Biden taps longtime diplomat Burns to lead CIA

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns attends a press conference in Tripoli, Libya, April 24, 2014. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)(zhf)

"The CIA and America's other national security institutions have to reimagine their roles on an international landscape that's profoundly different from the world I encountered as a young diplomat nearly 40 years ago," says William Burns.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President-elect Joe Biden announced Monday that he has picked William Burns, a longtime diplomat serving in the State Department, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

"I'm asking Ambassador Bill Burns to lead the Central Intelligence Agency because he's dealt with many of the thorniest global challenges we face," Biden said on Twitter. "As a legendary career diplomat, he approached complex issues with honesty, integrity and skill. That's exactly how he'll lead the CIA."

Burns "shares my profound belief that intelligence must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation deserve our gratitude and respect," the president-elect said in a separate statement.

"The CIA and America's other national security institutions have to reimagine their roles on an international landscape that's profoundly different from the world I encountered as a young diplomat nearly 40 years ago," said Burns, who was U.S. deputy secretary of state from 2011 to 2014.

Libya's First Deputy President of the General National Congress Ezzedine Muhammad Yunus Awami (R) meets with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns in Tripoli, Libya, April 23, 2014. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)

"It's a world in which we face familiar threats, like terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but it's also a world in which climate change and global health security are increasingly powerful challenges, and a world in which cyber threats are only going to grow more significant," said the 64-year-old who served in the U.S. foreign service for 33 years under five presidents and 10 secretaries of state in a variety of posts.

After retiring from public servant in 2014, Burns became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.

If confirmed by the Senate, Burns will be the first director of the CIA whose entire public career was spent in the diplomatic arena.

While Biden-appointees are expected to have relatively easy confirmation processes in the Democratic-controlled Senate in the new Congress, it is possible that senators will grill Burns on his role in the 2012 terrorist attack on U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, which killed then U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and other senior U.S. diplomats.