Talk:William J. Burns (diplomat)

message: Here is the official bio from the us embassy moscow page. Bio Hopefully this will serve as a good enough starting point.
Ambassador William Joseph Burns, of the District of Columbia, is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, with the rank of Career Minister. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Ambassador to the Russian Federation on July 29, 2005. Ambassador Burns served from 2001 until 2005 as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and was Ambassador to Jordan from 1998 until 2001.
Ambassador Burns has also served in a number of other posts since entering the Foreign Service in 1982, including: Executive Secretary of the State Department and Special Assistant to the Secretary of State; Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow; Acting Director and Principal Deputy Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff; and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council staff.
Ambassador Burns earned a B.A. in History from LaSalle University and M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees in International Relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar. He is the recipient of three honorary doctoral degrees. Ambassador Burns is the author of Economic Aid and American Policy Toward Egypt, 1955-1981 (State University of New York Press, l985). He speaks Russian, Arabic, and French, and is the recipient of two Presidential Distinguished Service Awards and a number of Department of State awards, including two Distinguished Honor Awards, the Robert C. Frasure Award, the James Clement Dunn Award, and five Superior Honor awards. In 1994, he was named to TIME Magazine's list of the "50 Most Promising American Leaders Under Age 40", and to TIME's list of "100 Young Global Leaders."
Ambassador Burns and his wife, Lisa Carty, have two daughters.
--Jowe 06:30, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Would it be appropriate to add a footnote to the sentence about the cable describing the Dagestani wedding linking to the cable itself, from wikieaks? We should not of course put it into Wikipedia, but is it against policy to link to confidential (but published) information? 92.251.255.13 (talk) 21:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to the Dagestan cable? 

message: The sidebar mentions that he was acting Secretary of State for a day.  This seems notable/some explanation in the article might be helpful.  -KaJunl (talk) 13:26, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: , judging by the dates in which he reportedly served as Acting Secretary of State (January 20-21, 2009, the first two days of the Obama Administration), and the fact that his service as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs overlapped the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, he was the highest-ranking official at the State Department following the resignations of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary John Negroponte, pending Senate confirmation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, although we should find a reliable source to officially confirm that.--TommyBoy (talk) 03:07, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secretary of State 

message: It seems to me that per WP:COMMONNAME this article title should be William J. Burns or William Burns, however I'm not sure how we would disambiguate from the other ones as "diplomat" doesn't seem to do the job now that he's been nominated as CIA director. Does anyone have any ideas? Connormah (talk) 02:46, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Pinging    as you might have an interest in this. Connormah (talk) 07:20, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , my impulse would be "William Burns (diplomat)" since that's been 90% of his career, but "William Burns (CIA)" is probably what he'll ultimately be most known for. Either is probably better than the current title. Therequiembellishere (talk) 20:15, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  - Is there any term that might encapsulate both? My first thought might be "public servant" but I'm not sure if that is an entirely accurate descriptor. Connormah (talk) 19:06, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I like that, unless others have thoughts. He's definitely not a civil servant since he's exclusively been a political appointee, so public servant sounds good. Therequiembellishere (talk) 19:08, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Public servant is fine, but the previous comment is incorrect.  Burns was a career Foreign Service Officer. NPguy (talk) 22:08, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article title/disambiguation  

