Former CIA Director William J. Burns Announces 'Diplomat Spy: A Memoir of Espionage in Revolutionary Times'
Former CIA Director William J. Burns is publishing Diplomat Spy: A Memoir of Espionage in Revolutionary Times, Random House announced June 3
The release date of Diplomat Spy has not yet been announced
Burns previously published another memoir, The Back Channel, which was lauded by Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton and moreFormer Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Burns is taking readers into the room where it happens.
The former diplomat, CIA director and Biden cabinet member is releasing a memoir, titled Diplomat Spy: A Memoir of Espionage in Revolutionary Times. Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced the news on Tuesday, June 3.
Using insight from Burns' four years in Langley, Va., Diplomat Spy will not only share the former CIA director's experience, but also 'a wider story about the revolution in intelligence and America's changing role in the world,' according to Random House.
The release date of the book has not yet been announced.
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According to Random House, the memoir will be 'a riveting firsthand account of dealing with the most difficult foreign adversaries in the most difficult crises, a candid look at the personal and professional pressures which come with espionage and a reflection on the future of intelligence at a time of rapid technological change and relentless attacks on public institutions.'
In Diplomat Spy, the former CIA director 'will bring the reader into the room where decisions are made, and into the often-shadowy world of espionage, to make the case that intelligence not only remains America's first line of defense, but that it's more important than ever,' the publisher said.
'It was a profound honor to lead the men and women of CIA,' Burns said in an official statement, 'and I hope in this new book to illuminate their remarkable service, and the crucial connection in this revolutionary new era between spycraft and statecraft.'
Throughout his career, Burns served six different presidents across party lines. Most recently, he headed the CIA — becoming the first career diplomat to do so — from 2021 until 2023, until he was elevated to a cabinet position.
In 2024, TIME magazine featured him on its list of 100 Most Influential People.
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Throughout the Biden administration, Burns 'served as a kind of diplomat-spy, asked by the White House not only to rethink the priorities of the CIA after two post-9/11 decades focused on counter-terrorism, but to take on a variety of sensitive missions in Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan and China, for which his three-and-a-half decades as a diplomat had prepared him,' Random House said in a press release.
Following his diplomatic career, Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014. He went on to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan international affairs think tank, from 2015 to 2021.
During his years at the think tank, he wrote his first memoir, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for its Renewal in 2020.
The memoir was praised by everyone from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton, who said that through The Back Channel, Burns 'provides another great act of public service by giving us a smart, plainspoken account of America's changing role in the world and the power and purpose of American diplomacy at its best.'
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And you certainly want younger Americans of high school and college age to learn Mandarin, so that as they become our leaders in the next couple of decades, they have a real good sense of the other big superpower. For the most part, Chinese students in the United States at the undergrad and grad level are observing our laws, and they're getting a taste of what a democratic society looks like, what true democracy is and they're learning how to think independently. I don't know what Secretary Rubio meant when he said we're going to aggressively revoke the visas of Chinese students. Are they going to revoke the visas of every member of the Communist Party? There are 99 million members of the Communist Party. Are we going to keep everybody out? I have enough confidence in our democracy that the Chinese will come here and be impressed by our country. And that many of them will want to stay and work for Google and Amazon and ChatGPT, and they'll make our country stronger, and some of them will go on to found tech companies that will employ Americans. I think it would be a major mistake to close the doors. Yes, we have to screen out the bad actors, but we're doing that, and that would be the difference I have with the Trump administration on this issue of Chinese students.
