[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “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.
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/jerry-dunleavy-the-truth-about-the-us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-and-the-formation-of-a-ccp-taliban-partnership-5501015
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Jerry Dunleavy, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Jerry Dunleavy: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Mr. Jekielek: I'm familiar with you from years ago around 2017 when there were 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. I just want to tip my hat to someone who saw some very strange things going on and wasn't believing the mainstream narrative at the time around the so-called Trump-Russia collusion.
Mr. Dunleavy: I spent a few years as a reporter at The Washington Examiner where I was writing about this ridiculous, and now obviously completely discredited Steele dossier, the Clinton campaign's role in funding it, and the FBI's use of it. For a while, that was a lonely place to be.
Mr. Jekielek: Everybody was very aware of the people that were counter-narrative back then, and you could count them on your hand. However, let's jump to the issue at hand. You've co-authored the book, Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End. This is the story of the Afghanistan withdrawal. We know terrible things happened and we know it wasn't handled well. But curiously, it's something that has completely fallen out of the public perception. You have really dug deep here. You've spoken to Congress as an investigator around this issue, even though today you're here in your personal capacity. Congratulations on that.
Mr. Dunleavy: Thank you.
Mr. Jekielek: Let's start here. Why are we not thinking about this Afghanistan withdrawal?
Mr. Dunleavy: As the debacle was unfolding in August 2021, for a very brief moment the media was covering this as the Taliban took over Kabul and we saw those desperate scenes of crowds at the airport, and we saw Afghans falling from planes. Then we almost saw on live television an ISIS-K terrorist blow himself up and kill those 13 American heroes and wound dozens more. Some people were willing to give President Biden a chance, but this blew up two big things that Biden had been touting in the 2020 election—that he would be experienced and competent and that he would be an empathetic leader.
The way that this withdrawal was handled with tons of Americans left behind, tens of thousands of Afghan allies left behind, and those 13 Americans killed in that suicide bombing blew up that 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.
The media was happy to very quickly move on, because this event did permanent damage to President Biden's approval rating. You can see it in the numbers that this is something that he never fully recovered from with the American people. Rightly so, because this was a decision of his own making and based on his own lack of planning.
Of course, there were 20 years of mistakes and 20 years of tragic American deaths, but ultimately, this was President Biden's decision and it's on him. He has played a small political price, but there has been no real accountability. Nobody has been fired, and no one has 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.
My co-author James Hasson and I wrote this book because the Biden administration is obviously not going to hold themselves accountable. Most of the mainstream media has no interest in holding Biden accountable. The book is an effort at holding Biden accountable for this disaster.
Mr. Jekielek: You pay a lot of attention to a few key issues. You've done some forensic work around the Abbey Gate bombing. At the same time you looked at the people left behind, and also the 100,000 Afghans brought over to America. I want to find out who they are. You also talk about a shift in the global dynamic as a result of everything that has happened. You have a whole chapter on the Chinese Communist Party’s designs on Afghanistan, and its use as a propaganda tool. Let’s start with that.
Mr. Dunleavy: Obviously this was a disaster for Afghanistan. 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. It's a problem for Afghanistan, but what happened in Afghanistan did not stay in Afghanistan, and the world has become a more dangerous place.
One chapter in our book relates to Russia's response to this disaster in Afghanistan. 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 complete shambles. We also have an entire chapter devoted to China's response to this disaster in Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover. The name of that chapter is, “The CCP and the Kabul moment.”
Mr. Jekielek: Which they keep touting.
Mr. Dunleavy: Which they absolutely keep touting. The Kabul moment is 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. The Taliban was clearly on the verge of taking over Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, and prior to this, the CCP had been getting closer to the Taliban for a number of years.
They got really close to them in 2021, because the Chinese saw the writing on the wall, and the United States government apparently didn't. This is what the Kabul moment means to the CCP. They looked at Taiwan and said, “Look, this is what happened after 20 years of war in Afghanistan, and this is how it ends. The Taliban is now in charge. Look at how the United States treated its Afghan allies, with tens of thousands of them being left behind.”
