September 14, 2023 • 40 mins
In this episode, Lisa welcomes former Army Captain James Hasson, who co-authored the book "Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End." Lisa and James delve into the lies told about the withdrawal, the warnings that were ignored, and Biden's decision-making. They address concerns about Biden's control and decision-making abilities, as well as his response to the safety of women and children who fought alongside the US. Lisa and James also highlight specific incidents during the withdrawal and the disconnect between top leadership and soldiers on the ground. They express their disgust at the lies and failures of the American government and hope that sharing the full story will lead to accountability and prevent future failures. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the iHeartRadio Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
They try to warn us about Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told us that he had
been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security
issue over the past four decades. Barack Obama said, don't
underestimate his ability to f things up. This interview that
we're about to do just really underscores those points. It's
a breakdown and an in depth interview, an investigation on
(00:26):
what exactly happened during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. This
interview is going to make you sick to your stomach.
It's going to make you angry about that disgraceful chapter
in American history. We'll learned things like that suicide bombing
was avoidable, the fact that even after losing thirteen service members,
Marines were ordered to pick up human feces before they
(00:49):
were allowed to leave Kabble to help the Taliban. I'm
telling you you're not going to want to miss this conversation.
It's gut wrenching, but it's important. We're going to talk
to former Army Captain Jisan. He's a co author of
the new book Cobble, The Untold story of Biden's fiasco
and the American warriors who fought to the end.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
He served this country.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
He was an Afghanistan veteran, or he is an Afghanistan veteran,
and he co authored this book with Jared Dunlevy, who's
an investigative reporter who worked for the Washington Examiner. We're
going to get into all of it. You're not going
to want to miss this conversation. Stay tuned for James Haissan. James,
(01:31):
I know that you covered the disaster's withdrawal from Afghanistan
and your new book, which we're going to get into.
As you think back on what you wrote and what
you found out, what's the biggest lie that we've been
told about the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Well, how much time do you have.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
We've got as much time as you have.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I don't know if I can't I name just one,
but if you allow me to go through a couple.
The first was that it was entirely unforeseen that the
Afghan security forces would collapse. And I think that the
reason why this is important is that you know, if
the administration had just presented this choice to the American people,
(02:12):
if they just said, Hey, the entire state's going to go,
you know, to hell and the military is not gonna
be able to stay itself. But we've done twenty years.
It's time to go. I think that'd be a fair
choice to put to the American people, but instead they
engaged in this fiction. You know, President Biden in April
(02:33):
of twenty twenty one said that the Afghan military was,
you know, as well equipped as any Western military, which
is just patently untrue. And one of the things that
they did is they cited this figure that the Afghan
national security forces were three hundred thousand strong, and I
think at one point General Milly over the summer of
(02:55):
twenty twenty one increased that number to three hundred and
twenty five thousand. And the reason why that was just
a complete falsehood was that number one, there was a
very well known problem of what are called quote unquote
ghost units. They are Afghan military units that existed only
on paper, so that you know, the battalion commander or
(03:19):
something could pocket the salaries for those non existing soldiers.
That's one. But secondly, they also included in that figure
all of the Afghan local police, the border police, and
you know, these kind of smaller pair military units that
you know, we wouldn't say the American military is five
(03:40):
million strong because we're afcluding the police force from Peoria, Illinois.
But they went ahead and did that, and we spoke
to a few senior career CIA officials said that their
assessment was without American military support, without contractor or support
for all the things that we were enabling them to do,
(04:04):
the best case scenario was ninety days and the worst
case scenario was thirty days before the military collapse. And
one of the pernicious things about that is that the
administration kept painting this rosy picture that you know the
government was going to hold when all intelligence reports and
(04:27):
indicators said to the contrary. But what it did is
it gave a lot of Americans who were there, who
were working as aid workers, worked for places like the
World Bank, or even who were naturalized citizens who had
gone home to visit their families this false sense of
security that there was time and that they could get
(04:47):
out and then lo and behold. It kind of collapsed
overnight and they're stuck behind the Taliban, with the Taliban
standing between them and safety. But I think the second
thing is that the suicide bombing at Abby Gay on
August twenty sixth, which took the lives of thirteen Americans
(05:11):
wounded forty five more, some of them you know, permanently.
There's a fewal Marine who's now paralyzed starrying Tyler Vargus
Andrews has lost two limbs and also took the lives
of two hundred Afghan civilians. That that attack was not preventable,
and it's kind of almost a falsehood on multiple levels.
(05:37):
So first they the administration loves to cite the Pentagon
report and they quote it out of context and they say, look,
they said it wasn't preventable. This was just going to
happen no matter what. And then that's not actually what
the Pentagon report said. It said it was not quote
tactically preventable end quote. Given the all of the strategic
(06:00):
decisions that the Biden administ administration made, to include abandoning
Babram over the advice of military leaders, which we know
that the suicide bomber on the twenty sixth Albill Ramanell Lobery,
who the administration has refused even named to this day,
(06:23):
was in prison at you know, at Bagram when we
abandoned it, and he was freed by the Tali Dan
when they overran it on the fifteenth. So the idea
that just rid large this was just a baked in
cost he is completely a falsehood. But even even then,
(06:44):
I would say that there are some very serious questions
about the even the assessment that it was not tactically preventable.
And for one, that again assumes that tax we had
to rely on the Taliban for our security.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Ignoring the warnings. Was that a choice from this administration?
