American Thought Leaders - Jerry Dunleavy: The Truth About the US Withdrawal From Afghanistan and the Formation of a CCP–Taliban Partnership

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

“Bagram Air Base had prisons there that were filled with thousands of ISIS-K fighters, as well as dozens of members of al-Qaeda, and thousands of Taliban fighters as well. And the United States abandoned Bagram on July 21.”In April 2021, President Joe Biden announced that in five months, on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. troops would completely withdraw from Afghanistan. By the end of August, the Taliban was back in charge.“What happened in Afghanistan did not stay in Afghanistan, and the world became a more dangerous place,” says investigative journalist Jerry Dunleavy. He is co-author of the new book “Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End.”“You heard President Biden and many people around him continually saying throughout 2021 that the Afghan military was 300,000 strong, and that they could obviously therefore fight off a smaller Taliban force,” says Mr. Dunleavy. “This 300,000 figure was a complete fiction and was well known to be a fiction at the time.Mr. Dunleavy and I discuss President Biden’s decision-making process with regard to the Afghanistan withdrawal, the other players involved, and why the media has, for the most part, lost interest in the story.“The Biden administration is not going to hold themselves accountable, obviously. Most of the mainstream media has no interest in holding Biden accountable. And so, the book is an effort at doing that—at holding Biden accountable for this disaster,” says Mr. Dunleavy.

Bagram Air Base had prisons there that were filled with thousands of ISIS-K fighters, as well as dozens of members of al-Qaeda and thousands of Taliban fighters as well. And the United States abandoned Bagram on July 21. In April of 2021, President Biden announced that in five months, on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, U.S. troops would completely withdraw from Afghanistan. What happened in Afghanistan did not stay in Afghanistan, and the world became a more dangerous place. Investigative journalist Jerry Dunleavy is the co-author of the new book

Kabul, the untold story of Biden's fiasco and the American warriors who fought to the end. You heard President Biden and many people around him continually saying that the Afghan military was 300,000 strong. This 300,000 figure was a complete fiction. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Jerry Dunleavy, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Well, you know, I'm familiar with you, of course, from years ago. I can't even remember what year it was, but sometime around 2016, 2017, there were very, very few people reporting on what's now known as Russiagate. Some of us called it Spygate back in the day. And you were one of them. So I just want

to tip my hat to someone who saw some very strange things going on and wasn't credulous to the so-called mainstream narrative at the time around Trump-Russia collusion. Yeah. I spent a few years there as a reporter at the Washington Examiner where I was writing about this ridiculous and now obviously completely discredited Steele dossier and the Clinton campaign's role in funding it and the FBI's use of it. For a while there was kind of a lonely place to be, I suppose. Yeah, I remember I think everybody was very, very well aware of the people that were counter-narrative back then, right? You kind of count them on your hand. Let's jump to the issue at hand, however. So you've written Kabul,

co-authored the book Kabul. This is a story of the Afghanistan withdrawal. We know terrible things happened. It wasn't handled well, but it's just something that seems to have completely fallen out of the public perception, curiously. And you've really dug deep here. And I might add, you've come on in Congress as an investigator around this issue, even though, of course, you're here in your personal capacity. Congratulations for that. Thank you. Let's start here. Why are we not thinking about this? Well, look, I think that the media in August 2021, I think for a very brief moment, was covering this. As the debacle was unfolding, as the Taliban took over Kabul and we saw those desperate scenes of crowds at the airport and we saw Afghans falling from planes

and then we saw almost on live television an ISIS-K terrorist blow himself up and kill those 13 American heroes and wound dozens of them. I think that some people were willing to give President Biden a chance, but this kind of blew up two big things that I think Biden had been touting in the 2020 election, which was sort of this idea that he'd be experienced and competent, and this idea that he'd be sort of an empathetic leader. And the way that this withdrawal was handled with tons of Americans left behind, tens of thousands of Afghan allies left behind, those 13 Americans killed in that suicide bombing. I think that it blew up that sort of narrative. It blew up the idea that President Biden was competent, and it blew up the idea

that he was empathetic, because this was the opposite of competence and the opposite of empathy. And so I think the media was happy to move on very quickly, because this event, I think, did permanent damage to President Biden's approval rating, for instance. You can see it in the numbers that this is just something that he never fully recovered from with the American people. And I think rightly so, because this was a decision of his making and the planning, or I would say lack thereof, was his. And of course, there were 20 years of mistakes and 20 years of tragic American deaths, but this was President Biden's decision and it's on him. And I think that he's played a small political price,