The CCP basically said to Taiwan, “This is the fate that awaits you, especially if you think that you can count on the United States, and especially if you try to fight back in the event of an invasion. Don't even try, because this is what the United States does to its allies.” This is the CCP’s propaganda.
When we titled that chapter, “The CCP and the Kabul moment,” I was wondering if China was 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, when the book came out right around the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover, 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.
Mr. Jekielek: This is propaganda warfare gold for the CCP, and the CCP will use this to elevate itself. There are numerous propaganda narratives that have been around since time immemorial, and this one will also be around for a long time. This is on top of decades of information warfare against Taiwan, with the goal being to take it over without firing a single shot.
Mr. Dunleavy: Exactly. We just gave the CCP another tool to put in their propaganda toolkit when it comes to undermining Taiwan.
Mr. Jekielek: What about the CCP’s actual designs on Bagram and Afghanistan, how is that playing out? The CCP has been showing itself as a supporter of the Taliban, and it has been fighting for the Taliban at the UN. The money of the previous government has been frozen. They're advocating to get that money unfrozen, which will then benefit them. Please tell me about this.
Mr. Dunleavy: The CCP is probably the most powerful voice on the world stage right now that is advocating for the Taliban's interests. A big piece of that is there are currently billions of dollars of former Afghan government funds that have been frozen by the United States. 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, so their interests are aligned there. Since the United States exited Afghanistan and the Taliban took over, the CCP has been working to increase its economic presence there, and also slowly but surely working to increase its military and intelligence interests there as well.
On the economic front, China is very interested in Afghanistan's natural resources and its rare earth minerals. Afghanistan has a wealth of natural resources and rare earth minerals that they haven't been able to tap into for many years, largely because of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda attacks that have made day-to-day business very difficult.
China is very interested in partnering with the Taliban to gain access to those natural resources, not just to enrich the Chinese economy, but also to help build up the Chinese military. This connection between the Chinese economy and the Chinese military buildup is very strong.
So far, the Chinese have had some success with entering into some pretty lucrative deals with the Taliban, and that will likely continue. There are also indications that Huawei will be entering the Afghanistan space in a much more significant way. There is also evidence that Chinese intelligence has been helping the Taliban to track down certain people that would be of interest to both the CCP and the Taliban.
It does not look like China has gained access to Bagram Air Base yet, which China is certainly very interested in. There were many reasons why it was a very foolish idea for the United States and the Biden administration to give up Bagram Air Base.
Bagram was a very strategic air base for the U.S. for projecting our air power throughout Afghanistan, which was incredibly helpful and key for striking the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS-K and keeping the Taliban at bay. It was also strategic because it could monitor U.S. foes and U.S. frenemies. Pakistan is probably more of a foe than a frenemy, but certainly it is in that category.
It was helpful for monitoring a foe like China because Bagram Air Base is fairly close to the Chinese border. Giving it up was bad for that strategic reason. If you're going to do an evacuation from Afghanistan from Kabul airport, a tiny airport in the middle of a dense urban environment in a city full of millions of people that ended up being controlled by the Taliban, it was not a smart place to do an evacuation from.
On top of that, Bagram Air Base had prisons there that were filled with thousands of ISIS-K fighters, dozens of members of Al-Qaeda, and thousands of Taliban fighters as well. The United States abandoned Bagram on July 21st. That was giving up our final big strategic footprint in Afghanistan, and our final real base to project power in Afghanistan. It also meant that we were leaving behind these thousands of prisoners.
The first thing that the Taliban did when they took over Bagram on August 15th was to open the doors to those prisons and free thousands of prisoners, including thousands of ISIS-K prisoners. One of those prisoners was the man who would go on to kill 13 Americans and nearly 200 Afghans at Abbey Gate just about a week-and-a-half later.
Mr. Jekielek: Why would you abandon this base? It just doesn't make any sense.
Mr. Dunleavy: President Biden was maniacal about a full U.S. troop withdrawal, except for 600 or fewer to protect the embassy in Kabul. To maintain Bagram you need a few more troops than that. You don't need 10,000 troops, but you do need more than 600 if you're going to maintain Bagram Air Base, maintain the 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 could say that the U.S. military was essentially gone from Afghanistan, outside of the presence that guards our embassy. This just 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.
When most Americans looked at that, everybody was confused. 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 at 9/11 that killed 3000 people on American soil. It wasn't a strategic decision, it was a political one. Perhaps he wanted some sort of victory lap on the 20th anniversary, but it remains a confusing decision to this day.
But the other problem was that the U.S. was leaving Afghanistan right in the middle of the Afghan fighting season. After 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, everybody knows that spring is when fighting ramps up again as the snow melts and the weather gets better. The mountain passes clear, and then the Taliban can move a lot of people from Pakistan into Afghanistan across the AfPak border. The fighting ramps up in the spring, and then it's at its heaviest in the summer and on into the fall.
Biden's announcement meant that we were pulling U.S. troops through the spring and the summer, right as the Taliban was ramping up its fighting. It was not just pulling our troops, but also pulling our logistics, our ISR, our advisors, and our contractors. Those were all things that had been supporting the Afghan military, already a very shaky military.
We knew that if we pulled out all of those things in rapid fashion with no plan about how to continue to assist the Afghan military and Afghan Air Force in any significant way, we knew that the Afghan military would not be able to function. Biden's announcement about a spring to summer withdrawal means that the Taliban is taking over in spring to summer, and it means that on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the Taliban would be back in charge.
Mr. Jekielek: If you talked to people on ground they would tell you these Afghani forces were not going to be able to hold anything. But there was other intelligence which told a different story than the one being used in the decision-making. Can you clarify that? You seem convinced that people knew that the Afghani forces would not be able to hold anything.
Mr. Dunleavy: There were 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 out 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 meant that the Afghan military would not be able to function. As the Taliban advanced, there were some Afghan units that fought and fought bravely. There were hundreds and likely thousands of Afghan troops who died in 2021 fighting the Taliban, but a lot of them didn't. A lot of them dissolved and just fell apart. Some of them surrendered and some of them fled. Some of them were limited because they weren't getting food, they weren't getting ammunition, and they weren't getting the basic resources that they needed.
Unfortunately, they weren't getting 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. 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 therefore fight off a smaller Taliban force.
This 300,000 figure was a complete fiction, and it was well known to be fiction at the time. On paper, the Biden administration was combining the size of the Afghan military and the Afghan police. On paper, those two 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, and nobody really does that, so it was misleading in that regard.
Another known problem was 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. It was likely someone in the Afghan military collecting a check in some way, but these units did not really exist.
We knew that throughout 2021 the Afghan military was falling apart without our support. 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. It also 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. Obviously, it ended in disaster with the Taliban taking over and Americans and Afghan allies getting left behind.
Mr. Jekielek: What do you think was the guiding principle behind this whole debacle? You have a theory.
Mr. Dunleavy: Yes, I do. We try to get into President Biden's head a little bit in the book. The way that we do that is by looking at his history. One vignette that we tell is going back to the Vietnam War. President Biden was elected senator when he was 30-years-old, and he got into the Senate near the tail end of the Vietnam War. He was there too late to make his name as a big anti-Vietnam war advocate.
He decided to make a name for himself by being the most vocal voice in the country fighting against the efforts by then President Gerald Ford, Republicans, and also many Democrats to bring out our South Vietnamese allies as the North Vietnamese marched south towards Saigon.
President Ford wanted to bring out a lot of these South Vietnamese allies. President Biden tried to make his mark by standing against that. There's one quote 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. That was his mentality during the war in Vietnam. That mentality and that feeling towards the current United States local allies carried over.
You could see a little bit of that when he was President Obama's vice president. When he was Obama's vice president he got a big chip on his shoulder related to the U.S. military and the U.S. military 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. This was a combination of things like not really caring very much about our allies and having a big chip on his shoulder related to military advice. It was 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. As president he wanted to make his mark, and he wanted to get out. We lay out in the book how this was a singular focus of his early presidency. He just wasn't open to anyone who told him, “Look, this will be a disaster.” He really didn't care.