You know, why do you think they avoided the warnings
about a suicide bomber? What do you think was behind
the decision making of that.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, I think they were fully aware of the fact
that there was a threat. Even it's remarkable President Biden
on August twenty fourth, even you know, spoke about the
threat to the airport from isis k from quote prisoners
(07:37):
who were released from from Barbara before and so there
were plenty It's clear that this was something that intelligence
had at Zion. But number one, they had already put
all of their their cards kind of on the table
(07:57):
in terms of the Taliban being quote business like and professional,
that's the term that they used, and our security partners,
and at that point they'd seated a whole lot of
a whole lot of ground, and they had no stomach
for any kind of confrontation with the Taliban whatsoever. In facts,
when we floated the idea of leaving after the thirty first,
(08:20):
the Taliban basically stated in no on certain terms. Well,
in that case is it's game on. And the administration
just folded and abandoned American citizens. But prior to that,
this was a political decision from day one. One of
the things that we report in Kabble is that our
(08:41):
book Cobble is that in Joe Biden's first week in office,
he asked his advisors how quickly can we get out
of Afghanistan. He didn't ask how can we do it safely?
How can we do it while getting American allies and
American citizens out? It was just how quick can we
get out? And where this really came into play it
(09:03):
was bob because he wanted no more than six hundred
troops in the country. And that's something that we verified
and or Is and now other people have also verified.
And you can't hold Bogram with six hundred troops. And
so the military was completing to be able to hold
Bograham and use that even as part of an evacuation
(09:23):
and they were overruled quite literally by Joe Biden himself.
And so it was a political decision, not a military.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well, and that's interesting too, because you know, there's this
narrative sometimes from the right about Joe Biden because of
his age, because of his his uh, you know, clear
cognitive issues that are going on, that somehow he's just
a puppet for people, you know, other people, powerful forces
behind him.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You know, what do we know?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
You know, you just talked about his decision making, and
you know what do we know about his decision making
and all of this and Joe Biden driving all of this.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, it's it's a great question. Glad he asked it,
because you know, there there are a lot of, you know,
questions and concerns being raised about how much the president
is in control of the White House and how much
he's making the actual decisions. And I think in a
lot of circumstances those are fair questions to raise. But here,
(10:19):
as we lay out in Cobble, this was Joe Biden
from start to finish. And so if you allow me,
I can give you kind of three different examples. First,
it's entirely consistent with who Joe Biden has always been
from a foreign policy perspective. And when I say that,
(10:40):
I mean one thing that we detail in the first
chapter of the book is just to go through how
he's been wrong about every single thing, you know, in
the words of Bob Gates, for forty years. But when
Vietnam was collapsing and Biden was trying to make his mark,
it was too late to be an anti war senator.
And so he made his mark in saying that we
(11:00):
shouldn't accept, in his words, we don't have a moral
obligation to one or one hundred and thousand and one
South Vietnamese allies who helped us. And so that's you know,
it's an eerie foreshadowing of four years later of how
he approached Afghanisan. But secondly, this is what he was
pushing for even when President Obama was office, and you know,
(11:23):
he was urging Obama to get out, and Obama, you know,
was kind of sided with the generals over Biden. But
at the time Richard Holbrook, who was the UN ambassador
for the Biden or for the Obama administration, raised the
issue of what about all of the women and children,
(11:44):
about the allies that who fought along beside us, and
Biden snapped screw that we got away with in Saigon,
didn't we And so in one sense is very consistent
with who Biden is and what he's always want it
to do. But then as president, you know, we have
(12:06):
people in the room that he was making these decisions,
and on top of that, he got very involved in
the first days after the collapse and directed the military
to quote unquote open the gates and to let as
many people in as possible because there was there are
(12:28):
a lot of pointed questions about the slow pace of
evacuations and what that did is it put Americans and
Afghan allies at the very back of the mobs were
at the gates, and so reason why and military officers
told the Pentagon in their investigation, that's a reason why
a lot of Americans were abandoned because it came straight
(12:48):
from the president that he was changing the criteria on
the fly.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And that of course makes his actions all that much
more dishonorable in the aftermath of all of this, with
him having been at the helm of all this decisions.
You know, we interviewed a gold star mom, Cheryl Rex
on the show, who lost her son, Marine Lance Corporal
Dylan Marolla, and he lied to her, you know, he
(13:15):
said that his son came home in an American flag
draped coffin, which of course that's not how his son
Bo died, who died of cancer. He checked his watch
during the dignified transfer, so you know, he turned his
back on America and during press conferences.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
So you know, the fact that he was the.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
One leading all of this and making all the decisions
makes all those interactions that much more dishonorable.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
It absolutely does. My co author, Jerry Dunleavy, and I
had the just the absolute honor of talking to most
of those gold Star families. And I know Jerry, since
we published the book, is now working as the lead
investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Afghanistan Investigation, and so
he's talking to them, you know, even now on a
(14:01):
more frequent basis. But every single one that we spoke
to brought up that he checked his watch every time
a flag drip cost like casket came off off the
ramp of Dover, and that he told them all the
same thing about Bo. And even when one of the
other fathers of the Fallen Marines showed a picture of
(14:25):
his son and said, you remember the space. You need
to remember their stories. Biden just snapped back, I do
remember their stories. And to this day he continues to
just claim that it's a success, but he is never
once in public mentioned the names of the thirteen service
(14:48):
members who were killed as a direct result of the
decisions that he made. And it's just unconscionable as a
commander in chief.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
To take a quick commercial break more from the disastrous
withdrawal from Afghanistan. Cheryl told me that, you know, she's
really having that. All the families are just having the
hardest time getting information from this administration that they're shielding behind.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Oh it's classified, this, that and the other.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You know, what do we know about what happened that day,
that day of the suicide bomber that led to the
death of her son as well as twelve other service members.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So what I can tell you is what we know
about the few days before that, and then also about
what we know leading you know on that morning of
the twenty six from Sergeant Tylers Andrews testimony and working backwards,
Sergeant Vargus Andrews was a marine sniper. You lost multiple
(15:49):
limbs in the bombing and was never interviewed by the Pentagon,
by the way, in their report. And he testified that
he get that there was a description of a potential
suicide bomber that went out a bald individual who was
a very closely cropped beard, wearing certain types of clothes,
carrying a certain type of bag, and that you know,
(16:13):
his sniper team spotted that that individual someone who matched
that description, called an Army Psychological Operations team up to
the sniper tower to get confirmation. The syops team confirmed
that the individual matched the description, and then his sniper team,
(16:34):
Reaper two, radioed the Rettalian commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brad Wadett,
and asked whether or not they had permission to take
a shot, and the response they got was I don't
have that authority to give you. And when they said, well, respectfully, sir,
who does, the answer was I don't know, but let
(16:55):
me try and find out. And then they never got
a response and the individual, you know, kind of melted
into the crowd later on, and you know, later that afternoon,
there was of course a suicide bombing that everyone knows about.
