Consider This from NPR - Keeping America Safe: CIA Director Burns reflects

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

On a shelf in his office at CIA headquarters, Director Bill Burns keeps a tiny scaled model of a house. It's the house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where Al Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2022. When NPR went out to interview him last week, Burns pointed to the exact balcony on which Zawahiri was standing. There was pride in his voice. The CIA had never stopped looking for the guy even more than two decades after 9/11. But it was also a reminder of challenges, of adversaries that will outlast any single CIA director.Now, as Burns wraps up four years running the Central Intelligence Agency, the challenges have multiplied and intensified.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.orgEmail us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Shortly after he took over as CIA director, I sat down with Bill Burns in his office at CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia and asked him this question. What keeps you awake at night? Oh, one thing I've learned, especially in this job over the last four months, that there's a certain amount of interrupted sleep that comes with the job or comes with the territory. The honest answer is people. When I caught up with him last week, same office, four years later, I wanted to know if the answer to that question had changed. You know, I have a lot of colleagues who are doing really hard jobs in really hard places

right now, and I can't make risk go away. It hasn't. And every morning I walk by our memorial wall, you know, in the lobby of headquarters with 140 stars on the wall, which are a vivid reminder of the sacrifices that CIA officers make. And so that's something that is bound to keep me up at night. In the time Burns has served as chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, the threats to his colleagues and to the country have increased, intensified. Russia invaded Ukraine.

Hamas attacked Israel. Israel responded. And the conflict has since destabilized large parts of the Middle East. China continues to challenge the U.S. in a myriad of ways. And a 42-year-old man, inspired by ISIS, committed an act of domestic terrorism in New Orleans. Consider this. Bill Burns is finishing up his tenure as CIA director, but the threats to America continue. Coming up, he reflects on the challenges he's navigated and what might await his successor.

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Every weekday, Up First gives you the news you need to start your day. On the Sunday story from Up First, we slow down. We bring you the best reporting from NPR journalists around the world, all in one major story, 30 minutes or less. Join me every Sunday on the Up First podcast to sit down with the biggest stories from NPR. For every headline, there's also another story about the people living those headlines.

On weekdays, Up First brings you the day's biggest news. On Sundays, we bring you closer with a single story about the people, places, and moments reshaping our world. Your news made personal. Every Sunday on the Up First Podcast from NPR. On a shelf in his office at CIA headquarters, director Bill Burns keeps a tiny, scaled model of a house. It's the house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda leader Aiman al-Zawahiri was killed by a US drone strike in 2022.

When we went out to interview him last week, Burns pointed to the exact balcony on which Sawahiri was standing. There was pride in his voice. The CIA had never stopped looking for the guy, even more than two decades after 9-11. But it was also a reminder of challenges, of adversaries that will outlast any single CIA director. As Burns wraps up four years running the central intelligence agency, I wanted to ask about some of them, starting with Russia and Vladimir Putin. I know you're fond of joking that most of your grey hair came from dealing with Vladimir Putin. I will note your hair is entirely grey as we sit and speak today.

You're about to leave government service. Vladimir Putin is still running Russia, is marking a quarter century doing so and shows no signs he's going anywhere. So what's your best advice to your successor for how to handle him? Oh, you know, I've had a couple of conversations with my successor, which on Radcliffe, and I'm not sure he needs my free advice. But you must have picked up a tip or two along the way. Yeah, no, I certainly have in my long experience dealing with and interacting with Putin. I mean, I think he's a big believer in control and intimidation.

He's deeply suspicious of people around him and always looking for vulnerabilities that he can take advantage of. And so, you know, as the new administration thinks about the prospect of negotiations over Ukraine in this year, in 2025, the issue I think is going to be how do you help President Zelensky in Ukraine sustain enough leverage to ensure that those negotiations are not just on Putin's terms? And how do you continue to inflict costs on Russia so that Putin understands that time is not necessarily on his side, which is what I think he believes today.

