© REUTERS/Alexander Natruskin
President-elect Joe Biden announced Monday morning that he will nominate ambassador William Burns to serve as his director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"Bill Burns is an exemplary diplomat with decades of experience on the world stage keeping our people and our country safe and secure,"
Biden wrote in a statement. "He shares my profound belief that intelligence must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation deserve our gratitude and respect."
The
president-elect claimed that "Burns will bring the knowledge, judgment, and perspective we need to prevent and confront threats before they can reach our shores," and that "the American people will sleep soundly with him as our next CIA Director."
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris called Burns "a national security expert with decades of experience serving under Democratic and Republican presidents," adding that he "has a deep understanding of the global threats and challenges facing our country. He will lead the CIA with independence and integrity, always honoring our nation's intelligence professionals."
Burns, a 33-year State Department veteran, served as the U.S. ambassador to Jordan for former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and U.S. ambassador to Russia for Bush as well. He has a long relationship with Avril Haines, Biden's Director of National Intelligence appointee.CNN noted that Burns, then serving as deputy secretary of state, stood in for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a 2012 House hearing during the Benghazi investigation.
"We learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi," he testified at the time. "We are already acting on them. We have to do better. We owe it to our colleagues who lost their lives in Benghazi."
Comment: Not surprisingly, considering Biden's an anti-Russian warhawk, Burns is extremely antagonistic towards Russia. RT went into
even more detail in that regard:
In a 2017 op-ed published by the New York Times, the retired diplomat accused Russia of "aggressive" and "deeply troubling" election meddling. Burns predicted that Washington's relationship with Moscow will remain competitive and "often adversarial" for the foreseeable future, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking greater influence in the world "at the expense of an American-led order." He alleged that Russia is dreaming of a dominant position in global affairs unconstrained by "Western values and institutions."
He called on the US to focus on the conflict in Ukraine, predicting that the country's fate will determine the "future of Europe, and Russia, over the next generation."
Tellingly, he also dismissed the "superficially appealing notions" like cooperation against Islamic terrorism. He claimed that Russia's efforts to help the Syrian government defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) has made the terrorist threat "far worse."
His animosity towards Russia was again revealed in an interview with the Atlantic magazine in 2019. He told the outlet that Putin had been able to "sow chaos" in the United States by "acting like [a] good judo expert, which he is." According to Burns, the Russian leader took advantage of a "stronger opponent" by leveraging the "polarization and dysfunction" in the US political system.
Comment: Not surprisingly, considering Biden's an anti-Russian warhawk, Burns is extremely antagonistic towards Russia. RT went into even more detail in that regard: