It could be a news quiz question like the weekly New York Times quiz, or even the script for one of TV’s breathtaking political thrillers.

There is one US official who has made dozens of trips abroad over the past two years, mostly out of the public eye, on some of the hottest fronts on the planet… Ukraine And Afghanistan as of Chinaand from Russia How territories of Palestine And Libya. He is not a minister or chief adviser White House. But he seems to be a man for difficult missions. He speaks Russian and Arabic, as well as English and French. And he has a long diplomatic career spanning decades, and was also in Greece recently (May 2023) for contacts.

67-year-old William Burns, its director CIA United States since March 2021, in recent years has been going “where there is fire”, but traveling unnoticed by the public in a (probable) role as a “firefighter”, crisis manager, messenger or negotiator.

Olivier Knox of The Washington Post singles out such visits as those of her director. CIA in recent years: in Afghanistan (in April and August 2021), in Russia (in November 2021), in Israel and in the Palestinian territories (in August 2021 and January 2023), in Germany (in January 2022), in Ukraine (in January and November 2022, as well as in January 2023), in Saudi Arabia (in April 2022 and April 2023), in Türkiye (in November 2022), in Libya (in January 2023), Egypt (in January 2023), Greece (in May 2023) and China (also in May 2023).

William (Bill) Burns “often performs undercover assignments abroad”. […] as one of Joe Biden’s most confidantes,” writes the Financial Times amid the CIA director’s latest “secret” trip to China. Burns, 67, in May became the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit Beijing.

“Last month, Burns traveled to Beijing where he met with his Chinese counterparts (including those in Chinese intelligence), to whom he stressed the importance of keeping lines of communication open,” a U.S. official told the FT, referring to the trip, which is said to in order to return Sino-American relations to the framework of stability and … warming. And we say “rumored” because the CIA has not officially commented on this, and the identity/character of the officials with whom the US CIA director negotiated in the Chinese capital last month is unknown.

This, of course, was not William Burns’ first secret mission abroad. Rather, it was added to a long line of other covert operations that we learn about (when we learn) always after the fact and not completely.

Back in December 2021, the Financial Times wrote that “Joe Biden turns to the US intelligence chief for tough challenges,” even emphasizing that Bill Burns “is the first career diplomat in history to lead the CIA.” “Joe Biden is using Burns in missions that blur the lines between diplomacy and intelligence,” read the article, written in late 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, against the backdrop of Burns’ visits to Afghanistan (from which U.S. troops are withdrawing) and Moscow. In fact, according to this publication, on these overseas missions assigned to him by Biden, Burns acted “in a manner that some say is unprecedented for a CIA chief.”

What initially seemed unprecedented was now, almost three years later, the new normal, with the director of the CIA making frequent — mostly secret — trips abroad where they could not or diplomatically “should not” go. others are more prominent or “official” institutionally American officials.

The New York Times recently reported that Burns has made more than 30 trips abroad since taking over the reins of the US Central Intelligence Agency about two years ago.

As part of his travels, the 67-year-old met people that other US officials would not have been able to meet with the same “comfort”, such as the de facto leader of the Taliban, Abdul Ghani Baradarin 2021, or Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman in April 2022 in Jeddah (a few months before Biden’s meeting with Salman in July of that year), or the head of Russian intelligence Sergei Naryskin in Turkey in November 2022. However, in the context of these contacts, Burns also had the opportunity to assess the course of events, identify risks, and prepare the American side (and the West more broadly) for what comes next.

The head of the CIA was, for example, in Moscow in November 2021, a few months before the Russians invaded Ukraine, to meet with Yuri Ushakov, former Russian ambassador to the United States and foreign policy adviser to President Putin. “My level of concern has increased, not decreased,” he reportedly told Biden after that meeting… effectively predicting a Russian invasion.

However, even in times of greatest crisis, Burns emphasizes (he even stated publicly on CBS’s Facing the Nation last February) that it is important to keep lines of communication open.

Having worked for some 30 years in the diplomatic corps (30 years during which he served, among other things, as the US ambassador to Russia and Jordan before taking up the duties of Deputy Secretary of State in Washington), William Burns remains in one sense a “diplomat”, although now director of the CIA himself. After all, intelligence services are, among other things, a channel of communication between countries, a US official said in a Washington Post commentary in an attempt to explain Burns’ many covert missions abroad.

“As director of the CIA, William Burns reports directly only to the President of the United States, and this gives him a great degree of trust in foreign officials,” explains, however, American journalist Shane Harris, emphasizing something else: that many already know Burns, in particular . “Burns has spent his entire career,” continues Harris, “meeting people, talking to them, listening to them and, if necessary, passing messages to them,” which he apparently continues to do…but sometimes to the chagrin of those who want to get annoyed

Tellingly (in this case, Turkish) irritation: today’s front page of the Hurriyet newspaper, the central issue of which is the officially unconfirmed visit of the CIA director last month (not only to Athens, but also to … Alexandroupolis…