but there has been no real accountability. Nobody's been fired. No one's been resigned. Some people have been promoted. Once Republicans took over, starting in 2023, they've just been stonewalling Congress because they want to turn the page. But obviously we wrote this book. My co-author James Hassan and I wrote it because the Biden administration is not going to hold themselves accountable. Obviously, most of the mainstream media has no interest in holding Biden accountable. And so the book is an effort at doing that, at holding Biden accountable for this disaster. So you pay a lot of attention to a few key issues. Of course, the Abbey Gate bombing that we're at

the anniversary now, I want to kind of dig into that because you've really done some forensic work around this. At the same time, you looked at the people left behind and the people brought over. And this is actually interesting because it's about 100,000, as I understand, Afghans were actually brought over. I want to find out who's here. But before we go there, it just occurred to me, part of it also, you talk about a shift in a global dynamic as a result of everything that happened. And I'm very interested in that. And of course, sort of China's or the Chinese Communist Party's designs on Afghanistan and its use as a propaganda tool. And you have a whole chapter for that. Why don't we actually start with that?

And then we'll dive into the other stuff. Obviously, this was a disaster for Afghanistan. And now some members of the Taliban government are also considered to be essentially dual-headed members of al-Qaeda. And you can see the terrorist threat growing in Afghanistan. So it's a problem when it comes to just Afghanistan. But what happened in Afghanistan it comes to just Afghanistan. But what happened in Afghanistan did not stay in Afghanistan, and the world became a more dangerous place.

So, one chapter in our book relates to Russia's sort of response to this disaster in Afghanistan. And I think that we make a very strong case that Vladimir Putin's decision to go into Ukraine was likely prompted, at least in part, by the way that NATO and the U.S. were in a complete shambles. We also have an entire chapter devoted to China's response to this disaster in Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover. So the name of that chapter is the CCP and the Kabul moment. Which they keep touting.

Which they keep touting. Which they absolutely keep touting. The Kabul moment is sort of what the Chinese Communist Party decided to label this whole event as part of their propaganda effort to undermine the United States and to undermine and threaten Taiwan. And so when the Taliban was clearly on the verge of taking over Afghanistan the summer of 2021, the CCP, which had been getting close to the Taliban, you know, for a number of years prior, but they really got close to them in 2021 because the Chinese saw the writing on the wall, even if the United States government apparently didn't. And basically what the cobble moment to the CCP is, they look to the Taiwanese and say, look, this is what happened in Afghanistan,

20 years of war, and this is how it ends. The Taliban's in charge. Look at how the United States treated its Afghan allies, tens of thousands of them left behind. And the CCP basically says to Taiwan, this is the fate that awaits you, especially if you think that you can count on the United States, especially if you try to fight back in the event of an invasion. Don't try because this is what the United States does to its allies. This is the CCP's propaganda. And when we titled that chapter, the CCP in the Kabul moment, I was wondering, man, I wonder if China's going to continue doing this or if this chapter is somehow going to be stale by the time the book comes out. But sure enough, the book came out right around the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover,

and the Chinese foreign ministry immediately returned to this, bringing up the Kabul moment again as an opportunity to undermine the United States and threaten Taiwan. I'll just jump in. So anything like this, this is, information warfare gold for the CCP. The CCP will use that to elevate itself. There's numerous pieces of propaganda that have been around since time immemorial. I expect this one will be around for a long time. Secondly, this is on top of decades of information warfare against Taiwan to just be able to take it without firing a shot, so to speak.

Exactly. You know, and it's just, we just kind of gave the CCP another tool to put in their propaganda toolkit when it comes to undermining Taiwan. Yeah. So, and what about Bagram? And what about, you know, the CCP's actual designs on Afghanistan? How's that actually playing out? The CCP has been showing itself as a supporter of the Taliban. It's been fighting for the Taliban at the UN. The money of the

previous government, which has been frozen, they're advocating to get that money out, which of course then they will benefit from. So give me that piece. The CCP is probably the most powerful voice on the world stage right now advocating for some of the Taliban's interests. And a big piece of that is that there are currently billions of dollars of former Afghan government funds that have been frozen by the United States. And the CCP has been pushing the United States relentlessly for two years to free that money and hand it over to the Taliban.

This is what the CCP wants. This is obviously what the Taliban wants as well. And so their interests are aligned there. Since the United States exited Afghanistan, the Taliban took over, the CCP has been working to increase its economic interests there and also working to slowly but surely increase its military and intelligence interest there as well. So on the economic front, China's very interested in Afghanistan's natural resources and its rare earth minerals.

Afghanistan really does have a real wealth of natural resources and rare earth minerals. Afghanistan really does have a real wealth of natural resources and rare earth minerals that they haven't really been able to tap into for many, many years, largely because of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda attacks that have just made business very, very difficult. But China is very interested in partnering with the Taliban to start to gain access to those natural resources, not just to enrich the Chinese economy, but also to help build up the Chinese military, obviously, because this connection between the Chinese economy and the Chinese military buildup is very strong. And so they've had some success, the Chinese have, with entering into

some pretty lucrative deals so far with the Taliban. And I expect that to likely continue. There's also indications that Huawei will likely be entering the Afghanistan space in a much more significant way. There's some evidence that Chinese intelligence has been helping the Taliban with tracking down certain people that would be of interest to the CCP to track down and would likely be of interest to the Taliban to track down as well. It does not look like China has gained access to Bagram airbase yet, but that is certainly something that China is very interested in. And, you know, there were many reasons why it was a very foolish idea for the United States and the Biden administration to give up Bagram. One of them, of course, is that Bagram is a very strategic air base,

not just strategic in the sense of the U.S. being able to project our air power throughout Afghanistan, which was incredibly helpful and key for striking the Taliban, striking al-Qaeda, striking ISIS-K, and keeping the Taliban at bay. But it was also strategic because it was helpful for helping monitor sort of U.S. foes or U.S. frenemies, I would say, when it comes to Pakistan. Probably more of a foe than a frenemy, but certainly in that sort of category. And then helpful for monitoring more of a foe like China, because Bagram Air Base is fairly close to the Chinese border. And so giving it up was bad for that strategic reason. It was also bad because if you're going to do an evacuation

from Afghanistan, doing it from Kabul Airport, which is a tiny airport in the middle of a dense urban environment in a city full of millions of people, which, oh, by the way, ended up being a city that was controlled by the Taliban. Not a smart place to do an evacuation from. And then on top of that, Bagram Air Base had prisons there that were filled with thousands of ISIS-K fighters, as well as dozens of members of al-Qaeda and thousands of Taliban fighters as well. And the United States abandoned Bagram on July 21st. And that was sort of our giving up our final big strategic footprint in Afghanistan, sort of our final real base to project power in Afghanistan.

But it also meant that we were leaving behind these thousands of prisoners. And, you know, the first thing that the Taliban did when they took over Bagram on August 15th is they opened the doors to those prisons and they freed those thousands of prisoners, including thousands of ISIS-K prisoners. And one of those prisoners was the man who would go on to kill those 13 Americans and those nearly 200 Afghans at Abbey Gate just about a week and a half later. Why would you do this? Have you managed to glean any sense of it? It just doesn't seem to make any sense. Yeah. President Biden was maniacal about a full U.S. troop withdrawal, except for some tiny number, 600 or fewer, to try to protect the embassy in Kabul. And so to maintain Bagram, you need a few more troops than that. You don't need 10,000 or anything like that to maintain Bagram, but you do need more than 600 if you're going to maintain Bagram Air Base and maintain a U.S. embassy and hold on to Kabul airport.

But President Biden was obsessed with getting the troop levels vastly below that so that he'd be able to say that the U.S. military was essentially gone from Afghanistan outside of just the sort of troop presence that guards our embassies in any country. And this just kind of shows how befuddling the entire episode was. He set the full U.S. troop withdrawal date for September 11th, 2021, which is the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Now, most Americans looked at that. I think everybody was confused, and many of them probably felt like that was a punch in the gut because it made no sense to pick the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9-11 that killed 3,000 people on American soil, it wasn't a strategic decision. It was a political one. He wanted perhaps some sort

of victory lap on the 20th anniversary. It remains a confusing decision to this day. But the other problem with it was that it meant that the U.S. was leaving Afghanistan right in the middle of the Afghan fighting season, which 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, everybody knew that the spring is when fighting ramps up again in Afghanistan as the snow melts, as the weather gets better, as the mountain passes clear, as the Taliban can move a lot of people from Pakistan into Afghanistan across the AfPak border. The fighting ramps up in the spring. It's at its real heaviest in the summer and into the fall. And Biden's announcement meant that we were pulling U.S. troops in the spring and into the

summer, right as the Taliban was ramping up its fighting. And what the U.S. pulling its troops meant was not just pulling our troops, but also pulling our logistics and our ISR and our advisors and our contractors. Everything that the Afghan military, which was already a very shaky military, but those were all things that the Afghan military had been built around, built around by the United States. So we knew that if we pulled all of those things, especially in rapid fashion, as we did with no plan about how to continue to assist the Afghan military and Afghan Air Force in any real serious, significant way, we knew that that meant that the Afghan military would not be able to function. And so Biden's announcement spring to summer means that the Taliban is taking over spring to summer. And it means that on the 20th anniversary of 9-11, the Taliban was back in charge.

Roughly what I heard was if you talk to operators on the ground and people, you know, they would tell you these Afghani forces are not going to be able to hold anything. But there seemed to be other intelligence that was being used to do the decision-making, which told a different story. This is my rough recollection of what I've heard. Can you just clarify that reality? Because you seem convinced that people knew that the Afghani forces would not be able to hold anything. Yeah. I mean, there are classified studies that were conducted by think tanks for the Pentagon ahead of 2021 that made it very clear that the Afghan military just

would not be able to function without U.S. military assistance unless the United States came up with a real plan about how to assist them in some other way, which the Biden administration never did. We just pulled the U.S. troops and that was that. There were also warnings from the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan well ahead of this debacle in August saying that the U.S. military pulling out in the way that it did meant that the Afghan military would not be able to continue to function. And as the Taliban advanced, there were some Afghan units that fought and fought bravely. And there were hundreds and likely thousands of Afghan troops who died in 2021 fighting the Taliban. But a lot of them didn't. And a lot of them dissolved, fell apart. Some of

them surrendered. Some of them surrendered. Some of them fled. And some of them were just limited in terms of they weren't getting food. They weren't getting ammunition. They weren't getting the basic resources that they needed. They obviously weren't getting, unfortunately, much in the way of U.S. air support anymore, which was something that had been critical in their fight against the Taliban. The Biden administration throughout all of this was continuously misleading

the American people and the world about the size and strength of the Afghan military. And one piece of that that I'll note, because I think it was really important, is that you heard President Biden and many people around him continually saying throughout 2021 that the Afghan military was 300,000 strong and that they could obviously therefore fight off a smaller Taliban force. This 300,000 figure was a complete fiction and was well known to be a fiction at the time. Because one thing that they did, the Biden administration, is they were combining the size on paper of the Afghan military and the size on paper of the Afghan police and border forces. And those two on paper

combined got you to around 300,000. But no other military in the world measures its size by combining its military and its police. The United States doesn't do that. Nobody really does that. So it was misleading in that regard. And then on top of that, everybody knew, again, a known problem, that there were things called basically Afghan ghost soldiers or Afghan ghost units, which were soldiers or units that just existed on paper, but weren't really there. And just likely someone in the Afghan military collecting a check in some way, but these soldiers or units not really existing. And on top of that, we knew throughout 2021 that the Afghan military was falling apart without our support. And so this 300,000 figure that the Biden administration continued to tout was a total fiction.

But they continued to tout it. And it misled the American people, of course. I also think that it misled the Americans who were in Afghanistan because it was painting a very misleading picture about what the Afghan military was going to be able to do. And obviously, it ended in disaster with the Taliban taking over and Americans and Afghan allies left behind. What do you think was the guiding principle behind this whole debacle. You have a theory. Yeah, I do. We try to get into President Biden's head a little bit in the book. And the way that we do that is by looking at a lot of his history. And one vignette that we tell is we go all the

way back to the Vietnam War. President Biden, then a very young senator, he was elected when he was like 30 years old. And he kind of got into the Senate near the tail end of the Vietnam War. So he was there too late to make his name as a big anti-Vietnam War advocate. And so how he decided to try to make a name for himself was he was the most vocal voice in the country fighting against efforts by then President Gerald Ford and Republicans and many Democrats as well who wanted to help bring out many of our South Vietnamese allies as the North Vietnamese march south towards Saigon. So President Ford wanted to help bring out a lot of these South Vietnamese allies as the North Vietnamese march south towards Saigon. So President Ford wanted to help bring out a lot of these South Vietnamese allies and

President Biden tried to make his mark by standing against that. And there's one quote from him that I dug up from the congressional archives where he essentially says, we don't have a moral obligation to 100,001 or even one South Vietnamese. And so that was sort of his mentality during the war in Vietnam. And I think that that mentality, that feeling towards the United States' local allies, I just think that it carried over. And you could see a little bit of that when he was President Obama's vice president. And I think that it was when he was Obama's vice president also that he really got a big chip on his shoulder related to the U.S. military and the U.S. military's generals

in particular. Because while he was Obama's vice president, pretty much nobody was listening to Vice President Biden. The military generals were quite annoyed with him. One thing to note was that President Biden, then vice president, was pretty much the only voice who opposed the U.S. raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. And so I think that it was a combination of things, not really caring very much about our allies, having a big chip on his shoulder related to military advice, and also feeling like he wanted to make his mark on the war in Afghanistan because no one had really listened to him while he was vice president. He had missed his chance to make his mark by opposing the raid that killed Osama bin

Laden. And so as president, he wanted to make his mark. He wanted to get out. We lay out in the book how this was a singular focus of his very early on in his presidency. And he just really wasn't open to anyone who told him, well, look, this will be a disaster. He didn't really care. At the same time, though, if I understand it, I mean, the U.S. has brought out over 100,000 Afghans. And so that's a lot. Maybe it stands in juxtaposition to what you just

said, right? There seems to have been an incredible interest in getting people out. Yeah. Well, so a lot of the problem here stems from the fact that the US military by August 2021 is essentially gone from Afghanistan. We've given up Bagram. The Taliban is on the march. The Taliban is taking over provincial capitals. The Taliban takes over Kabul. And the United States is stuck with just control over a small airport and nothing else. And the Taliban at that point pretty much controlled all of Afghanistan. And so U.S. military leaders decided that essentially the only option was to cooperate with the Taliban in getting Americans and Afghan allies out. And this put the U.S. military in the position where we were relying on the Taliban to provide security, security I'll put in air quotes, outside the Kabul airport. Many of the people that we were trying to get out would have to make it through that Taliban gauntlet

to get to the airport because so many Americans and Afghan allies were now stranded behind Taliban lines. There was no real plan in place from the Biden administration about how to get all of those Americans out and about how to get all of those tens of thousands of Afghan allies out. And so... Let me just jump in here. That strains credulity. There must have been some, I mean, presumably you've looked extensively. There was actually no plan. There was no real plan to get Americans and Afghan allies out in a large number in a rapid fashion. Such a thing really didn't exist. The State Department's planning for an evacuation was paltry to say the least. And in fact, the State Department didn't officially request a non-combatant evacuation called a NEO. They didn't officially request that

until after the Taliban had taken over Kabul. And so you see how there essentially was no plan in place about how to get all these Americans and Afghan allies out because there was no planning for a situation where we'd have to do it with the Taliban controlling the entire country. And so it became very clear very early on from this August 15th time period on that the United States was not going to get all of the Americans out and that the United States certainly was not going to get all of those tens of thousands of Afghan allies out, many of whom we had made promises to, many of whom had worked and fought alongside the United States for years or even decades. Biden was pushing them very hard to get those numbers up because there was no way that the U.S. was going to successfully complete what I think many

Americans thought the mission should be, which was get all Americans out and get all of our Afghan allies out. There was no way that that was going to happen because of the situation that Biden had put us in. And so the Biden administration's measurement of success instead turned into getting a really big number of people out. And that's the level of success that the Biden administration points to today. When they call this a success, they point to that large figure, over 100,000 people evacuated from August 15th until we left at the end of August. But many Americans, well over a thousand, and tens of thousands of Afghan allies were left behind. You look at the numbers, you look at that 100,000 plus figure, and you start to break it down, you see that

a relatively small number of those who got out were actually those Afghan allies and those Afghan special immigrant visa holders and applicants. Potentially all of the Afghans that got out or close to all of them felt like if they stayed in Afghanistan, obviously it would be a terrible time for them, as it is for everyone in Afghanistan. And I'm sure that many of them felt that they'd be at some sort of risk from the Taliban, but many of them didn't have a specific connection to assisting the United States, to assisting NATO, to assisting in that effort fighting the Taliban and fighting Al Qaeda from 2001 to 2021. And we can get into this just a little bit further, but some of those that we got out because of the chaos at the airport

and because of the Taliban's beating people, turning Americans away, sometimes beating people, you know, turning Americans away, sometimes beating Americans, turning Afghan allies away, sometimes killing Afghans in full view of us. And this general chaos at the airport and sometimes crowds storming into the airport and, you know, eventually sometimes making it on the planes. Because of this chaotic nature and because of the U.S. reliance on the Taliban, some of the people that were evacuated didn't really have any particular connection to the United States. Some of them were not vetted properly before they made it here. And a few of them, like in the dozens, were essentially considered to be national security risks, turning up because of biometrics,

turning up with their fingerprints on IEDs that the United States had diffused. A small number of them, a real number, but a small number seeming to have connections to the Taliban, whether being liberated by the Taliban or having other connections to the Taliban, whether like being liberated by the Taliban or having other connections to the Taliban. And then some of the unvetted refugees, Afghan refugees that made their way to the United States, some of them committed various crimes, sex crimes and otherwise. Now, this was, in terms of the whole number of people that we got out, it was a relatively small number of people. But still, when you're talking about dozens of people being deemed national security risks, and you're talking about serious, heinous crimes, this is a problem. And it all went back to

the fact, I think, that the Biden administration knew very early on that Americans and Afghan allies were going to get left behind. And so their measurement of success had to be something different than getting all Americans and Afghan allies out. And the measurement of success became trying to get a large number of people out instead. And what happened with all these people, in particular the ones that would be of concern at the moment? Like 100,000 people is a substantial number. Yeah. What I can say is that some of the people that were later deemed to be national security risks, some of them were later identified and either imprisoned or deported, but some of them, according to the government records, some of them likely were not identified, were not located, and some of them likely still haven't