And I want to be pretty clear about one thing,
is that last week. General mackenzie stated that there was
(17:18):
no specific description of any individual given out and you
see he doesn't know, uh, you know, where Sergeant Fargus
Andrews would have come up with that, you know, testimony
essentially or that that no shape. But when you go
back into the witness interviews, the transcribed witness interviews that
the Pentagon conducted with all the service members on the ground,
(17:42):
there were several different individuals from different units who all
told basically the same story that Sergeant Fargus Andrews did
before he ever went public and while he was at
Walter Reed recovering from dozens of surgeries, and that you know,
maybe there was a disconnect between what sent COOM. You
(18:05):
know what the John McKenzie was the commander of Sencom
at the time, uh, what was filtered up to him
and what was getting down to the people on the ground.
But if that's the case, that's a huge problem all
on its own. But notably that that the Psychological Psychological
Operations Team told Pentagon investigators that they had gotten that
description directly from SENACA, which which I think is very interesting.
(18:28):
But working backwards, there were two things that we reported
in Kabble, which we, you know, indicated that if we
hadn't chosen to rely on the Taliban, that there could
have been opportunities two m potentially disrupt or prevent what happened.
(18:49):
So one of the things that we reported in Kabble
was that there were our book Kabble was that there
are two potential opportunities that to potentially disrupt or even
prevent the attack from happening if we hadn't been relying
on the Taliban for our security. And the first of
(19:09):
those is that on August twenty fourth, the military drew
up a potential air strike which is at what they
call targeting package for an isis K operative named Kabir Iedi.
He was in Nangar Province and he was a known
distributor of suicide vests and an attack planer and depending
(19:32):
on later said publicly that he had a rule in
them in the abbeygated. And what it appears for reading
through the sworn statements submitted by Zeer military officials who
were part of drawing up that that potential air strike
is that it was deemed infeasible by the commanders on
(19:55):
the ground because of the quote unquote negative response from
the talent. And what we also know is that General Dunnah,
who was in constant conversation with his Taliban counterpart outside
the gates. But crucially, the military executed what appears to
(20:18):
be that exact same targeting package according to this testimony,
on August twenty seventh, and then they killed this isis
K operative in Nanglehar, and they stated that doing so
prevented a follow on attack. The military officials Eden told
the Wall Street Journal that this operative kuld Be variety
(20:42):
was quote planning on another attack, and so it stands
to reason that if by striking him on the twenty
seventh prevented a follow on attack, there's some legitimate questions
about whether, had we struck him on the twenty fourth
and not been concerned about the negative reaction from the Taliban,
(21:02):
whether or not that could have been prevented. But secondly,
the other thing that we reported and General Mackenzie actually
appeared to confirm last week was that the military asked
the Taliban to raid suspected isis K locations in Kabble
prior to the bombing several of them, and that the
(21:25):
Taliban often refused to do so, and that again just
just drives home this fatal stupidity of relying on a
Taliban describing them as our security partners. And it's something
that the administration cannot admit because they're on record telling
(21:47):
the American people that the Taliban was businesslike and professional
and which, of course are many other examples of where
they weren't, and I can get to those in a bit.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Well, yeah, like history, you know, like common sense, you don't,
I guess you know, James, Yeah, it's like they're a
terrorist organization. I mean, you know, what do you what
do you expect?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Right?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And that really all begs the question, James, you know,
why were we relying on the towelban? You know, why
were we relying on terrorists for the security of our
own people at our allies.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
There's a pivotal meeting that happened on August fifteenth, when
when Kabble was falling. I would say there are two reasons. First,
just the overall lack of planning and failure to heed
any of the you know, lights blinking red coming from
Afghanistan from the administration. It was too preoccupied with COVID response.
(22:44):
It's it's domestic spending bills, all those kinds of things
to worry about Afghanistan much. So that's just kind of
an overarching factor. But secondly, on August fifteenth, General mackenzie
went and met with a Taliban commander named bard Our
in Doha, cutter and to try and work out a
(23:06):
solution because the Taliban were basically outside the gates and
reporting McKenzie himself. The Bardar offered to keep Taliban forces
outside the confines of Cobble, and Mackenzie basically said, no,
(23:27):
as long as you don't interfere with our evacuation, then
you know, we're not trying to fight you, essentially, And
it's actually since we came out of the books from
reported elsewhere that Bartur even turned to it to interpreter
and said that is he saying they won't attack us
if we come into Cobble, And so that you know,
in some ways that decision right then was was kind
(23:50):
of the original sin of a lot of what unfolded afterwards.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
And it wasn't just relying on secure. I mean, we
kind of bowed down to them, it seemed. And you know,
I know that you guys reported that the Marines were
ordered to pick up human feces before they were allowed
to leave Kabble after we had lost thirteen service members.
