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Former CIA director William J. Burns blasted President Donald Trump’s mass firing at the State Department in July and the reduction of international programs.

“It was heartbreaking to see so many of you crossing [the State Department] lobby in tears, … carrying cardboard boxes with family photos and the everyday remains of proud careers in public service," Burns wrote. "After years of hard jobs in hard places — defusing crises, tending alliances, opening markets, and helping Americans in distress — ­you deserved better."

“The work you all did was unknown to many Americans, rarely well understood or well appreciated,” wrote Burns, the author of The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal. “And under the guise of reform, you all got caught in the crossfire of a retribution campaign — of a war on public service and expertise.”

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“[T]here is a smart way and a dumb way to tackle reform, a humane way and an intentionally traumatizing way,” said Burns. “If this process were truly about sensible reform, crucial experts in technology or China policy in whom our country has invested so much wouldn’t have been pushed out.”

If the firings were truly about reform, he said, it would have addressed not only bloat and in­efficiencies but also their causes, including congressionally mandated budget items. If it were about sensible reform, “you and your families wouldn’t have been treated with gleeful indignity.”

But this was not about reform, said Burns. It was about retribution. “It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government.”

Burns said he has served six presidents: three Republicans and three Democrats, and it was his “duty” to faithfully implement their decisions, even when he didn’t agree with them. Career public servants have an obligation to execute the decisions of elected leaders, which is “essential to any democratic system.”

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But what Trump was doing was “hammering professional public servants into politicized robots.”

“That’s what autocrats do. They cow public servants into submission — and in doing so, they create a closed system that is free of opposing views and inconvenient concerns,” said Burns, adding that Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s “foolish decision to invade Ukraine” was a classic example of policy making without peer review.

“Putin … relied on a handful of long-serving advisers who either shared his flawed assumptions about Ukraine’s ability to resist and the West’s willingness to support it, or had learned a long time ago that it was not career-enhancing to question Putin’s judgment. The results, especially in the first year of the war, were catastrophic for Russia,” said Burns, explaining that Trump was now engaging in his own “strategic self-immolation” by dismantling USAID, Voice of America, and by flushing “50 percent” of the State Department’s budget.

“If intelligence analysts at the CIA saw our rivals engage in this kind of great-power suicide, we would break out the bourbon,” Burns writes. “Instead, the sound we hear is of champagne glasses clinking in the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai.”

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Read the full Atlantic report at this link.