been. And what about everybody else? Are they living in cities, in small town America? Do you have any sense of that? Yeah, there are Afghan refugee populations that are somewhat scattered now around the United States. A decent number of them actually live sort of in the DMV area, the Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland area as well. And obviously, they were brought without a real plan from the Biden administration about what was going to happen next for them because the Biden administration didn't plan on bringing tens of thousands of people over in a rapid fashion. And you saw that with how the Biden administration was really scrambling and struggling to find third countries to bring people to as sort

of holding areas, basically called lily pads, because that hadn't been figured out by the time the Taliban took over. And then what to do with many of these folks once they came to the United States. And it's a struggle that's going to continue. And a lot of the Afghans that got brought over here, there's going to be a period of adjustment. Obviously, many of them didn't expect the Taliban to take over either and didn't expect that they'd be jumping on planes. A lot of blame was put on the Trump administration for its handling of things prior to the Biden administration taking over. And how do you view that? So we have an entire chapter on the Doha agreement and sort of the final year or so of the Trump presidency related to Afghanistan. And we make it pretty clear in the book that we think that the Doha

agreement, which was struck between the United States and the Taliban during the Trump administration, we make it pretty clear that we think that the Doha agreement was a pretty flawed agreement. However, there were conditions inside the agreement, and the Taliban was not meeting any of those conditions whatsoever. I think that President Trump was inclined to lower the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan and eventually withdraw from Afghanistan, but he did not do this rapid, total, go-to-zero withdrawal that President Biden very quickly did in the first year of his presidency. So when President Trump left office, the number of US troops in Afghanistan was fluctuating somewhere between about 2,500 and 3,500. And that's what was left at the end.

And the Biden administration really likes to point to the Doha agreement to deflect blame from their own mistakes. It's essentially their only defense because nothing that they actually did in 2021 was defensible. And so their only defense is, well, we had to do it because of the Doha agreement. But it's just not true. One key example of how the Taliban wasn't following the Doha Agreement is the continued alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. That alliance remained unbroken from before 9-11 throughout the 20 years of war. It remains unbroken today. And you've even got some members of the Taliban government who are basically considered dual-hatted members of al-Qaeda. And by the way, President Biden in 2021 tried to say, well, al-Qaeda is gone from Afghanistan. They're not. So this Doha agreement excuse doesn't hold water because the Taliban was not holding up

any piece of the Doha agreement. And so therefore, the United States was under no obligation to follow through on whatever we had said we would do, because if they're not holding up their end of the deal, there is no reason for us to do so as well. And to do a conditionless withdrawal anyway, especially in the middle of Afghan fighting season, that was a choice. That was a choice President Biden made. It's not something that his hands were tied on. You've mentioned the Haqqani Network a number of times now. And this Haqqani Network figures very importantly into what you believe happened in the Abugate bombing. So a big premise of our book is that the Abagate attack by ISIS-K while the Taliban was providing security at the airport, that Abagate attack that killed 13 Americans, wounded dozens more,

some of them grievously, and killed nearly 200 Afghans, that attack was likely preventable. And I can kind of go through some of the reasons why. The first, of course, that we had kind of touched on, the prisons at Bagram held thousands of ISIS-K terrorists. But the United States made the decision to abandon Bagram anyway in July 2021. And the Taliban, the first thing that they did when they took over Bagram around August 15th, was they opened those doors and they freed all those prisoners. Many of them very quickly went on to try to target and harm Americans at Kabul airport. And one of those ISIS-K terrorists who was freed is a man by the name of Abdul Rahman Al-Agri.

And he is the man who successfully detonated himself at Abbey Gate and killed those 13 Americans. So if the United States had simply held on to Bagram Air Base, which was a good idea for about 100 different reasons, the terrorist who killed those 13 Americans on August 26th would have been sitting behind bars rather than being freed by the Taliban on August 15th. And keep in mind that the Biden administration continued to talk about how the Taliban was businesslike and professional, which was not true. And President Biden himself repeatedly kept talking about how the Taliban and ISIS-K are mortal enemies, with the implication there being that we can somehow count on the Taliban to make sure that ISIS-K doesn't attack

Americans at Kabul airport. And it is true, by the way, that the Taliban and ISIS-K are enemies. They fought each other for years before August 2021. They're still fighting each other today. But this is Afghanistan. And so things are always more complicated, I think, than the simplistic terms that our leaders try to think of them in. And so even though the Taliban and ISIS-K would fight each other in Afghanistan, there was also coordination and collusion between the Haqqani Network elements of the Taliban and ISIS-K in the years leading up to August 2021. And so there are many instances where the Haqqani Network Taliban and ISIS-K would coordinate on carrying out high-profile attacks against the United States and the Afghan government in Kabul specifically.