You're already reeling and already have the fear of having
lost your teammates, and then you're ordered to pick up
(24:19):
human feces.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I mean, that's.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Disgraceful, first of all, and then secondly, why would we
do that for the Taliban?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Maybe bobbles the mind and I have a hard time
giving you an answer for why we would do something
a logical answer for something so illogical. But the backstory
on that is essentially that when we were closing down,
the military gave each unit kind of a sector to
quote unquote demilitarize, basically to make sure that sensitive equipment
(24:48):
and things that were in that in that sector were
kind of disabled. Yeah. For example, the engineers poured concrete
over a various pieces of sensitive equipment. But the Marines
from h two to one second second Italian First Marines,
(25:09):
who had lost eleven of their fellow marines, you know,
for them, they they took that to its to its
very fullest, and they just destroyed everything because of course,
why are you leaving anything to the Telebanion. They had
the flipped over vehicles, they smash TVs, and they described
(25:29):
that to us as as basically a release. And the
day after when they were getting ready to depart, they
got the order to go ahead and clean up everything.
And based on what we know, the kind of the
senior most leadership at the airport just said that this
(25:49):
isn't how we leave an institution, you know, this isn't
we take care of equipment, we you know, blah blah
blah blah blah, which just shows the disconnect between the
people at the very top and the individual marines and
soldiers who were manning the gates, and uh, you know,
they all, to a man and woman, all the marines
told us, you know what, we're cleaning this place for
(26:11):
the Taliban. It's one thing you for doing a training
mission and there's another unit, American unit coming behind you.
It's another thing that the Taliban is literally taking your
base from you and you have to roll out the
red carpet. It makes it makes no sense. So yeah,
so they had to go ahead and unflip all those vehicles,
(26:33):
clean up trash, rotten food in this entire area where
people had been Afghan uh, you know, evacuees had been
defecating and all kinds of other things. That senior one
of the senior NCOs from the unit described to Pentagon
investigators that it was just filled with people who had
(26:55):
been defecating and doing quote other unspeakable things. And he
he said it was the most grading experience of his
military career. And it's just one more fact or incident
that the American people have never been told about this
whole withdrawal. And that's why Jerry and I wrote Kabble
is because the American people deserve to know the truth.
(27:15):
Number one and number two, we wanted to make sure
it never happened again.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Take a quick commercial break, and then more on the
disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. And we did leave billions of
weapons behind to the Taliban and including Blackhawks. You know,
what do we know about the state of Afghanistan right now?
And do you think those weapons will be used against
(27:41):
us in the future.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Well, we do know for a fact that some of
them have made their way into places like Iran, some
of them have made their way into Pakistan. In fact,
the Pakistani government just five or six days ago alleged
that militant groups in Pakistan are now using American made
weapons to attack Pakistan. And Pakistan shares a large share
(28:03):
of you know, as a large share of blame for
failures in Afghanistans. So I don't feel particularly sympathetic to them,
but we do know that they're you know, they're they're
traveling far and wide on the black market, and almost
certainly they will be used in terrorist attacks. Again. But
beyond the weapons, we left behind a significant number of
(28:28):
Afghan commandos who served alongside US Special Forces units, and
we were able to obtain documents that are now highly
classified showing that Iran in particular has been recruiting and
debriefing those commandos about things like how US Special Operations
(28:52):
units plan for missions, what their capabilities are, how we
react in certain circumstances. And we also know that that
Russia was trying to recruit them to fight on behalf
of the Wagner Group in Ukraine. In fact, there were
Afghan passports found on the battlefield in Ukraine. So that
that's one of the things that we cover in the
(29:13):
final few chapters of Kable is that unlike all of
you know, the Americans, that the administration willfully left behind,
these these failures and these consequences are not going to
stay in cobble. They're going to be felt across the
region and across the world.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
And it's not just what we we left behind either,
it's also what we've allowed to enter into the United States.
You know, there were reports at the time that the
government had handed out blank copies of visas in Afghanistan
meeting that we weren't just letting allies on those planes
that exited or you know planes. You know, in the
aftermath of it coming to the United States, you report
(29:53):
in your book that there were are more than sixty
five terrorists that have been allowed into the United States.
Tell us a little bit more about that, and then
you know how susceptible are do we to a terrorist
attack in the United States based on the people we've
allowed in?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
I would say there probably that the security threats is
probably that it's the term the government used, and so
I'll stick with that. But that's it, you know it
six to one a half dozen of the other. Really,
this this goes back to what I mentioned about President
Biden change it panicking and changing the entry criteria on
(30:29):
the fly. And we actually obtained an email that the
State Department sent down after that call that President Biden
had with senior State Department officials, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan,
and General o' donaho, and we're Admiral Vassili, who was
in charge of US Forces Afghanistan. And what we detail
(30:54):
is that they were very frustrated about the low numbers
they were getting pointed questions, and it's what they opted
to do was just juice their numbers by, instead of
focusing solely on US citizens and Afghan allies, to allow
any Afghan who appeared to be part of a family
(31:14):
unit or appeared to be quote at risk, and then
to air on the side of letting people l And
those are all directly from Joe Biden. Those were his directives.
And what that meant was that over the course of
about thirty six hours, you had tens of thousands of
(31:36):
people on the airfield, most of whom had no connection
to the US government or to the Afghan government and
hadn't been vetted at all. And in fact, the military
had to shut down evacuations for twenty four hours to
just deal with the overload. But what that meant by
bringing all kinds of unvetted people in was that only
(32:02):
after the fact, when they the National Round Intelligence Center
compared fingerprints taken from people and allowed into the country
against a Pentagon database of known security threats, did they
realize that there were Initially they found fifty and that
number has risen to sixty five individuals who the Pentagon
(32:24):
had flagged as security threats, and that included people's people
whose fingerprints have been found on diffused IED's in Afghanistan,
and that we have no way of tracking these individuals
now they're just in the country. And more to the point,
(32:44):
there are also plenty of people came here and I
wouldn't say the majority by any means, but a substantial
number who committed horrific crimes against children and women in
terms of abuse when they were on US military basins.
Because again, these weren't the people that we had vet it.