Mr. Jekielek: At the same time though, the U.S. has brought over 100,000 Afghans. Maybe that stands in juxtaposition to what you just said. There seems to have been a big interest in getting people out.
Mr. Dunleavy: By August 2021, the U.S. military is essentially gone from Afghanistan. We have given up Bagram. The Taliban is on the march, and the Taliban is taking over provincial capitals. The Taliban takes over Kabul, and the United States is in control of a small airport and nothing else. The Taliban at that point pretty much controlled all of Afghanistan.
U.S. military leaders decided that the only option was to cooperate with the Taliban in order to get Americans and our Afghan allies out. This put the U.S. military in the position where we were relying on the Taliban to provide “security” 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.
Mr. Jekielek: That strains credulity. There must have been some type of plan.
Mr. Dunleavy: There was no real plan to get Americans and Afghan allies out in a large number in a rapid fashion. Such a thing didn't really exist. The state department's planning for an evacuation was paltry, to say the least. In fact, the State Department didn't officially request a non-combatant evacuation [NEO] until after the Taliban had taken over Kabul. Essentially, there 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 would have to do it with the Taliban controlling the entire country.
Very early on from August 15th, it became very clear that the United States was not going to get all of the Americans out. 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, and 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 many Americans thought the mission should be, which was to get all Americans out and to 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.
The Biden administration's measurement of success instead turned into getting a really big number of people out. That is still the level of success that the Biden administration points to today. When they called this a success, they pointed to that large figure of 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 can look at that 100,000-plus figure and start to break it down. You will see that a relatively small number of those who got out were actually Afghan allies and Afghan special immigrant visa holders and applicants. Potentially, all of the Afghans that got out felt like if they stayed in Afghanistan it would be a terrible time for them, as it is for everyone in Afghanistan. Many of them felt that they would be at some risk from the Taliban. But many of them didn't have a specific connection to assisting the United States and NATO in fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from 2001 to 2021.
We can get into this a bit further. There was chaos at the airport as the Taliban turned Americans and Afghan allies away, sometimes beating Americans, and sometimes killing Afghans in full view of us. There was this general chaos with crowds storming into the airport and eventually sometimes making it onto the planes.
Because of this chaos 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 over here. Dozens were essentially considered to be national security risks, and they turned up because of biometrics with their fingerprints on IEDs that the United States had distributed.
A small number of them seemed to have connections to the Taliban, whether being liberated by the Taliban or having other connections to the Taliban. Some of the unvetted Afghan refugees that made their way to the United States had committed various crimes. In terms of the whole number of people that we got out, it was a relatively small number of people. But 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.
It all went back to the fact that the Biden administration knew very early on that Americans and Afghan allies were going to get left behind. Their measurement of success had to be something different than getting all Americans and Afghan allies out. The measurement of success became trying to get a large number of people out instead.
Mr. Jekielek: What happened with all these people that would be of concern at the moment? 100,000 people is a substantial number.
Mr. Dunleavy: Some of the people that were identified to be national security risks were either imprisoned or deported. But according to the government records, some of them were not identified and were not located, and some of them likely still haven't been identified.
Mr. Jekielek: What about everybody else? Are they living in cities or in small town America? Do you have any sense of that?
Mr. Dunleavy: There are Afghan refugee populations that are somewhat scattered around the United States. A decent number of them actually live in the Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland area. 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.
You could see that with the Biden administration really scrambling and struggling to find third countries to bring people to as holding areas, basically called lily pads, because that hadn't been figured out by the time the Taliban took over. Then there was the question of what to do with these folks once they came to the United States.
This is a struggle that is going to continue. For a lot of the Afghans that got brought over here, there is going to be a period of adjustment. Many of them didn't expect that the Taliban would take over, and didn't expect that they would be jumping on planes.
Mr. Jekielek: A lot of blame was put on the Trump administration and its handling of things prior to the Biden administration taking over. How do you view that?
