avoided towards the end of the Trump presidency. It's Consider This. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.