WASHINGTON (Reuters) -William Burns, former CIA director and veteran U.S. diplomat, on Wednesday issued a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers, saying they are aimed at stifling dissenting views and will harm U.S. security.
“Under the guise of reform, you all got caught in the crossfire of a retribution campaign – of a war on public service and expertise,” Burns wrote in a “Letter to America’s Discarded Public Servants” published in The Atlantic magazine.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Burns was CIA director under Democratic former President Joe Biden, and a foreign service officer. He served three Democratic and three Republican presidents. His career included stints as U.S. ambassador to Russia and deputy secretary of State.
Taking aim at U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping purge of federal workers, including State Department staff and U.S. intelligence officers, Burns said that civil servants recognize the need for serious government reforms.
“But there is a smart way and a dumb way to tackle reform, a humane way and an intentionally traumatizing way,” he said. “This is not about reform. It’s about retribution. It’s about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government.”
“That’s what autocrats do,” Burns said. “They cow public servants into submission, and in doing so, they create a closed system that is free of opposing views and inconvenient concerns.”
Burns cited Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “foolish decision” to launch his February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine as an example of how an absence of dissenting policy views led to “catastrophic” results for the Kremlin.
The threat to the U.S. “is not from an imaginary ‘deep state’ bent on” undermining Trump, he wrote, but “a weak state…no longer able to uphold the guardrails of our democracy or help the United States compete in an unforgiving world.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by David Gregorio)
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