There were people that were brought in because the administration
(33:04):
wanted to be able to say, which now they have
done at nauseum, that it was the largest airlift in history.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
So we've now ceded Afghanistan to terrorists while also allowing
these terrorists into the country where it would not be
that difficult for them to coordinate with the people back
in Afghanistan of how to coordinate an attack against the
United States within our own country.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
That's a pretty accurate way to say, Lisa sad as
it is.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I mean, this really is just a story of disgrace, right,
I mean, I don't know if I don't think there's
been a time as an American in my thirty eight
years where I have been more ashamed of my own government,
more shamed of my own country than what happened with
the withdrawal that led to so many people dying. And
(33:54):
then secondly, just a story of just utter incompetence, which
just baffles the mind of how people who are in
these positions could be so dumb, so disgraceful, and so incompetent.
You're a former Army captain or I guess you know,
once an Army captain, always an Army captain, and an
Afghanistan veteran.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Was it hard to write this book?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, honestly it was. It was. It was pretty gut wrenching.
And when we started out writing it, Jerry and I
kind of thought that we had an idea about everything
that went on, and we realized that we even though
we were paying close attention and we were talking at
the time to people who were on the ground. I
(34:34):
was trying to help get friends interpreters out, and thank god,
we got a good amount of them out. But you know,
we thought we knew and we didn't even know a
third of it. And yeah, some of the most difficult
things for me to hear. We're talking to these eighteen
nineteen twenty twenty one year old mareens and soldiers who
(34:56):
were at the gates and what they had to deal
with because I remember, you know, leading people that age,
and how they're they're they're all in and and they
do so well, trusting that the people above them have
their best interests in mind. And yeah, as as as
(35:17):
evidenced by this whole collapse, that wasn't the case. But
they saw it. I mean, they performed heroically. Honestly, this
was the average American at its very best and an
American government at its very worst. Uh. But but they
you know, they they saw things like babies being trampled
underfoot in the mob right in front of them. There
(35:41):
were women that were trying to throw their babies over
the razor wires so that they could at least their
babies could get out, and sometimes they uh, they didn't
throw them far off. So the babies landed in the
razor wire. Uh. There were the Taliban was beating Americans,
you know, and and Afghans and in some cases executing
(36:02):
Afghan allies in full view of these soldiers and marines.
And one thing that came up time and time again
during these hours and hours of conversations that I had
with these these soldiers and marines was the concept of
moral trauma, in that you know, they're under the rules
(36:26):
of engagement, they couldn't do anything, and yet they had
to just stand there and witness all this kind of
just horrific, all these horrific things, and at other times
tell people that they were allowed in or they weren't
allowed in, knowing that when they turned people away that
there was a good chance at the Taliban we're gonna
you know, kill them because they had tried to come
(36:47):
to the airport.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I mean, that just makes you you know, even as
you were just talking, I just felt stick to my
stomach just imagining these young men and women to have
to see all this and as you mentioned, to not
be able to do anything when they're sent there to
to serve and protect. So I can't imagine how difficult,
and I can't imagine how difficult to this day it's
got to be for the people to side. That's just
something you probably never forget in your entire life.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
One of the things that they said was was just
solving the wounds. Was while they were dealing with this,
seeing news reports from from the White House describing the
Taliban as you know, again quote business like and professional
and saying that they were letting people through when they
knew for a fact that that was not true.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
And then of course they lied to us about the
aid worker that they droned and told us it was
you know, I think an isis guy and it was
an AID worker and his kids. So I mean, it's
just it's it's probably one of the more disgraceful chapters
in American history. You know, you had mentioned, you know,
one of the objectives is that to write this book
(37:51):
so that it never happens again. What do you hope
the lesson is after writing this? You know, what do
you hope we learn as a country, as a people?
What do you hope for government learns after writing this book?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I hope that the decisions that people like Secretary Blincoln made,
Secretary Austin made follow them for the rest of their careers,
and that they dealt In a just world, they wouldn't
be able to give a press conference without being asked
to justify that the things that they did. But on
(38:24):
a broader sense, you know, the first step to making
sure something doesn't happen again is for people to know
what happened. And the administration has no absolutely no intent
of holding anyone accountable. Number one, because that would have
that would involve admitting that this was not a success
(38:44):
as they have claimed. But two, telling the American people
the full story. And I think once people understand just
the scope and the magnitude of the failure, how preventable
it really was, and the human kind of suffering and
the consequences geoplitically even that that are flowing from this,
(39:06):
that the administration will have to count for that, whether
that's you know, next November or sooner than that. And
we've we've been able to speak a lot with members
of Congress, and obviously Jerry Now after the Congressman read
our book, hired him to lead the investigation. So we're
(39:28):
going to just keep pressing to make sure that there
is a measure of accountability and kable at least you know,
writing Kable at least for us was a start.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Well, James, I appreciate your service to this country. I
appreciate you co authoring this book Kabble, The Untold Story
of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors who Fought to
the End.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Everyone should go check it out.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Thank you for both your service and for putting in
the work to write this book and bring it to
the American people.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Thanks so much, Lisa, I really appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
That was James Hastan, co author of Kavel, The Untold
Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors who Fought
to the End.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I mean, wow, it's.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Infuriating to hear how this was all preventable, that those
thirteen lives were preventable. It's just disgraceful. But I appreciate
him for taking the time to join the show as
service to the country. Appreciate you guys at home for
listening every Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout
the week. What do I think John Cassio, my producer,
for putting the show together. Until next time,
They try to warn us about Joe Biden.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told us that he had
been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security
issue over the past four decades. Barack Obama said, don't
underestimate his ability to f things up. This interview that
we're about to do just really underscores those points. It's
a breakdown and an in depth interview, an investigation on
(00:26):
what exactly happened during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. This
interview is going to make you sick to your stomach.
It's going to make you angry about that disgraceful chapter
in American history. We'll learned things like that suicide bombing
was avoidable, the fact that even after losing thirteen service members,
Marines were ordered to pick up human feces before they
(00:49):
were allowed to leave Kabble to help the Taliban. I'm
telling you you're not going to want to miss this conversation.
