CIA director Burns helping broker another deal to release hostages from Hamas on January 25, 2024 at 5:18 pm

CIA director Bill Burns is helping President Biden with efforts toward a deal to release the remaining hostages held in Gaza by the militant group Hamas amid its ongoing war with Israel.

“He has been … involved in helping us with the hostage deal that was in place and trying to help us pursue another one,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Thursday.

Kirby said that discussions about a trying to get a renewed hostage deal have been “sober and serious” and noted that White House adviser Brett McGurk is currently in Doha, Qatar, and Cairo working on a deal.

Burns, who was involved in the effort to secure the Hamas hostages in November, is expected to travel to Europe for talks with the Israelis and Egyptians, according to reporting from The Washington Post.

The CIA declined to comment when asked to confirm the director’s travel.

Burns traveled to Doha for the November deal, which led to the release of over 100 hostages and included a pause in the fighting from Nov. 24 to Dec. 1. That deal took five weeks of intense negotiations among the White House, Qatar, Israel and Hamas.

For that deal, Burns in October began speaking regularly with the Israelis delegated authority to negotiate to the director of Mossad, David Barnea.

On Nov. 9, Burns met in Doha with Barnea and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, also known as MBAR, to go through the texts of the then-emerging arrangement. And, on Nov. 18, Burns dialed into a meeting between McGurk and MBAR in Doha to go over the text of the deal.

Hamas took almost 250 hostages during its deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, which left about 1,200 Israelis dead. The first phase of the hostage deal was structured for women and children to be released and was considered at the time to include an expectation for future releases.

—Laura Kelly contributed.

​ CIA director Bill Burns is helping President Biden with efforts toward a deal to release the remaining hostages held in Gaza by the militant group Hamas amid its ongoing war with Israel. “He has been … involved in helping us with the hostage deal that was in place and trying to help us pursue another… 

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