MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
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 we went out to interview him this 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. 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 gray hair came from dealing with Vladimir Putin. I will note your hair is entirely gray as we sit...
WILLIAM BURNS: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...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?
BURNS: Oh, you know, 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, 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 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, you know, 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 there were...
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, you know, was the subject of pretty intense debate in the Congress - I spent, you know, hours with a 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 something that Putin's taking advantage of.
KELLY: The Middle East - who or what is blocking a ceasefire on 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.
I mean, and the thing that I always remember is that this is not just an abstraction. I mean, this is not just about brackets and negotiating tactics. 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 and 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 weeks.
KELLY: 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.
BURNS: No, it's just the only one that I was speaking to is on this one too. And, you know, 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: Oh, I think, you know, we're quite concerned, as has been, you know, 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, you know, we're very sharply focused as an agency on dealing with that threat, you know, supporting the FBI in the New Orleans case, whereas 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, you know, a large number of deaths in Moscow in a terrorist attack there and then Iran.
KELLY: 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?
BURNS: No. I mean, I think it's a complicated story in that 42-year-old's case of, you know, lots of other failures in his life apparently. So it's always hard to understand how people were 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.
KELLY: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUANDEWAN'S "BE GOOD TO ME")
KELLY: Part 1 of our exit interview with CIA Director Bill Burns. Elsewhere on today's program, he reflects on his four years at the helm.
BURNS: I've taken 84 trips overseas during that time, covered more than a million miles, and, you know, it's just deepened the pride that I have in the work of this agency.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUANDEWAN'S "BE GOOD TO ME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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