President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for intelligence chief, Avril Haines, has informed Senate Intelligence Committee that she would release the classified report into the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump had refrained from taking harsh measures against Saudi Arabia after reports emerged Khashoggi’s body was dismembered in the Kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in 2018. Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, allegedly ordered the killing of the Washington Post journalist.
Biden, during his election campaign, had vowed to re-evaluate the relationship with Saudi Arabia.
A New York judge had earlier ordered US intelligence agencies to acknowledge that they possess tape recording of the 2018 murder of Saudi Arabian journalist.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has been vetting 51 year old Avril Haines, former top CIA official’s nomination to be director of national intelligence (DNI) by Joe Biden’s incoming administration.
“Our approach to China has to evolve, and essentially meet the reality of the particularly assertive and aggressive China that we see today,” Haines told the US Senators, adding, “to safeguard the integrity of our intelligence community, the DNI must insist that, when it comes to intelligence, there is simply no place for politics — ever.”
“The DNI must prioritise transparency, accountability, analytic rigour, facilitating oversight and diverse thinking —- not as afterthoughts, but as strategic imperatives that bolster our work and our institutions,” Haines added.
Avril will be overseeing all US intelligence, including the CIA, the National Security Agency(NSA) and FBI counterintelligence.