And those attacks by ISIS-K would be carried out with facilitation and help from the Haqqani Taliban. Now you start to see sort of a more complicated picture. You see the Taliban freeing these ISIS-K prisoners, nominally their mortal enemies, but freeing them. And some of them likely rejoining the fight quickly to try to target Americans, and one of them killing 13 U.S. service members. And on top of that, at Kabul airport, it's very well documented, and this was known to the Biden administration at the time, that the Taliban fighters who had surrounded the airport, many of them were Haqqani Taliban. And one Haqqani leader later said that the first thing that he did when he arrived at Kabul airport was he surrounded it with a thousand suicide bombers. These are his own words. And some of the Taliban units that were

surrounding Kabul airport were members of the Badri 313, which were essentially the Taliban special forces linked to the Haqqani network, had been trained up by al-Qaeda, and often carried out suicide attacks themselves. And you could see many of these Badri 313 units as the ones that were in full U.S. military, often U.S. special forces kit, walking around and guarding the airport. And so the dynamic between the Haqqani Taliban and ISIS-K is much more complicated than the Biden administration was letting on. There were U.S. service members on the ground who raised the issue of, you know, collusion for this bombing

was very possible. There was an Afghan Tajik American interpreter who had to deal with these Haqqani commanders. And he also raised the issue of, look, you know, some of these Taliban commanders, they're horrible, evil people, but they seem to be coordinating with us at least a little bit. But these Haqqanis, they hate us and they are not helping. And it's very possible that they helped that bombing happen. And so in our book, we raise this issue and bring it to light because when the Pentagon did its investigation into the Abbey Gate bombing, when you read the witness statements, you can see many of them raising the issue of the Haqqanis and the Haqqani network and the way the Haqqanis were behaving at Kabul airport.

But when you read the top lines and summaries and conclusions of the investigation, the Haqqanis don't even get mentioned. And so we thought that that was something important to bring to light to add to the conversation because it's not talked about and it should have been considered at the time when we were trusting the Taliban to protect us against ISIS-K. I mean, you've done some incredible work in there. I'm not surprised you got the call to do some investigative work on this. Let's talk about these private airlifts, the private contractors coming in and helping. This is an amazing story. It's been told a bit, but I also think it's something that's receded into memory. I'd like to see what you've discovered in the process here? Well, these private and veteran-led groups that basically sprung up organically as the Taliban

took over Kabul, they ended up proving essential for getting many of the Americans and many of the Afghan allies. The State Department was totally unprepared to do its job to get all of the Americans and Afghan allies out that we needed to get out. And you could see the result of that with well over a thousand Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies getting left behind. But many of the successes that happened in terms of getting Americans and getting some of our Afghan allies out happened because these private and veteran-led groups sprung up to help make it happen. Many of them had relationships with the Afghans on the ground who they were trying to get out.

Many of them had worked alongside these Afghan interpreters and others for years before, and so they were often trying to get their own interpreters out. And oftentimes they were working from afar from the United States, working from their kitchen tables, working at ad hoc command centers set up in hotel ballrooms. And some of these private and vet-led groups actually ended up helping on the ground in Kabul as well to help get people out. I might add that even after all of the U.S. troops had left Afghanistan at the end of August 2021, many of these private and vet-led groups continued their efforts to continue to help get Americans and Afghan allies out, whether through getting them out by plane, getting them out through overland routes,

getting them out covertly. Those efforts continued and continue. Let me tell a story about how one interpreter was able to get out, and this was through private and vet-led efforts. So President Biden, back when he was a senator, he had visited Afghanistan many years before with a couple of other senators, and their helicopter was forced down in a snowstorm. And U.S. Special Forces and an Afghan interpreter came to then-Senator Biden's rescue.

