Biden nominates former diplomat CIA director Burns

-U.S. President-elect Joe Biden nominated William Burns (65, photo) as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the 11th. Nominee Burns is a veteran diplomat who has worked for the US State Department for over 30 years. Once nominee Burns passes Senate approval, he becomes the first CIA director to be a career diplomat.

US media such as CNN announced that former Deputy Minister Burns was appointed as the first CIA director of the Biden administration. “Burns is an exemplary diplomat who has kept the United States and our people safe while working on the world stage for decades,” said Biden-elect. “He shares my belief that intelligence agencies should be non-political.” He also said, “When (Nominee Burns) becomes the new CIA director, Americans will be able to sleep comfortably. President-elect Biden emphasized his intention to take a different path from President Donald Trump, who faced criticism of privatizing the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) throughout his administration. Biden hopes that nominee Burns will play a role in erasing the CIA’s dark history of torture and other acts.

CNN said that Biden had nominated him because he judged that he was the right person to restore his long diplomatic experience and confidence in the intelligence agency in the post-Trump era. Burns, who began public service at the State Department in 1982, worked for the State Department for 32 years until 2014. During the presidency of George W. Bush, he served as Russian ambassador. He is known to be fluent in Russian and Arabic French.

Born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina in 1956, Nominee Burns graduated from La Salle University in Pennsylvania and studied international relations at Oxford University in England. After joining the State Department in 1982, he served as the Jordanian ambassador, served as Deputy Secretary of State during the Barack Obama administration, and made a relationship with Biden-elect, then Vice President. He visited Korea as an assistant to President Obama in 2013, and after retiring in 2014, he served as the chairman of the Carnegie International Peace Foundation, a think tank specializing in international relations. In August of last year, three months before the US presidential election, he warned early about the possibility of President Trump’s dissatisfaction with the presidential election through a contribution to the current news media Atlantic. At the time, he predicted that “a very dangerous situation could arise when President Trump, who lost the presidential election, does not accept it.”Go to reporter page>