The diplomatic spy, by Shane Harris
Today’s must-read: Bill Burns has played an unusual role for a CIA director.
 

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“We’re no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical block,” CIA Director Bill Burns told Shane Harris.

(Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Michael A. McCoy / The New York Times / Redux.)

 

Bill Burns has spent much of his nearly four-decade career in government arguing about words. As he was packing up his office this week at CIA headquarters, the language of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which he had toiled over for the past 15 months, was at the top of his mind. If the parties agreed to the deal, as he was cautiously confident they would, Israeli hostages in Gaza would go free and Palestinians would receive vital humanitarian aid.

“In many ways, this [negotiation] was the hardest” of his long career, Burns told me.

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