Many career diplomats travel the world for years, but few continue to do so in retirement as heads of intelligence agencies.
Such is the career path of the current director of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), William Burns, who has been cruising the planet for three years, and in the past few days he was also in the Balkans.
In the so-called unannounced visit, this 68-year-old visited Sarajevo, Belgrade and Pristina, and the local media reported on it almost immediately.
When CIA chief John Deutsch was in Sarajevo in 1996. probably due to the participation of Mujahideen fighters in the war in Bosnia, the news of the arrival was announced three days later.
Burns' tour is not unusual, says David Kanin, a senior CIA analyst who was in charge of the Balkans in the 1990s.
"His job as head of the CIA is less important than his status as a confidential and important figure in US President Joseph Biden's foreign policy team.
"The administration wants to achieve some success in foreign policy before the end of the mandate in January or maybe even before the elections," Kanin said in a written statement for the BBC in Serbian.
In June 2023, Biden promoted Burns to a member of his cabinet.
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"We are the first line of national defense. We achieve what others do not and we go where others cannot," it says on the official website on behalf of the CIA on the social network Iks.
In this, the outlines of Burns' biography are depicted.
When he was appointed head of the CIA in March 2021, he became the first career diplomat to take that position, writes in official biography.
"Burns' rise is an almost incredible reversal for a tall, discreet figure with wary eyes, ashen hair and a scraggly moustache, the kind you might easily imagine in a John le Carré novel whispering into the ear of an official at an embassy party that the city is falling to the rebels and that he will boat waiting in the harbor at midnight," wrote Robert Draper in the New York Times.
The same newspaper also announced that in less than two years of mandate, he was abroad about thirty times.
He visited Israel, Palestine, China, Ukraine, Turkey, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many other crisis or important countries.
"As director of the CIA, he answers directly and only to the president.
"It gives him a high level of credibility with world officials," said Shane Harris, who covers security at the Washington Post.
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What was he doing in the Balkans?
It is known that he met with officials in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Pristina.
Washington continues to push well-known positions on Bosnia and Kosovo at the same time as it tries again to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza, assesses Kanin.
"There is nothing new here, and I don't expect anything to emerge from what I consider rather stale American diplomacy in both the Balkans and the Middle East," adds this experienced intelligence officer.
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
Burns first visited Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he arrived on August 20.
He met with the director of the BiH Intelligence and Security Agency, Almir Džuv, and then with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Elmedin Konaković.
After the meeting, Konaković called Burns one of the "most important people of the American administration", as well as "a man with rich experience and excellent knowledge of the region", Sarajevo's Oslobođenje reported.
He assessed the CIA director's visit as "important", stressing that it shows that America "continues to keep Bosnia and Herzegovina at the top of their priorities", which "means a lot" to the people of Bosnia.
This "confirmation of devoted friendship and commitment", he stated, "is a clear message to everyone that America is there to protect and support the territorial integrity, sovereignty and prosperity" of Bosnia.
And it was precisely this construction about the "integrity and sovereignty" of BiH that could most often be heard during Burns's visit to Sarajevo.
Especially after the meeting with the members of the BiH Presidency, including Željko Cvijanović, the representative of Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Cvijanović is on the US blacklist precisely because of threats to the "integrity and sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina", as well as the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995, which ended the war.
As one of the topics of Burns' meetings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, referring to sources from the US government, N1 and Radio Free Europe state "the worrying secessionist rhetoric and actions of the President of the Republic of Srpska Milorad Dodik and the Government of the Republic of Srpska".
Dodik, who for years has often threatened the secession of Republika Srpska, has also been under US sanctions for a long time due to "undermining legitimacy, peace and suspicions of involvement in illegal affairs and corruption".
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Although he said in May that "Serbian people can no longer live in Bosnia and Herzegovina" and announced an agreement on peaceful delimitation, Dodik's tone after Burns' visit was much softer.
On X, he wrote that Republika Srpska "never disputed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in accordance with the Dayton Agreement", and that "secession was never our policy".
"BiH is a union of two equal entities and three constitutive peoples, therefore Burns' position that the responsibility for the functioning of the country rests on all ethnic communities is encouraging."
He also called the visit of the head of the CIA "significant", emphasizing the fight against terrorism which is "the obligation of the entire free world", and to which "Republika Srpska is dedicated and welcomes any cooperation in this area".
It is not uncommon for the head of the CIA to come to Sarajevo in recent years.
CEO John Brennan was in Sarajevo in 2016. when he met with colleagues from intelligence agencies, as well as with members of the BiH Presidency.
One of his predecessors, Michael Hayden, also came in 2007, and David Petraeus also visited, but as a former director of the CIA.
- Serbia
Unlike BiH, visits to Belgrade, if there were any, are regularly kept secret.
And this time, when Burns arrived in Serbia, there were no official announcements.
"We had a useful, polite and important meeting," said President Aleksandar Vučić about the CIA chief's visit.
Answering the BBC's question in Serbian, he added, without going into details, that the topics were "important for the future of Serbia".
The media previously reported that Burns was hosted in Belgrade by the Security and Information Agency (BIA) and director Vladimir Orlić.
Orlić did not advertise, and neither did the BIA.
The topics with the Serbian officials were more political than intelligence and Kosovo was mostly discussed at the meetings, the BBC has learned unofficially.
- Kosovo
Kosovo was the last destination of this Berns tour.
In Pristina on August 22, he met with Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani and the head of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency (KIA) Petrita Ajeti.
Osmani also published a photo with him.
"The alliance with the USA is a guarantee of security, peace and success," Osmani wrote on Facebook, adding that it was her pleasure to welcome Burns to Kosovo.
He publicly thanked him for his support to Kosovo Prime Minister Aljbin Kurti, also with photos from, as he wrote, a "strategically important meeting".
Who is William Burns
- He was born in 1956 in the American state of North Carolina, as the son of a decorated American army general who fought in Vietnam.
- He holds a BA in History from La Salle University, and a MA and PhD in International Relations from Oxford University, as a Marshall Fund Scholar.
- Burns' career as a diplomat and intelligence officer coincides with the administrations of six American presidents from both Democrats and Republicans, as it spans nearly four decades.
- He served as the US Ambassador to Jordan from 1998-2001. and in Russia in 2005-2008. year.
- He was only the second diplomat in history to hold the position of Deputy Secretary of State from 2011 to 2014.
- He speaks Russian, French and Arabic.
- And his wife Liza Carti, with whom he has two daughters, is his colleague - ambassador.
- The only blemish in an almost flawless career, marked by praise and recognition, was that Burns was seeing a financial consultant. Jeffrey Epstein, later convicted of sexual abuse of minors. "I'm sorry I didn't do my homework first," he would later say.
- He also wrote a memoir in 2019. The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal.
"Burns is well-respected for his professional and intelligence skills and will likely continue (his career) at a high level if Kamala Harris becomes president."
"But, in my opinion, too much can be read into his visit to the Balkans," concludes the CIA veteran.
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