More national security lawyers needed, intel chief says

Recruiting a diverse workforce to join the demanding field of national security law is a shared priority among the leadership at all 18 agencies within the U.S. intelligence community, according to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

Haines said the U.S. must continue to build strong, adaptable institutions to face complex challenges.

Her advice to law students interested in the field is not to limit their career choices by focusing on only one aspect of national security law.

Drawing on her own experience working in the legislative, executive and judicial branches, Haines said each position she held informed the next one and provided important insight to navigate the complex world of national security law.

“I have been able to do my job more effectively as a consequence of having experience in different places,” she said. And as a woman working in largely male-dominated field, she shared her thought process on how to avoid allowing others to define you.

“I pretend they are like an uncle in my family or something like that. Because part of the challenge is making sure that you don’t stop listening to them,” she said, adding that breaking through that obstacle allows the conversation to move forward. 

Haines spoke at an American Bar Assoiation webinar sponsored by Women in National Security Law, a group that has emerged out of the larger ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security (www.americanbar.org/groups/law_national_security), of which Haines is a former member.

She said in addition to balancing the increasingly complex challenges facing the intelligence community, the U.S. must continue to build strong institutions that are adaptable and capable of moving quickly.

“If I look across the intelligence community, we have an almost infinite list of threats,” requiring a constant balancing act of shifting priorities and resources. “Whether it’s a pandemic or ... terrorism or some other threat ... you realize that things like this can be on your doorstep in a relatively short time.”

Haines is the seventh Senate-confirmed director of national intelligence and the first woman in the position. She served as principal deputy national security adviser from 2015-2017 under President Barack Obama. Before that she served as deputy director of the CIA.