Biden Picks Longtime Diplomat William Burns to Head CIA

(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Joe Biden Monday named Ambassador William J. Burns to be his CIA director.

Burns, 64, a longtime diplomat, is currently the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served as deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama.

The appointment comes as both Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns about the politicization of the U.S. intelligence apparatus and as many of America’s most important diplomatic relationships have come under strain from President Donald Trump’s “America first” foreign policy.

In a statement, Biden said Burns “shares my profound belief that intelligence must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation deserve our gratitude and respect.”

Burns joined the State Department in 1982. He served as ambassador to Russia during President George W. Bush’s tenure and has also served as ambassador to Jordan. Burns later served as under secretary of state for political affairs, before being appointed deputy secretary of state in 2011.

During his time at the State Department, Burns won acclaim for his research and cable-writing abilities after Wikileaks released a thousands of State Department dispatches in 2010. In one dispatch, Burns described a wedding in Chechnya attended by the region’s president who danced “with his gold-plated automatic stuck down the back of his jeans.”

When Burns retired from the State Department in 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry described him as “a statesman cut from the same cloth, caliber, and contribution as George Kennan and Chip Bohlen,” two legendary U.S. diplomats during the Cold War.

Burns was widely tipped as a possible Secretary of State during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run, as well as a potential choice for Biden’s top diplomat.

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