C.I.A. to Get First Woman in No. 2 Job The C.I.A."s deputy director, Michael J. Morell, is retiring after 33 years at the agency and will be replaced by Avril D. Haines, the top lawyer at the National Security Council, the C.I.A."s director, John O. Brennan, announced Wednesday. The switch will put a woman in one of the agency's top two jobs for the first time. Ms. Haines is an unusual choice because she is not an intelligence professional, though in her two years at the White House she has been deeply involved in intelligence programs and got to know Mr. Brennan when he was President Obama's counterterrorism adviser. In April, the president had nominated Ms. Haines to become the legal adviser at the State Department, a job in which she would also have been the first woman. But with Mr. Morell's departure, he evidently decided to shift her to the C.I.A. post. The agency's deputy director is not subject to Senate confirmation. Mr. Morell, 54, is leaving voluntarily, officials said, after a full career that has included two recent stints as acting director of the spy agency, first after the departure of Leon E. Panetta in 2011 and then after the resignation of David H. Petraeus last year over a sex scandal. He was a leading candidate for the top job, but Mr. Obama chose Mr. Brennan in January, and colleagues said then that Mr. Morell was likely to retire. "As much as I would selfishly like to keep Michael right where he is for as long as possible, he has decided to retire to spend more time with his family and to pursue other professional opportunities," Mr. Brennan said in a statement. He praised Mr. Morell for his "exceptionally sharp mind, tremendous energy and absolute dedication to mission." Mr. Morell, a career intelligence analyst and former presidential briefer, previously oversaw the agency's analytic efforts, which are separate from the clandestine service that sends spies overseas. He is viewed as a competent and well-liked manager who has rarely made waves with the public, though in recent months he drew attention for his role in helping to draft the administration's disputed "talking points" on the lethal attack in September on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. In a statement, Mr. Morell recalled that he was at President George W. Bush's side as his intelligence briefer when Al Qaeda struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and with Mr. Obama during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He will leave his job on Aug. 9; Mr. Obama said he would appoint him to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. As legal adviser to the National Security Council, Ms. Haines, 43, leads the group of lawyers from security agencies that studies the legal implications of the most delicate operations, including lethal drone strikes, cyberattacks and intelligence collection on American soil. Mr. Brennan said her work at the White House and previously as an assistant legal adviser for treaty affairs at the State Department "has given her a range of experiences on many of the same issues that we focus on as an agency." Last month, Mr. Brennan chose not to appoint a veteran female C.I.A. officer who had been the acting head of the agency's clandestine service as the service's permanent head. The woman, who is still under cover, was closely associated with the agency's controversial former interrogation program, but the decision not to choose a woman to lead the clandestine service for the first time drew some criticism.