It's gut wrenching, but it's important. We're going to talk
to former Army Captain Jisan. He's a co author of
the new book Cobble, The Untold story of Biden's fiasco
and the American warriors who fought to the end.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
He served this country.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
He was an Afghanistan veteran, or he is an Afghanistan veteran,
and he co authored this book with Jared Dunlevy, who's
an investigative reporter who worked for the Washington Examiner. We're
going to get into all of it. You're not going
to want to miss this conversation. Stay tuned for James Haissan. James,
(01:31):
I know that you covered the disaster's withdrawal from Afghanistan
and your new book, which we're going to get into.
As you think back on what you wrote and what
you found out, what's the biggest lie that we've been
told about the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Well, how much time do you have.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
We've got as much time as you have.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I don't know if I can't I name just one,
but if you allow me to go through a couple.
The first was that it was entirely unforeseen that the
Afghan security forces would collapse. And I think that the
reason why this is important is that you know, if
the administration had just presented this choice to the American people,
(02:12):
if they just said, Hey, the entire state's going to go,
you know, to hell and the military is not gonna
be able to stay itself. But we've done twenty years.
It's time to go. I think that'd be a fair
choice to put to the American people, but instead they
engaged in this fiction. You know, President Biden in April
(02:33):
of twenty twenty one said that the Afghan military was,
you know, as well equipped as any Western military, which
is just patently untrue. And one of the things that
they did is they cited this figure that the Afghan
national security forces were three hundred thousand strong, and I
think at one point General Milly over the summer of
(02:55):
twenty twenty one increased that number to three hundred and
twenty five thousand. And the reason why that was just
a complete falsehood was that number one, there was a
very well known problem of what are called quote unquote
ghost units. They are Afghan military units that existed only
on paper, so that you know, the battalion commander or
(03:19):
something could pocket the salaries for those non existing soldiers.
That's one. But secondly, they also included in that figure
all of the Afghan local police, the border police, and
you know, these kind of smaller pair military units that
you know, we wouldn't say the American military is five
(03:40):
million strong because we're afcluding the police force from Peoria, Illinois.
But they went ahead and did that, and we spoke
to a few senior career CIA officials said that their
assessment was without American military support, without contractor or support
for all the things that we were enabling them to do,
(04:04):
the best case scenario was ninety days and the worst
case scenario was thirty days before the military collapse. And
one of the pernicious things about that is that the
administration kept painting this rosy picture that you know the
government was going to hold when all intelligence reports and
(04:27):
indicators said to the contrary. But what it did is
it gave a lot of Americans who were there, who
were working as aid workers, worked for places like the
World Bank, or even who were naturalized citizens who had
gone home to visit their families this false sense of
security that there was time and that they could get
(04:47):
out and then lo and behold. It kind of collapsed
overnight and they're stuck behind the Taliban, with the Taliban
standing between them and safety. But I think the second
thing is that the suicide bombing at Abby Gay on
August twenty sixth, which took the lives of thirteen Americans
(05:11):
wounded forty five more, some of them you know, permanently.
There's a fewal Marine who's now paralyzed starrying Tyler Vargus
Andrews has lost two limbs and also took the lives
of two hundred Afghan civilians. That that attack was not preventable,
and it's kind of almost a falsehood on multiple levels.
(05:37):
So first they the administration loves to cite the Pentagon
report and they quote it out of context and they say, look,
they said it wasn't preventable. This was just going to
happen no matter what. And then that's not actually what
the Pentagon report said. It said it was not quote
tactically preventable end quote. Given the all of the strategic
(06:00):
decisions that the Biden administ administration made, to include abandoning
Babram over the advice of military leaders, which we know
that the suicide bomber on the twenty sixth Albill Ramanell Lobery,
who the administration has refused even named to this day,
(06:23):
was in prison at you know, at Bagram when we
abandoned it, and he was freed by the Tali Dan
when they overran it on the fifteenth. So the idea
that just rid large this was just a baked in
cost he is completely a falsehood. But even even then,
(06:44):
I would say that there are some very serious questions
about the even the assessment that it was not tactically preventable.
And for one, that again assumes that tax we had
to rely on the Taliban for our security.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Ignoring the warnings. Was that a choice from this administration?
You know, why do you think they avoided the warnings
about a suicide bomber? What do you think was behind
the decision making of that.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, I think they were fully aware of the fact
that there was a threat. Even it's remarkable President Biden
on August twenty fourth, even you know, spoke about the
threat to the airport from isis k from quote prisoners
(07:37):
who were released from from Barbara before and so there
were plenty It's clear that this was something that intelligence
had at Zion. But number one, they had already put
all of their their cards kind of on the table
(07:57):
in terms of the Taliban being quote business like and professional,
that's the term that they used, and our security partners,
and at that point they'd seated a whole lot of
a whole lot of ground, and they had no stomach
for any kind of confrontation with the Taliban whatsoever. In facts,
when we floated the idea of leaving after the thirty first,
(08:20):
the Taliban basically stated in no on certain terms. Well,
in that case is it's game on. And the administration
just folded and abandoned American citizens. But prior to that,
this was a political decision from day one. One of
the things that we report in Kabble is that our
(08:41):
book Cobble is that in Joe Biden's first week in office,
he asked his advisors how quickly can we get out
of Afghanistan. He didn't ask how can we do it safely?
How can we do it while getting American allies and
American citizens out? It was just how quick can we
get out? And where this really came into play it
(09:03):
was bob because he wanted no more than six hundred
troops in the country. And that's something that we verified
and or Is and now other people have also verified.
And you can't hold Bogram with six hundred troops. And
so the military was completing to be able to hold
Bograham and use that even as part of an evacuation
(09:23):
and they were overruled quite literally by Joe Biden himself.
