Q&A: CIA Chief on how the U.S. intel community handled Russia, China and Mideast

During his four years at the helm of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns has witnessed firsthand a dizzying number of international crises.

Early in his tenure, in the summer of 2021, he flew to Kabul to negotiate with the Taliban over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, later that year he went to Moscow to personally try to dissuade the Russian leadership from invading Ukraine. In 2022, he oversaw the operation that killed the leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri. After war broke out between Israel and Hamas in 2023, he became one of the highest-profile members of the Biden administration, shuttling back and forth to the region, trying to broker a ceasefire. Back at headquarters, he reoriented the CIA’s priorities and budget to focus on intelligence threats coming from China.

Now, that tenure is coming to an end. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated John Ratcliffe, a former Director of National Intelligence, to head the CIA. And as Burns prepares to leave office, the geopolitical landscape is still deeply volatile with the war in Gaza still raging, Russia about to enter its fourth year in Ukraine, and, in Burns’ own words, ISIS once again a “rising threat.”

In an exit interview in his office on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters this week, Burns gave All Things Considered his parting thoughts on all of these flashpoints, while reflecting on his time as one of America’s top spy chiefs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Mary Louise Kelly: You’re about to leave government service. Vladimir Putin is still running Russia, is marking a quarter century doing so and showing no signs he’s going anywhere. So, what’s your best advice to your successor on how to handle him?

William Burns: I’ve had a couple of conversations with my successor — with John Ratcliffe — and I’m not sure he needs my free advice, I think…

Kelly: But you must have picked up a tip or two along the way.

Burns: Yeah, 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, 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 Zelenskyy and 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.

Kelly: As CIA director, I know you don’t do policy, but you do assess what is working and what isn’t.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: Did the U.S. 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?

Burns: 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. And…

Kelly: But we’re in 2025. And they’re saying morale is low. They’re being decimated.

Burns: There are, but I mean, the most recent supplemental assistance package, which was the subject of pretty intense debate in the Congress… I spent 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 I think that’s provided, at least in terms of weapons and ammunition and equipment, 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 that manpower disadvantage is something that Putin’s taking advantage of.

Kelly: The Middle East. Who or what is blocking a ceasefire in Gaza at this point?

Burns: You know, at this point, I still think there’s a chance. I mean, 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 20. And I think the coordination with the new administration on this issue has been good. So, I think there’s a chance. And the thing that I always remember is that this is not just an abstraction. I mean, this is 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 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.

Kelly: You just said coordination on this issue, the Middle East, has been great with the incoming team, which suggests other issues it has perhaps been trickier?

Burns: No, it’s just the only one that I was speaking to is on this one, too. And that’s the one I’m most familiar with anyway, as well.

Kelly: 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?

Burns: I think we’re quite concerned, as has been [the] FBI about the rising threat posed by ISIS, especially ISIS-Khorasan based in South Asia.

Kelly: That’s how you would describe it? A rising threat?

Burns: 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 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 advance intelligence on plots we knew that ISIS was engaged in, and that resulted in a large number of deaths in Moscow in a terrorist attack there and in Iran.

Kelly: 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 U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis. How’s that going this time around? How would it compare to this time around?

Burns: Well, I’ve had a couple of conversations with my successor, at least 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 [the] CIA was capable of, just as they showed me what [the] 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 [the] CIA, but I think that’s what’s going to serve the American interests the best, too.

Kelly: 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 U.S. commander in chief suggested he believed Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence community. Did you, Bill Burns, ever figure out why?

Burns: 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.

Kelly: I’m just going to push you on this because you are a Russia expert and a past U.S. ambassador in Moscow. You never figured out why Donald Trump was so deferential to Vladimir Putin?

Burns: No, I mean, that’s not something… you know, I’ve commented on that in the past before I was back in government, but it’s not something I’m going to offer opinions on today.

Kelly: On China and the recent cyberattack by China in two U.S. 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.” Does this strike you as a new level of sophistication that they’re able to do this?

Burns: 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. The People’s Republic of China being one, the revolution in technology being a second, because its 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 [the] CIA for the China target across the whole CIA. It’s now about 20 percent of 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, unlike anything we’ve seen since the Industrial Revolution. What that means for us at [the] CIA, and has meant over the last four years, is that we have to begin to revolutionize the practice of intelligence.

Kelly: What do you have planned for the afternoon of January 20?

Burns: Probably sleep. I mean, there are lots of things that 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.