As CIA director, I know you don't do policy, but you do assess what is working and what isn't. Yes. Did the US hold back too much in an effort not to antagonize Russia in terms of weapons it supplied, in terms of limits on what Ukraine could do with them? I don't think so. I mean, I think there were some very careful choices that the president made over the course of this that enabled the Ukrainians not just to hold the line, but also to make some significant advances against the Russians,

especially in 2022. But we're in 2025 and they're saying morale is low, they're being decimated. There are, but I mean, the most recent supplemental assistance package, which, you know, was the subject of pretty intense debate in the Congress. I spent, you know, hours with the new speaker of the house talking to him about my experience on all those travels to Ukraine and what was at stake. And, you know, I think that's provided at least in terms of, you know, weapons and ammunition and equipment, you know, a boost for the Ukrainians too. But they do face a huge manpower challenge. It's not a question of their courage or tenacity, which I don't doubt for a minute.

But you know, that manpower disadvantage is,power disadvantage is something that Putin's taking advantage of. The Middle East. Who is blocking a ceasefire on Gaza at this point? At this point, I still think there's a chance. I've learned the hard way not to get my hopes up. I do think there remains a chance to get a deal and we'll certainly in this administration work very hard at that right up until January 20th. And I think the coordination with the new administration

on this issue has been good. So I think there's a chance. I mean, and the thing that I always remember is that this is not just an abstraction. I mean, it's not just about brackets in negotiating texts, it's about human beings. It's about hostages held in hellish conditions. It's about their families with whom I meet regularly. And it's about Gazan civilians who are also in hellish conditions right now and

suffering terribly, especially through this winter. So there's every reason for political leaders to recognize that enough is enough, that perfect is rarely on the menu in the Middle East, and that, you know, it's time to make a deal. And I do think the negotiations that are going on right now are quite serious and do offer the possibility, at least, of getting this done in the next couple of weeks. in the next couple of weeks. You just said coordination on this issue, the Middle East, has been great with the incoming team, which suggests other issues that has perhaps been trickier? No, it's just the only one that I was speaking to is on this one too. And yeah, that's the one I'm most familiar with anyway as well. ISIS, which I was not expecting to come in and ask you about in 2025, but we have a terror attack, a horrible terror attack in New Orleans last week, which is raising fresh questions. The man who drove that truck into the crowd had an Islamic state flag on his vehicle.

The FBI says he posted videos proclaiming support for ISIS. What is the state of ISIS? Well, I think, you know, we're quite're quite concerned, as has been FBI, about the rising threat posed by ISIS, especially ISIS Horizon based in South Asia. That's how you would describe it, a rising threat? A rising threat, yeah. We can see the external plotting that that particular branch of ISIS is engaged in. And we're very sharply focused as an agency on dealing with that threat, supporting the FBI in the New Orleans case, where as the FBI has said publicly,

their belief is that the man who perpetrated that horrific act was inspired by ISIS but operated alone. But we're quite concerned about other instances in which, you know, ISIS is doing external plotting. I mean, last summer we shared intelligence with our Austrian counterparts that helped protect tens of thousands of concertgoers at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna and resulted in the arrest of four ISIS operatives. We also, under the duty to warn that we operate under, provided the Russians and the Iranians with advanced intelligence on plots we knew that ISIS was engaged in and that resulted in a large number of deaths in Moscow and a terrorist attack there and in Iran. So there are all these efforts and yet ISIS is still able to reach, still able to inspire a 42 year old realtor in Houston.

Do you have any visibility into how? No, I mean, I think it's a complicated story in that 42 year old case of, you know, lots of other failures in his life, apparently. So it's always hard to understand how people are inspired, but the danger that, you know, ISIS can pose, even if it's not involved in the actual plotting or carrying out of an act, through its ability to inspire people is a significant threat. No. One or two on China and the recent cyber attack by China into US phone companies, the salt typhoon attack. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who chairs the Intelligence Committee has called it, and I quote, the worst telecom hack

in our nation's history by far, is it? Oh, I have great respect for Senator Warner and I think he's right. I'll highlight the seriousness of this concern. It's something that we're still in the process of, you know, understanding the breadth of it as well. It's a reminder not to underestimate the Chinese services and their determination in the case of salt Typhoon and us telecom companies, but also what's called

vault Typhoon, which was an effort to penetrate critical infrastructure. And so, you know, it's not in our interest to underestimate Chinese capability or determination on these issues. Is it the start of something new? Would you describe this? Because China, I think it's fair to say, has been seen as active in cyber attacks, but messier than some other actors, not the most sophisticated. Does this strike you as a new level of sophistication that they're able to do this? This is pretty sophisticated, yeah.

