LOSSES AND GAINS WITH AVRIL HAINES: From 2013 to 2015, Avril Haines was Deputy Director of the CIA. A respected attorney with lots of experience elsewhere in government including at the White House, she is now an advisor to the Biden campaign. And that has activists and others who The Daily Beast describe as “more left than liberal” in a funk. An unnamed Senate staffer described her involvement as “ominous.” Her crimes? Helping put a legal framework around the U.S. use of lethal drones and accepting the recommendations of an outside accountability board regarding allegations that CIA officers had “spied” on Senate staffer’s investigation of enhanced interrogation. Senator Mark Udall of Colorado seems to be worried about Haines getting a job in a potentially new Biden administration. “If our country is going to turn the page on the dark chapter of our history that was the CIA’s torture program, we need to stop nominating and confirming individuals who led this terrible program and helped cover it up.”
IS TIME RUNNING OUT FOR TIK-TOK? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday that the Trump administration is considering banning the Chinese app Tik-Tok as a “danger to American national security.” Ingraham asked him “Would you recommend that people download that app on their phones?” Pompeo said: “Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.” China already got all the good stuff with the OPM hack. Would it be so bad to overload them with countless videos of silly dancing? Wait, that could be used someday for blackmail, at least based on what we’ve seen.
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