For his first three years as the top of the C.I.A., William J. Burns was relentlessly centered on tripling the company’s assets dedicated to understanding China, and on countering Russia and its mysterious partnerships with Iran and North Korea.
However within the final 16 months of his tenure, the diplomat-turned-spy was plunged again into his previous life.
Over 4 a long time on the State Division, Mr. Burns got here to be thought to be the grasp of making “the again channel” — the title of his memoir — the invisible, important outreach to allies and enemies alike.
Because the Israel-Hamas battle threatened to tug the Center East into a bigger conflagration, President Biden requested Mr. Burns to swim in that again channel as soon as once more, mixing his intelligence function along with his expertise as a Center East negotiator to assist discover a technique to a cease-fire and the discharge of hostages held in Gaza.
Quickly he was, by his personal account, “on the telephone each day” with David Barnea, the top of Israel’s international spy company, and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani of Qatar, the hyperlink to Hamas, looking for a gap, for some leverage to deliver a few truce and possibly a brand new Center East.
The excellence between a diplomatic negotiator and an intelligence operative is imprecise within the area, and Mr. Burns’s arrivals and departures could possibly be stealthy. “It makes it simpler to return and go,” he mentioned in his workplace on the seventh ground of the C.I.A., with its memorabilia of the company’s operations and successes, and a framed map of the Russian plan to maneuver in on Ukraine.
Mr. Burns is a singular determine in Washington. He has labored for Republicans and Democrats; within the early 2000s, he was George W. Bush’s ambassador in Moscow, the place he bought to know Vladimir V. Putin, making him the one member of the Biden inside circle who is aware of the Russian chief nicely.
Present and former officers mentioned that had Kamala Harris been elected president final November, Mr. Burns was her choice for secretary of state, one thing he declined, with some diplomatic aversion, to verify or deny. It will have been a return to the establishment that outlined his profession — and the place he met his spouse, Lisa Carty, who’s now on the U.S. mission to the United Nations. (They sat subsequent to one another within the International Service coaching institute. College students have been seated alphabetically.)
When he arrived on the C.I.A., a number of veterans there concede that they have been suspicious: Why was a profession diplomat main a spy company?
By the point he packed up on Friday, the deal between Israel and Hamas barely holding collectively, and new conflicts on the horizon, a number of mentioned he had gained over the company.
As Mr. Burns and his deputy, David Cohen, left the constructing for the final time, hundreds of C.I.A. workers lined the corridors for a “clap out,” an indication of the respect they’d achieved.
A grasp negotiator faces a important second
Mr. Burns’s profession has included many tense negotiations, from Israeli-Palestinian conflicts to the Iran nuclear settlement, which he and Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s nationwide safety adviser, launched secretly in 2013.
However nothing, he says, matched the urgency of the hassle to halt the Israel-Hamas battle earlier than it unfold via the area.
“This most likely has been essentially the most difficult negotiations I’ve been concerned in, within the sense it was oblique talks twice eliminated,” Mr. Burns mentioned.
Mr. Burns and Mr. Barnea negotiated with the Qataris and the Egyptians, who spoke to the Hamas management primarily based in Doha. These Hamas leaders negotiated with the Hamas leaders in Gaza, who have been hiding underground and held the remaining 95 or so hostages, some alive and a few lifeless.
“A number of negotiations are passionate, however right here you had this human predicament of hostages and their households, harmless civilians in Gaza struggling horrible circumstances for the final 15 months,” Mr. Burns mentioned on Wednesday. “This wasn’t nearly texts. It was about actual human beings whose lives have been in peril.”
Mr. Burns made 19 journeys to the area after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, to work on the problem of the Gaza battle and the hostages. Till this week, the talks loomed as the main unfulfilled mission, and even failure, of his time main the spy company.
However below strain from President-elect Donald J. Trump, the chance negotiators have been on the lookout for appeared. With a last-minute push by Mr. Burns and the remainder of Mr. Biden’s group, negotiators introduced on Wednesday that they’d reached a deal.
Mr. Biden put Mr. Burns answerable for the hostage negotiations after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put Mr. Barnea, Israel’s spy chief, answerable for Israel’s negotiations.
Over the course of negotiations, each Hamas and Israel prevented an settlement at varied factors.
In the long run it was an strategy Mr. Burns and the American group developed that carried the day: a multiphase plan to launch some hostages in return for prisoners and help. Some Israeli troops might be pulled again. The thorny problems with governance of Gaza have been left for later negotiations.
Mr. Burns and Mr. Biden had pushed this formulation for months. However what modified, Mr. Burns mentioned, is that Hamas’s navy commanders have been feeling “beleaguered,” and their forces had been degraded. On the opposite aspect, the blows Israel landed in opposition to Iran and Hezbollah had created political house for an settlement.
“The Israeli political management is starting to see that good isn’t on the menu right here, however they’ve achieved lots of what they needed to realize,” he mentioned.
The query now for the Israelis, Mr. Burns mentioned, is the way to flip their tactical victories in opposition to Iran and Hezbollah right into a strategic win. And Mr. Burns and his colleagues argue {that a} cease-fire and hostage launch is a crucial a part of that transformation.
Speaking to his fellow intelligence chiefs helped in urgent that case. “I feel with intelligence work basically, you’re capable of be somewhat bit extra discreet than in the event you’re a diplomat,” Mr. Burns mentioned.