And it's a reminder of what they're capable of. And it's a further reminder of one of the most significant priorities in this agency over the last four years, which has been to invest in long-term priorities, People's Republic of China being one, the revolution in technology being a second, because it's technology that's the main arena for competition with China. So we formed a new China mission center, the only single country mission center that we have at this agency. We've tripled the budget at CIA for the China target across the whole CIA. It's now about 20% to the overall CIA budget. So it's a reflection of the fact that we realize the challenge ahead. And this is one of those moments of, I think,

revolutionary change on the international landscape with intense major power competition with China and with Russia, but also a revolution in technology and like anything we've seen since the Industrial Revolution. What that means for us at CIA and has meant over the last four years is that we have to begin to revolutionize the practice of intelligence. So I do want to ask about the transition because the last time this particular president-elect transitioned in, Donald Trump had spent the campaign ridiculing and attacking the leaders of the intelligence community. He was sworn into office having just compared US intelligence agencies to Nazis. How's that going this time around? How would it compare to this time around?

Well, I've had a couple of conversations with my successor, at least the, you know, the CIA director designee, John Ratcliffe, and I promised him that we would ensure the smoothest possible transition here. I stressed to him that this is an apolitical institution, that I was confident that my colleagues here, for whom I have the deepest respect and admiration, would show him what CIA was capable of, just as they showed me

what CIA is capable of. And so we'll continue to work hard at that because that's not only what I owe the women and men of CIA, but I think that's what's going to serve the American interests the best too. I mean, I'm asking in part because the relationship, if anything, deteriorated from there and led to the famous moment in Helsinki where the US commander-in-chief

suggested he believed Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence community. Did you, Bill Burns, ever figure out why? No, I didn't figure out why. And my hope, at least, is that in this new administration that people will understand the significance of good intelligence for any national security goals that the new administration wants to set and to understand the reality that this is an apolitical institution, made up of men and women who are patriotic, who are deeply committed to the best interests of this country.

And if you trust them and respect them, they'll produce amazing things. I'm just gonna push you on this because you are a Russia expert and a past US ambassador in Moscow. You never figured out why Donald Trump was so deferential to Vladimir Putin. No, I mean, that's not something in, I've commented on that in the past before I was back in

government but it's not something I'm gonna offer opinions about today. Okay. On briefings, has Trump asked for daily intelligence briefings? Is he getting them? There have been. I mean these are these are you know managed by the Director of National Intelligence by my friend Avril Haynes and there have been several briefings and certainly CIA officers contribute to them. Same format as Joe Biden gets? Same in terms of the PDB at least, the President's Daily Brief, which is what's the basis for the briefings for President-elect Trump as well.

And you mentioned John Ratcliffe, who if confirmed by the Senate, will succeed you in this office on the seventh floor of headquarters. What have your conversations with him been like? Oh, very straightforward. I think he's been curious about what's transpired in the intelligence community since he was the director of national intelligence in the last year of the first Trump administration. And very focused on what our priorities have been, especially on China and on technology issues as well. And I look forward to further conversations with him before the 20th of January.

What do you have planned for the afternoon of January 20th? No, probably sleep. I mean, there are lots of things that, you know, I haven't done over the last four years. I have three wonderful brothers and we had a tradition for 20 years of going to the first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament in March. And so this year I'm determined to actually get there with the three of them. There we go. From the CIA to March Madness. That's true.

Bill Burns. For a few more days, he is director of the CIA. Nice to see you there, Obies. Thank you very much. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and Mark Rivers. It was edited by Ashley Brown and Courtney Dornig. Our executive producer is Sammy Yennegan. It's Consider This from NPR.

I'm Mary Louise Kelly.