Political and Legislative
Top Spies Call President-Elect Biden’s Choice of CIA Director ‘a Great Pick’
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of career diplomat William Burns to be the next CIA director is drawing praise from veterans of the spy agency, who say the CIA will benefit from his deep foreign policy experience and his long relationship with Biden.
If confirmed by the Senate, Burns, who speaks both Arabic and Russian, would be the first career diplomat to lead the CIA, an agency with a paramilitary arm and a drone program that has often butted heads with the State Department. But the CIA also cooperates regularly with State, and Burns worked closely with agency operators as ambassador to Russia and Jordan.
“This is a great pick,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer who worked in the Middle East and against Russia. “He’s a titan of the foreign policy world, very well respected overseas, knows the intelligence community. Field officers really liked him.”