And so it was a political decision, not a military.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well, and that's interesting too, because you know, there's this
narrative sometimes from the right about Joe Biden because of
his age, because of his his uh, you know, clear
cognitive issues that are going on, that somehow he's just
a puppet for people, you know, other people, powerful forces
behind him.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You know, what do we know?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
You know, you just talked about his decision making, and
you know what do we know about his decision making
and all of this and Joe Biden driving all of this.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, it's it's a great question. Glad he asked it,
because you know, there there are a lot of, you know,
questions and concerns being raised about how much the president
is in control of the White House and how much
he's making the actual decisions. And I think in a
lot of circumstances those are fair questions to raise. But here,
(10:19):
as we lay out in Cobble, this was Joe Biden
from start to finish. And so if you allow me,
I can give you kind of three different examples. First,
it's entirely consistent with who Joe Biden has always been
from a foreign policy perspective. And when I say that,
(10:40):
I mean one thing that we detail in the first
chapter of the book is just to go through how
he's been wrong about every single thing, you know, in
the words of Bob Gates, for forty years. But when
Vietnam was collapsing and Biden was trying to make his mark,
it was too late to be an anti war senator.
And so he made his mark in saying that we
(11:00):
shouldn't accept, in his words, we don't have a moral
obligation to one or one hundred and thousand and one
South Vietnamese allies who helped us. And so that's you know,
it's an eerie foreshadowing of four years later of how
he approached Afghanisan. But secondly, this is what he was
pushing for even when President Obama was office, and you know,
(11:23):
he was urging Obama to get out, and Obama, you know,
was kind of sided with the generals over Biden. But
at the time Richard Holbrook, who was the UN ambassador
for the Biden or for the Obama administration, raised the
issue of what about all of the women and children,
(11:44):
about the allies that who fought along beside us, and
Biden snapped screw that we got away with in Saigon,
didn't we And so in one sense is very consistent
with who Biden is and what he's always want it
to do. But then as president, you know, we have
(12:06):
people in the room that he was making these decisions,
and on top of that, he got very involved in
the first days after the collapse and directed the military
to quote unquote open the gates and to let as
many people in as possible because there was there are
(12:28):
a lot of pointed questions about the slow pace of
evacuations and what that did is it put Americans and
Afghan allies at the very back of the mobs were
at the gates, and so reason why and military officers
told the Pentagon in their investigation, that's a reason why
a lot of Americans were abandoned because it came straight
(12:48):
from the president that he was changing the criteria on
the fly.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And that of course makes his actions all that much
more dishonorable in the aftermath of all of this, with
him having been at the helm of all this decisions.
You know, we interviewed a gold star mom, Cheryl Rex
on the show, who lost her son, Marine Lance Corporal
Dylan Marolla, and he lied to her, you know, he
(13:15):
said that his son came home in an American flag
draped coffin, which of course that's not how his son
Bo died, who died of cancer. He checked his watch
during the dignified transfer, so you know, he turned his
back on America and during press conferences.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
So you know, the fact that he was the.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
One leading all of this and making all the decisions
makes all those interactions that much more dishonorable.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
It absolutely does. My co author, Jerry Dunleavy, and I
had the just the absolute honor of talking to most
of those gold Star families. And I know Jerry, since
we published the book, is now working as the lead
investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Afghanistan Investigation, and so
he's talking to them, you know, even now on a
(14:01):
more frequent basis. But every single one that we spoke
to brought up that he checked his watch every time
a flag drip cost like casket came off off the
ramp of Dover, and that he told them all the
same thing about Bo. And even when one of the
other fathers of the Fallen Marines showed a picture of
(14:25):
his son and said, you remember the space. You need
to remember their stories. Biden just snapped back, I do
remember their stories. And to this day he continues to
just claim that it's a success, but he is never
once in public mentioned the names of the thirteen service
(14:48):
members who were killed as a direct result of the
decisions that he made. And it's just unconscionable as a
commander in chief.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
To take a quick commercial break more from the disastrous
withdrawal from Afghanistan. Cheryl told me that, you know, she's
really having that. All the families are just having the
hardest time getting information from this administration that they're shielding behind.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Oh it's classified, this, that and the other.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You know, what do we know about what happened that day,
that day of the suicide bomber that led to the
death of her son as well as twelve other service members.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So what I can tell you is what we know
about the few days before that, and then also about
what we know leading you know on that morning of
the twenty six from Sergeant Tylers Andrews testimony and working backwards,
Sergeant Vargus Andrews was a marine sniper. You lost multiple
(15:49):
limbs in the bombing and was never interviewed by the Pentagon,
by the way, in their report. And he testified that
he get that there was a description of a potential
suicide bomber that went out a bald individual who was
a very closely cropped beard, wearing certain types of clothes,
carrying a certain type of bag, and that you know,
(16:13):
his sniper team spotted that that individual someone who matched
that description, called an Army Psychological Operations team up to
the sniper tower to get confirmation. The syops team confirmed
that the individual matched the description, and then his sniper team,
(16:34):
Reaper two, radioed the Rettalian commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brad Wadett,
and asked whether or not they had permission to take
a shot, and the response they got was I don't
have that authority to give you. And when they said, well, respectfully, sir,
who does, the answer was I don't know, but let
(16:55):
me try and find out. And then they never got
a response and the individual, you know, kind of melted
into the crowd later on, and you know, later that afternoon,
there was of course a suicide bombing that everyone knows about.
And I want to be pretty clear about one thing,
is that last week. General mackenzie stated that there was
(17:18):
no specific description of any individual given out and you
see he doesn't know, uh, you know, where Sergeant Fargus
Andrews would have come up with that, you know, testimony
essentially or that that no shape. But when you go
back into the witness interviews, the transcribed witness interviews that
the Pentagon conducted with all the service members on the ground,
(17:42):
there were several different individuals from different units who all
told basically the same story that Sergeant Fargus Andrews did
before he ever went public and while he was at
Walter Reed recovering from dozens of surgeries, and that you know,
maybe there was a disconnect between what sent COOM. You
(18:05):
know what the John McKenzie was the commander of Sencom
at the time, uh, what was filtered up to him
and what was getting down to the people on the ground.
