CIA Director Dishes

From Gaza to Ukraine, Langley says what the Biden admin won’t

CIA Director Burns being interviewed on one of the ugliest couches I have ever seen

"In 40 years in public service in the United States, it's as complicated a moment as I've seen,” CIA director William Burns put it this weekend, elaborating about wars and hotspots, government intelligence assessments, and his views on national security.

America’s top spy was more candid about the globe than the President during a rare interview this weekend with the Financial Times. From Ukraine to Gaza, Burns provided blunt assessments that are sorely lacking today, both from the White House and the two major candidates for president.

It’s a pretty sad commentary on the state of our democracy that a literal spy is the person most willing to level with the American people about the pileup of crises overseas. The news media handled Burns’ views as a one-day story focused on him dissing Vladimir Putin for being “cocky.” But I watched the nearly hour-long interview more closely, and came away both surprised and angry. Surprised because he is so candid and revealed so much; and angry that this is so uncommon, with the rest of Washington getting away with the usual word salad that reveals nothing. 

Burns, rather than Kamala Harris, broke with the happy talk on Gaza, warning that the Biden administration’s oft-stated line that 90 percent of a ceasefire deal has already been agreed to didn’t tell the whole story.

“It is a fact that if you look at the written text, 90 percent of the paragraphs have been agreed to; but in any negotiation that I’ve been involved in, the last 10 percent is the last 10 percent for a reason: ‘cause it's the hardest part to do," Burns said. In this case, that last 10 percent happens to include the prisoner exchange — the heart of the entire deal!

When the White Houseat repeated their “90 percent” line in a press briefing last week and got push back from the media, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby replied, “you call that optimistic, I call that accurate,” pointing to “the immense amount of progress in the last few months…”

In sharp contrast to Kirby’s rhetoric, Burns said, “I cannot sit here today with all of you and say that we're going to succeed,” referring to the ceasefire negotiations.

Burns was similarly candid about Ukraine. He poured cold water on another rosy line of thought, that Putin’s control of Russia is uncertain. “I don't see any evidence today that Putin's grip on power is weakening,” Burns said. 

Simple declarative sentences like that should be the manner in which any top official addresses the public, instead of the Washington drivel that’s carefully constructed to say nothing. To be clear, I’m not saying Burns is some kind of hero. (To be honest, I don’t know much about him.) I’m saying that if even the official constrained by knowing every secret known to the U.S. government can speak like this, every official should.

Burns also offered this extraordinary admission about a brush with nuclear war the world may have had over Ukraine:

“None of us should take lightly the risks of escalation. There was a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of, you know, the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. I have never thought, however, and this is the view of my agency, that we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that.”

Most things nuclear are secret and opaque, and I’m a little worried that the word “intimidated” sounds awfully close to complacent, but this is the first official admission that there was even actual concern during that time period.

Burns also provides the most explicit praise of the Ukrainian offensive into Russia  — an indication of the administration’s support for it:

“The Kursk offensive is a significant tactical achievement. It’s not only been a boost in Ukrainian morale it has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin's Russia and of his military, much as Prigozhin’s short lived mutiny a little more than a year ago did as well. It did raise questions on the part of people we could see across the Russian elite about where [all of this is] headed.”

Returning to Gaza, the most politically sensitive issue today and one that has the whole country at loggerheads, Burn said something else we’re led to believe officials just can’t say: that the war on Hamas is futile if it doesn’t include a way to defeat the ideology underlying it. 

“I think what the Israeli military has succeeded in doing is severely degrading Hamas military capabilities over the last 11 months. The problem with the term that's sometimes used about destroying Hamas is that it is of course true that Hamas is a despicable terrorist organization, you can severely degrade their military capabilities. It's also a movement and an idea. and in my experience the only way you kill an idea, is with a better idea.”

One might ask how this “Burns doctrine” applies to the continuing American wars against ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, al Shabaab, the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other Islamist based fighters. But it certainly seems to challenge one of the most resilient (and losing) pillars of U.S. foreign policy.

On  China, Burns gets even more specific, revealing several facts that make clear how enormous the CIA’s focus on Beijing is as part of the U.S. pivot to Asia.

First, Burns discloses that China is the only country for which the Agency has an entire dedicated mission center. Second, he reveals that the Agency’s budget devoted to China has tripled in size in the last three years alone. Third, Burns says that  resources devoted to China account for 20 percent of Langley’s overall budget today. 

The Cold War with China is already here. Burns says of the China focus: “I can safely predict we will continue to do that over the next decade and beyond.” 

Burns’  remarks give you a sense of the awesome scale of the U.S. government’s realignment around China as the leading “threat.” That we are gearing up for the next Cold War would seem like something worth mentioning to the public at some point, with details conveyed in plain English instead of the high-flown rhetoric like “winning the century” and jargon like “pacing threat” and “near peer” this and that, which we usually get. 

That the head of an agency whose total budget is even a secret can, sitting on a couch, casually rattle off statistics about its spending levels, should really show you how much all the other officials who say nothing are short changing us. That includes the CIA, by the way.

— Edited by William M. Arkin