Mr. Dunleavy: We have an entire chapter on the Doha agreement [The Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan], in the final year of the Trump presidency related to Afghanistan. We make it clear in the book that the Doha agreement that was struck between the United States and the Taliban during the Trump administration was a flawed agreement. However, there were conditions inside the agreement, and the Taliban was not meeting any of those conditions whatsoever. President Trump was inclined to lower the true U.S. presence in Afghanistan and eventually withdraw from Afghanistan, but he did not do this total, rapid, go-to-zero withdrawal that President Biden did very quickly in the first year of his presidency.
When President Trump left office, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan was fluctuating somewhere between about 2,500 and 3,500, and that's what was left at the end. 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. Their only defense was, “We had to do it because of the Doha agreement,” but that's just not true.
One key example of how the Taliban wasn't following the Doha agreement was 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-head members of Al-Qaeda.
By the way, in 2021 President Biden tried to say, “Al-Qaeda is gone from Afghanistan.” They were not. This Doha agreement excuse doesn't hold water, because the Taliban was not holding up any piece of the Doha agreement. Therefore, the United States was under no obligation to follow through, because if the Taliban is not holding up their end of the deal, there is no reason for us to do so. There was no reason to do a condition-less withdrawal in the middle of the Afghan fighting season. That was a choice. That was a choice President Biden made, and his hands were not tied by the Doha agreement.
Mr. Jekielek: You've mentioned the Haqqani network which figures very importantly into what you believe happened in the Abbey Gate bombing.
Mr. Dunleavy: A big premise of our book is that the Abbey Gate attack by ISIS-K while the Taliban was providing security at the airport that killed 13 Americans, wounded dozens more, and killed nearly 200 Afghans, that attack was likely preventable. I can go through some of the reasons why.
The first, of course, we have touched on. The prisons at Bagram held thousands of ISIS-K terrorists, but the United States made the decision to abandon Bagram in July 2021. The first thing that the Taliban did when they took over Bagram around August 15th was to open those prison doors and free all those prisoners.
Many of them very quickly went on to target and harm Americans at Kabul Airport. One of those ISIS-K terrorists who was freed, Abdul Rahman Al-Logari, successfully detonated himself at Abbey Gate and killed those 13 Americans. If the United States had simply held onto Bagram Air Base, 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. Keep in mind that the Biden administration continued to talk about how the Taliban was businesslike and professional, which was not true.
President Biden repeatedly kept talking about how the Taliban and ISIS-K were mortal enemies, the implication being that we can somehow count on the Taliban to make sure that ISIS-K doesn't attack Americans at Kabul airport. It is true 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. Things are always more complicated than in the simple ways that our leaders try to think of them. 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.
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. Those attacks by ISIS-K would be carried out with facilitation and help from the Haqqani Taliban. Now you start to see a more complicated picture. You see the Taliban freeing these ISIS-K prisoners.
Nominally, ISIS-K are their mortal enemies, but the Taliban are freeing them. Some of them are likely rejoining the fight quickly to target Americans, with one of them killing 13 U.S. service members. On top of that, it was very well documented and known to the Biden administration at the time that the Taliban fighters who had surrounded Kabul airport, many of them were Haqqani Taliban.
One Haqqani leader later said that the first thing that he did when he arrived at Kabul airport was to surround it with a thousand suicide bombers. Those are his own words. 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. They had been trained up by Al-Qaeda and often carried out suicide attacks themselves.
You could see many of these Badri 313 units as the ones that were in full U.S. Special Forces kit walking around and guarding the airport. 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 collusion, and that this bombing was very possible.
There was an Afghan Tajik American interpreter who had to deal with these Haqqani commanders. He also raised the issue of, “Look, 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.”
In our book we raise this issue and bring it to light. 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 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.
We thought that was something important to bring to light to add to the conversation. 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.
Mr. Jekielek: You've done some incredible work, and I'm not surprised you got the call to do some investigative work on this. Let's talk about these private airlifts, with private contractors coming in and helping. It's an amazing story. It's been told a bit, but it's something that's receded into memory. What did you discover about this?
Mr. Dunleavy: These private and veteran-led groups that sprung up organically as the Taliban took over Kabul ended up getting many of the Americans and many of the Afghan allies out of there . 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. You could see the result of that with well over 1,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies getting left behind.
