Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

The Only Good CIA Director Is No CIA Director

Biden’s nominee for CIA director has gotten some relatively good press from some outlets on the “Left.” But William Burns will lead an agency that exists only to help impose U.S. imperialist rule around the world. Nothing’s going to change.

Sam Carliner

January 19, 2021
Facebook Twitter Share
Incoming CIA direct William Burns wears a suit and stares off camera, smiling slightly.
Image: AP/Kim Hong-Ji

On Monday, January 11, Joe Biden nominated former diplomat William Burns as his pick for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Burns, like most of Biden’s cabinet picks, was immediately praised throughout the bourgeois media. Surprisingly, even some news outlets more inclined to scrutinize intelligence agencies, such as Consortium News and CounterPunch, wrote pieces depicting Burns in a positive light.

Burns does seem to lack the blatant abundance of red flags that came with all of Biden’s other national security and foreign policy picks, such as Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken or Secretary of Defense nominee Lloyd Austin. Still, Burns will head the CIA, arguably the most brutal of the United States’s many violent intelligence agencies. No CIA head is worth feeling relieved over.

Burns has been a long-time advisor to Biden, serving as the Deputy Secretary of State to the Obama administration from 2011 to 2014. For all the talk of moving Biden left, his desire to surround himself with names from the Obama years shows that he stands by the policies of his time as Vice President, including mass surveillance programs and regime change throughout the Middle East.

Biden said that Burns “shares my profound belief that intelligence must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation deserve our gratitude and respect.”

Of course, intelligence is not apolitical. The CIA has always existed as a tool for U.S. regime change and psychological warfare. In using the term “apolitical,” Biden is likely referring to much of the infighting of intelligence communities that marked Trump’s time in office. Without the dysfunction of the Trump administration, the CIA and other intelligence agencies will likely have an easier time criminally subjecting the world to the desires of U.S. capital. Burns’s CIA will not be “apolitical” for the oppressed in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and any of the other regions where the CIA uses violence and manipulation to expand access to foreign markets.

You might also be interested in: Iran 1953: How the CIA Orchestrated an Imperialist Coup

Despite the celebration around Burns’s nomination, he poses a threat to the international working class like  other members of the incoming administration. With the well-documented threat of the CIA, leftists should remember that the only CIA worth a sigh of relief is one that’s been fully abolished.

Facebook Twitter Share

Sam Carliner

Sam Carliner is a socialist with a background in journalism. He mainly writes for Left Voice about US imperialism. He also tweets about imperialism as @saminthecan.

Guest Posts

“Angry, Terrified, and Excited”: A CUNY Adjunct Approaches A New Semester During Contract Bargaining

Adjuncts at CUNY are heading back to work without a new contract. One of these workers reflects on the poor conditions they will return to and their excitement to organize with their union for a better CUNY.

Red Labor Slate members running for NPC election in DSA 2023.

Red Labor’s 2023 Convention Slate: Toward an Independent, Working-Class Socialist Party and Programmatic Regroupment

The upcoming DSA National Convention is occurring at a crossroads for the organization. The Red Labor slate is running on a program of building an independent, working-class socialist political party.

Aaron Liu

July 27, 2023

Modi’s Far Right and Regional Crises Fuel Violence in Manipur, India

The conflict between the Kuki and Meitei ethnic groups in Manipur, India has led to displacements and deaths. Workers and struggling people from oppressed nationalities must unite against the warmongering bourgeois Indian state.

Aatish

July 27, 2023

Northeastern Grad Workers Organize for a Union Despite Harassment and Intimidation

In preparation for a union vote in September, graduate student workers at Northeastern University held a rally which defied intimidation from the administration and campus cops.

Tarang Saluja

July 26, 2023

MOST RECENT

Far Right Imposed Shutdown Represents Deeper Crises Only Workers Can Resolve

The United States is on the verge of a government shutdown. The fact that a minority far right in Congress has forced this, largely over disagreements with military spending, shows that the U.S. regime is in a historic crisis. Now more than ever, workers must intervene for their own interests.

Sam Carliner

September 29, 2023

Neither Trump nor Biden Represent the Interests of the Striking Workers

Donald Trump skipped the second GOP debate to go to Michigan to speak on the UAW strike. This, one day after Biden became the first U.S. president to walk a picket line, represents the on-going fight between the parties to win influence over the working class.

Enid Brain

September 29, 2023

The Deadliest Year for U.S.-Mexico Border Crossings Occurred during Biden’s Administration

The humanitarian crisis at the border was created by capitalism. Voting for a lesser evil won’t save the Latin American working class; it will take international, political and strategic solidarity across borders to build a combative immigrants’ rights movement.

Paul Ginestá

September 28, 2023

The Big Three Are Using Layoffs to Punish the UAW and Undermine the Strike

The Big Three are retaliating against the UAW by laying off thousands of its members at plants across the country. Defeating these attacks will require the self organization and mobilization of all the workers.

James Dennis Hoff

September 28, 2023