Today Michael Morell, Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), resigned. According to Morell, it is only because he wants to spend more time with his family.
This resignation comes soon after a leak by a former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) employee uncovered a massive internet surveillance program, the gathering of millions of U.S. phone records from Verizon, a major intelligence official apparently lying under oath and much, much more.
Yet, according to Morell, his resignation has absolutely nothing to do with any of the many scandals that have recently been plaguing the Obama administration.
“Whenever someone involved in the rough and tumble of Washington decides to move on, there is speculation in various quarters about the ‘real reason,’” Morell said in a statement.
“But when I say that it is time for my family, nothing could be more real than that,” he said.
CIA Director John Brennan said that Morell will be replaced by White House lawyer and “agency outsider” Avril Haines, according to The Washington Post.
Haines has worked as President Obama’s deputy counsel in charge of national security issues as well as a legal adviser to the National Security Council, according to the Post.
The National Security Council is the body reportedly behind the decisions to kill American citizens with drones. This is the process Attorney General Eric Holder claims counts as “due process.”
Haines “knows more about covert action than anyone in the U.S. government outside of the CIA,” Brennan said.
The Associated Press pointed out that Morell managed the resignation of former Director of the CIA David Petraeus and defended the CIA’s actions in the attack on the American diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
AP also pointed out that Morell was criticized for claiming that the CIA’s interrogation program which utilized “enhanced techniques” – better known as torture – produced some useful information.
Yet when Obama was on the campaign trail in 2008 he said, “Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence.”
While Morell will likely maintain that his decision has nothing to do with the many scandals involving the U.S. intelligence community as of late and instead is only related to his desire to spend more time with his family, the timing of his decision is interesting, to say the least.