Many of the successes in terms of getting Americans and our Afghan allies out happened because these private and veteran-led groups sprung up to 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.
They were often trying to get their own interpreters out. Oftentimes, they were working from the United States, working from their kitchen tables, and working from ad hoc command centers set up in hotel ballrooms. Some of these private and vet-led groups actually ended up helping on the ground in Kabul as well to help get people out. 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 get Americans and Afghan allies out, whether by plane, through overland routes, or getting them out covertly, those efforts continued, and they continue today.
Let me tell a story about how one interpreter was able to get out through private and vet-led efforts. Back when he was a senator, President Biden had visited Afghanistan many years before with a couple of other senators, and their helicopter was forced down in a snowstorm. U.S. Special Forces and an Afghan interpreter came to Biden's rescue.
This interpreter was going to be left behind in Afghanistan. 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. Just imagine, even a man who saved President Biden's life is being left behind by President Biden. That's what the situation was.
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. They were able to get him out and get him to a safe house in a third country, Pakistan. The Biden administration didn't play a role 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 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 life.
Mr. Jekielek: All of this was happening during Covid. How did that play into all this?
Mr. Dunleavy: Covid was playing into everything, and it played into this quite a bit as well. The Biden administration prioritized things like Covid case mitigation. They were prioritizing that over the functioning of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul or over the military readiness 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 days or weeks.
One of the functions that was shut down was the processing of Afghan special immigrant visas. There was a pause in this process of making sure that we would be able to get these Afghan allies out as the Taliban is on the march, and is just months away from taking Kabul. That's what the U.S. embassy in Kabul was thinking about. It’s not for me to completely downplay the coronavirus, 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.
Mr. Jekielek: We're going to have to finish up fairly soon. Recently, there was a round table with the Gold Star families here. We've talked about the Abbey Gate bombing. What sort of accountability is happening now?
Mr. Dunleavy: A good number of the Gold Star families came to Capitol Hill right around the second anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing. This was a hearing put on by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the testimony from these families was powerful. They want answers about this attack, and there are demands for accountability.
At this point, there has been no accountability. There has been no real accountability from Secretary Antony Blinken, Secretary Lloyd Austin, or national security advisor Jake Sullivan. But the families really want answers and they want accountability. While writing this book, I had the honor of talking to many of those families. We try to tell their stories and paint a picture of who these 13 heroes were.
Also in the book we lay out how it's very possible that the Abbey Gate attack was preventable. We've already talked about the fact that if we had just held onto Bagram, the suicide bomber, Abdul Rahman Al-Logari would have been behind bars, 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 of Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year that in the early morning of the day of the bombing, August 26th, 2021, he was receiving very detailed information about an impending attack, and likely at Abbey Gate. He was receiving intelligence on the description of the likely suicide bomber as well.
He and his sniper team ended up identifying someone that they believed matched the description of the likely suicide bomber in the crowd. According to Tyler's testimony, he asked his commanding officer for permission to take the shot and take this likely suicide bomber out. According to Tyler, Lieutenant Colonel Brad Whited told Tyler that he, as the commanding officer, didn't have authority to give Tyler permission to take the shot, and that he didn't know who did have that authority.
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. 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. According to this officer, it was in part because U.S. military leaders deemed that there would be a negative response from the Taliban.
This horrible attack killed 13 American heroes, grievously wounded dozens of them, including Tyler who tragically lost two of his limbs, and another female U.S. service member who is currently paralyzed. This attack also killed nearly 200 Afghans. If the U.S. had made better decisions, it's very possible that that attack could have been prevented.
Mr. Jekielek: Jerry, this has been a fascinating conversation. A final thought as we finish?
Mr. Dunleavy: My final thought is that my co-author James Hasson and I viewed this book as a first step—a springboard to getting to the answers, getting to the truth, and getting to accountability. There are a ton of details in here that people have never seen before and that have never heard before. We lay out 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, and not the finish.
Mr. Jekielek: Jerry Dunleavy, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Dunleavy: Thank you very much. I really had a good time.
Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Jerry Dunleavy and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
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