Profitable over the spies
There was a level of wariness among the many C.I.A.’s rank and file about Mr. Burns when he arrived on the sprawling Langley campus in early 2021.
Not each senior C.I.A. officer stationed overseas will get together with the ambassador overseeing an embassy — and thus American operations. However in his time in Amman, Jordan, and in Moscow, the place the C.I.A. station chiefs work together with the ambassador nearly every day, his administration fashion gained over analysts, case officers and even the navy veterans within the paramilitary arm of the company.
Rob Richer, the company’s chief of station in Amman when Mr. Burns was the ambassador, recalled that Mr. Burns “by no means, ever says one thing was his concept.”
“He is sort of a vacuum cleaner by way of what he sucks in,” he mentioned. “After which he bounces concepts off of the folks round him.”
Present C.I.A. officers, talking on the situation of anonymity as a result of they work undercover, mentioned Mr. Burns earned loyalty when he made two key selections.
The primary was throughout the fall of Kabul in 2021, when Mr. Burns vowed that the 9,000 commandoes who had labored with the company could be evacuated, together with 25,000 members of the family.
The second was when he persuaded Mr. Biden to permit a handful of C.I.A. officers to stay in Ukraine after the president had ordered all American authorities personnel to depart the nation. Their presence, Mr. Burns mentioned, was key to the partnership and the C.I.A.’s success.
The Putin whisperer
By the tip of his first 12 months, it was the battle in Ukraine that examined Mr. Burns, simply as he was starting to revive morale at an company after near-constant turmoil throughout Mr. Trump’s first time period.
It performed to his power: All these years in Moscow, as Mr. Putin consolidated energy (and interacted with the American ambassador) made him the federal government’s chief skilled on the Russian chief.
Beginning with a “mom lode” of latest intelligence that arrived within the early fall of 2021, Mr. Burns turned satisfied that his previous nemesis meant to attempt to take Kyiv, a step towards restoring Peter the Nice’s empire. .
Over objections contained in the intelligence neighborhood, Mr. Burns — together with Mr. Sullivan and Avril D. Haines, the director of nationwide intelligence — licensed declassification of the fabric, in hopes of convincing allies who thought Mr. Putin was bluffing.
The depth of the info demonstrated that the C.I.A. had penetrated deeply into Russia’s navy, acquiring its plans and later even issues about deploying nuclear weapons. Satellite tv for pc pictures, accounts from sources who have been clearly near the Kremlin and communications laid out what the Russians have been planning.
“What we collected at this company, but in addition elsewhere within the intelligence neighborhood, was beautiful, that was fairly detailed by way of not simply the navy buildup within the late fall of ’21, but in addition the planning for the day after,” Mr. Burns mentioned. Nonetheless, he acknowledged, most NATO allies have been skeptical. “It was fairly lonely within the late fall of ’21 as a result of we and the Brits have been the one two providers who have been satisfied” of the Russian leaders’ intentions.
Mr. Biden despatched Mr. Burns — moderately than the secretary of state or the nationwide safety adviser — to Moscow on a mission to warn Mr. Putin and attempt to head off battle. However he discovered a Russian chief who had stewed in his grievances over time and was solely extra intent on his objective.
Mr. Burns made his case in regards to the harm Mr. Putin would do to his personal nation if he invaded Ukraine. “I discovered Putin totally unapologetic about what we specified by entrance of him,” he mentioned.
The warning did nothing to cease the invasion. However Mr. Burns’s early warnings made it simpler to rally the allies, and Congress.
Nonetheless, Republicans have mentioned that even when that decision was correct, the C.I.A. failed in understanding different key occasions: how rapidly the Afghan authorities might collapse, how Bashar al-Assad would flee Syria and the way Hamas was making ready to assault Israel.
The lengthy sport: China
Considered one of Mr. Burns’s first acts was to create a mission middle devoted to China. It will be a spot the place evaluation of China’s financial future, its technical prowess, its intentions towards Taiwan and the C.I.A.’ s operations would come collectively. However he additionally poured extra money and folks — and Mandarin audio system — on the downside; right now China-related work accounts for about 20 p.c of the company’s labeled funds, officers say.
Mr. Burns attended a weekly assembly with high officers from the China middle. The assembly, mentioned one C.I.A. officer who has labored on the China challenge for 30 years, was “an excellent concrete manifestation of his private dedication when every little thing else was occurring.”
John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s selection to guide the C.I.A., has promised an company that takes extra danger and extra aggressive covert motion. However he has praised Mr. Burns’s concentrate on China and pledged to construct on his efforts.
Mr. Burns mentioned the company has made progress recruiting spies. That will mark a major comeback, 15 years after most of the C.I.A.’s operatives in China have been caught, and a few executed.
“China is the largest long-term geopolitical problem our nation faces,” Mr. Burns mentioned. “And it’s the largest intelligence precedence. It’s a concerted effort on the a part of the company that’s geared toward accumulating intelligence. And it’s starting to pay dividends.”
Retaining concentrate on priorities like China whereas giving “the overflowing inbox” of instant crises the eye they want has been the trick of the previous 4 years, he mentioned.
“It’s typically the toughest factor in authorities,” Mr. Burns mentioned. “However I feel we’ve got managed the steadiness fairly nicely.”