And this interpreter, he was going to be left behind in Afghanistan. And he ended up writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal under a pseudonym begging for help because the Biden administration was leaving him behind. And just imagine it, even a man who saved President Biden's life is being left behind by President Biden. I mean, that's what the situation was. And one of these private and vet-led networks actually managed to get this interpreter out after the fall of Kabul and after the U.S. troop presence had ended. And they were able to get him out and get him to a safe house in a third country, Pakistan. The Biden administration didn't really play a role actually in saving this interpreter's life, but found out about it and would later go on to take a lot of the credit for it. But that kind of just shows you what the reality was, that these

private and vet-led groups were essential in helping get people out, even getting an interpreter out that had saved Biden's own life. Another thing that's worth mentioning is this is all happening during COVID. So how did it play in here? Yeah, COVID was playing into everything and it played in here quite a bit as well. The Biden administration prioritizing things like COVID case mitigation. They were prioritizing that over the functioning of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul or over U.S. military readiness among some of the U.S. troops that would have to go into Kabul. When there were some COVID cases at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in 2021, the U.S. embassy ended up shutting down many of its key functions

for periods of time, days, weeks. And one of the functions that was essentially shut down was the processing of Afghan special immigrant visas. And so there was a pause on this process of helping to make sure that we're able to get some of these Afghan allies out as the Taliban is on the march and is just, you know, months away from taking Kabul. And that's what the U.S. embassy in Kabul was thinking about. And this is not for me to like completely downplay the coronavirus or anything, but COVID mitigation was being prioritized over helping get our Afghan allies out at a time when the Taliban was about to take over the country. I'm really enjoying this conversation. I think I would like to take it a lot further. I think

we're going to have to close up fairly soon, but I can't help but think about there is this recent roundtable with the Gold Star families here. Of course, we've talked about the Abbey Gate bombing. It's around the anniversary of it. What sort of accountability is happening now? Because there presumably is some. Yeah. So the Gold Star families, a good number of them came to Capitol Hill right around the anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing, second anniversary of it. And this was a hearing put on by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

And the testimony from these families was powerful. There are answers that they want about how this attack, and there are demands for accountability from them. And obviously, at this point, there are demands from accountability from them and obviously at this point there has been no accountability secretary anthony blinken secretary lloyd austin jake sullivan there's been no real accountability but the the families they really want answers and they want accountability and you know in writing this book first first I had the honor, really, of talking to many of those families when writing the book.

And we try to tell their stories, sort of paint a picture a little bit about who these 13 heroes were. And also in the book, we kind of lay out how it's very possible that the Abbey Gate attack was preventable. One way that we've already talked about is the fact that if we just held on to Bagram, the suicide bomber, Abdulrahman al-Aghri, would have just been behind bars still, rather than being freed by the Taliban and able to threaten Americans. On top of that, Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas Andrews testified in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee

earlier this year that in the early, early, early morning, the day of the bombing, August 26, 2021, he was receiving very detailed information about a likely impending attack, likely at Abbey Gate. And on top of that, he was receiving intelligence about the description of the likely suicide bomber as well. And he and his sniper team ended up identifying someone that they believed matched the description of the likely suicide bomber in the crowd. And according to Tyler's testimony, he asked his commanding officer for permission to take the shot, to take this likely suicide bomber out. Lieutenant Colonel Brad Whitted, according to Tyler, told Tyler that he, as the commanding

officer, didn't have permission to give Tyler permission to take the shot and that he didn't know who did have that authority. And Tyler and his sniper team never heard back about getting permission to take that shot. The likely suicide bomber disappeared into the crowd, and then that horrible attack happened later. We dug through thousands of pages of Pentagon documents, line by line. In those documents, there is testimony that U.S. intelligence knew that ISIS-K was staging at a hotel about two to three kilometers west of Kabul airport and that this was ahead of the Abbey Gate attack. Military commanders asked the Taliban to conduct an assault on that location, but the Taliban

obviously never did. And on top of that, we uncovered testimony in these Pentagon documents that the U.S. officers were trying to identify ISIS-K locations in Afghanistan before the Abbey Gate bombing. It looked like they had identified an ISIS-K location in Afghanistan, asked for permission to conduct an airstrike against that ISIS-K location. But that permission to conduct that strike was denied, at least in part, according to this officer, because U.S. military leaders deemed that there was a negative response from the Taliban. If we had made better strategic and better tactical decisions, it's very likely that this attack, this horrible attack that killed 13 American heroes, that grievously wounded dozens of them, including Tyler, by the way,

who lost two of his limbs tragically, and another U.S. service member, a female service member, who's currently paralyzed. This attack that also killed nearly 200 Afghans. If the U.S. had made better decisions, it's very possible that that attack could have been prevented. Jerry, this has been a fascinating conversation. A final thought as we finish? Well, my final thought is that the way that we viewed this book, my co-author James Hasson and I, we viewed this book as a first step, a sort of springboard to getting to the answers, getting to the truth, and getting to accountability. And I think that there are a ton of details in here that people have never seen before,

have never heard before. We lay out, I think, an incredibly detailed timeline about how a cascade of bad decisions led to this disaster and how this ultimately lies at the feet of President Biden. But we view this book as a start, not the finish. Well, Jerry Dunleavy, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you very much. Really, really had a good time. Thank you all for joining Jerry Dunleavy and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.