message: There's a paragraph about "A cable that Burns signed as ambassador to Russia."  The implication appears to be that Burns wrote the cable.  That is almost certainly not the case.  Every cable released from a U.S. Embassy is officially signed by the Ambassador, if there is one, but Ambassadors almost never write the cables themselves.  My recommendation is to delete the paragraph as misleading and, as a commentary on Burns, not notable. NPguy (talk) 03:45, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Where does it say that Burns was at the wedding?  Another assertion that seems unlikely.  The cable uses the anonymous "we" and does not refer to him. NPguy (talk) 22:20, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The sources we have say so. And as per Wikipedia:Verifiability, that is all that matters. I added Burns′ comment on that for balance and he does not say he was not there, moreover he acknowledges his co-authorship. The bit is notable if only because it has become famous, after it was leaked. Whoever the authors are, the text (the way the incident is described) is remarkable in its naïveté of their interpretation (buying the obvious subterfuge of the FSB colonel "being dead drunk").Axxxion (talk) 23:13, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The sources I can open still do not say he wrote the cable. Indeed the new one (which seems to barely support notability) largely says the opposite. I have been unable to open the Der Spiegel article, so perhaps you can supply a relevant excerpt. If your point is that the cable's authors didn't recognize that they were being played, that subtext, while eminently plausible, is surely original research and not notable or relevant to an article about Bill Burns. NPguy (talk) 19:13, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: As for Der Spiegel, perhaps you fail to click on "Continue reading with ads : Accept and continue". Anyway, i have already cited it in my previous edit comment: the top of the article: "The US Ambassador Learns that Cognac Is Like Wine: It was surely one of the strangest parties ex-US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns ever attended. In August 2006, he sent a dispatch to the US State Department describing a high society wedding in the Caucasus -- complete with massive quantities of alcohol, lumps of gold and revolver-wielding drunkards." ( https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/wedding-in-the-caucasus-the-us-ambassador-learns-that-cognac-is-like-wine-a-732370.html ; also archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20210111153904/https://www.spiegel.de/consent-a-?targetUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Finternational%2Fworld%2Fwedding-in-the-caucasus-the-us-ambassador-learns-that-cognac-is-like-wine-a-732370.html   ). Whatever the actual authorship (I in fact agree with you that ambassadors in large embassies rarely write cables themselves, BUT they nonetheless are responsible for them and normally carefully read those through before signing), the piece has become a part of diplomatic folklore and is known to be under his byline. The "subtext" being mine, the sheer fact of the senior U.S. diplomats being present at length at such event, being virtually surrounded by the adversarial security service personnel, who are attempting to doctor their drinks, is remarkable and notable, given the fact the person in question is reportedly being nominated for such position. Strictly off the record, i can tell you i lived in Moscow during his stint there. And while i had no actual contact with him whatsoever, I did see him a few times on Moscow′s social circuit and what struck me was that he appeared to be without any visible security, or any U.S. personnel company for that matter. He is known for having had rather uninhibited habits when in Moscow (like taking lonely strolls on Lenin′s Hills), which is a very parlous thing to do for a person in his position in an FSB-run Russia, unless you deliberately seek unofficial and unsurveiled contact of sorts.Axxxion (talk) 19:44, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the text of the Der Spiegel article. I was stuck in a do loop about accepting cookies.  I could be wrong, but my guess is that the authors of the Der Spiegel article misread Burns's name on the cable as an indication of his personal presence at the wedding.  It seems highly unlikely that a busy Ambassador would spend that much time at a wedding in the Caucasus, and even more unlikely -- if he was there -- that the cable would be written in the anonymous "we" voice that is more typical of Embassy staff. NPguy (talk) 21:22, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: You have a point there, but the way you have edited the text in question pretty much obviates the controversy of Burns′ personal involvement. But i would note for the record that "we" (strictly grammatically) does include "I", which, albeit technically, is Burns in this case. Another remark: we ought not to forget that, thanks to WikiLeaks, we have access to these cables, which is State Dpt communication; but as is well known, intl agencies send their own telegrams, often on the same issues, my point being this is specifically a State cable, for which Burns was responsible in any case.Axxxion (talk) 19:07, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The use of "we" in a diplomatic cable cannot be interpreted to include the Ambassador simply because the Ambassador was the person to approve the transmission of the final version. Normally an Ambassador's participation is stated explicitly. NPguy (talk) 04:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cable that Burns signed 

message: Under the heading 'Jeffrey Epstein meetings', it is stated for a fact that "In 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that Burns had three scheduled meetings with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014". This formulation in itself presents not just the reporting by the WSJ as a fact, but also these 'three scheduled meetings' are presented as if they are established facts. However, the WSJ has never disclosed these alleged 'documents' and 'calendars', which makes the newspaper's claims unverifiable. No one can read, verify, authenticate the 'trove of documents' that the WSJ claims to have in their possession. Should Wikipedia blindly believe they exist, and say what the WSJ claims they say? Or should we go for a more careful wording in the way of '... that Burns allegedly had three scheduled meetings...'? Mcouzijn (talk) 00:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Given the absence of an answer to my question, I will change the wording into the more careful version. Mcouzijn (talk) 08:15, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fact or allegation?