But if that's the case, that's a huge problem all
on its own. But notably that that the Psychological Psychological
Operations Team told Pentagon investigators that they had gotten that
description directly from SENACA, which which I think is very interesting.
(18:28):
But working backwards, there were two things that we reported
in Kabble, which we, you know, indicated that if we
hadn't chosen to rely on the Taliban, that there could
have been opportunities two m potentially disrupt or prevent what happened.
(18:49):
So one of the things that we reported in Kabble
was that there were our book Kabble was that there
are two potential opportunities that to potentially disrupt or even
prevent the attack from happening if we hadn't been relying
on the Taliban for our security. And the first of
(19:09):
those is that on August twenty fourth, the military drew
up a potential air strike which is at what they
call targeting package for an isis K operative named Kabir Iedi.
He was in Nangar Province and he was a known
distributor of suicide vests and an attack planer and depending
(19:32):
on later said publicly that he had a rule in
them in the abbeygated. And what it appears for reading
through the sworn statements submitted by Zeer military officials who
were part of drawing up that that potential air strike
is that it was deemed infeasible by the commanders on
(19:55):
the ground because of the quote unquote negative response from
the talent. And what we also know is that General Dunnah,
who was in constant conversation with his Taliban counterpart outside
the gates. But crucially, the military executed what appears to
(20:18):
be that exact same targeting package according to this testimony,
on August twenty seventh, and then they killed this isis
K operative in Nanglehar, and they stated that doing so
prevented a follow on attack. The military officials Eden told
the Wall Street Journal that this operative kuld Be variety
(20:42):
was quote planning on another attack, and so it stands
to reason that if by striking him on the twenty
seventh prevented a follow on attack, there's some legitimate questions
about whether, had we struck him on the twenty fourth
and not been concerned about the negative reaction from the Taliban,
(21:02):
whether or not that could have been prevented. But secondly,
the other thing that we reported and General Mackenzie actually
appeared to confirm last week was that the military asked
the Taliban to raid suspected isis K locations in Kabble
prior to the bombing several of them, and that the
(21:25):
Taliban often refused to do so, and that again just
just drives home this fatal stupidity of relying on a
Taliban describing them as our security partners. And it's something
that the administration cannot admit because they're on record telling
(21:47):
the American people that the Taliban was businesslike and professional
and which, of course are many other examples of where
they weren't, and I can get to those in a bit.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Well, yeah, like history, you know, like common sense, you don't,
I guess you know, James, Yeah, it's like they're a
terrorist organization. I mean, you know, what do you what
do you expect?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Right?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And that really all begs the question, James, you know,
why were we relying on the towelban? You know, why
were we relying on terrorists for the security of our
own people at our allies.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
There's a pivotal meeting that happened on August fifteenth, when
when Kabble was falling. I would say there are two reasons. First,
just the overall lack of planning and failure to heed
any of the you know, lights blinking red coming from
Afghanistan from the administration. It was too preoccupied with COVID response.
(22:44):
It's it's domestic spending bills, all those kinds of things
to worry about Afghanistan much. So that's just kind of
an overarching factor. But secondly, on August fifteenth, General mackenzie
went and met with a Taliban commander named bard Our
in Doha, cutter and to try and work out a
(23:06):
solution because the Taliban were basically outside the gates and
reporting McKenzie himself. The Bardar offered to keep Taliban forces
outside the confines of Cobble, and Mackenzie basically said, no,
(23:27):
as long as you don't interfere with our evacuation, then
you know, we're not trying to fight you, essentially, And
it's actually since we came out of the books from
reported elsewhere that Bartur even turned to it to interpreter
and said that is he saying they won't attack us
if we come into Cobble, And so that you know,
in some ways that decision right then was was kind
(23:50):
of the original sin of a lot of what unfolded afterwards.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
And it wasn't just relying on secure. I mean, we
kind of bowed down to them, it seemed. And you know,
I know that you guys reported that the Marines were
ordered to pick up human feces before they were allowed
to leave Kabble after we had lost thirteen service members.
You're already reeling and already have the fear of having
lost your teammates, and then you're ordered to pick up
(24:19):
human feces.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I mean, that's.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Disgraceful, first of all, and then secondly, why would we
do that for the Taliban?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Maybe bobbles the mind and I have a hard time
giving you an answer for why we would do something
a logical answer for something so illogical. But the backstory
on that is essentially that when we were closing down,
the military gave each unit kind of a sector to
quote unquote demilitarize, basically to make sure that sensitive equipment
(24:48):
and things that were in that in that sector were
kind of disabled. Yeah. For example, the engineers poured concrete
over a various pieces of sensitive equipment. But the Marines
from h two to one second second Italian First Marines,
(25:09):
who had lost eleven of their fellow marines, you know,
for them, they they took that to its to its
very fullest, and they just destroyed everything because of course,
why are you leaving anything to the Telebanion. They had
the flipped over vehicles, they smash TVs, and they described
(25:29):
that to us as as basically a release. And the
day after when they were getting ready to depart, they
got the order to go ahead and clean up everything.
And based on what we know, the kind of the
senior most leadership at the airport just said that this
(25:49):
isn't how we leave an institution, you know, this isn't
we take care of equipment, we you know, blah blah
blah blah blah, which just shows the disconnect between the
people at the very top and the individual marines and
soldiers who were manning the gates, and uh, you know,
they all, to a man and woman, all the marines
told us, you know what, we're cleaning this place for
(26:11):
the Taliban. It's one thing you for doing a training
mission and there's another unit, American unit coming behind you.
It's another thing that the Taliban is literally taking your
base from you and you have to roll out the
red carpet. It makes it makes no sense. So yeah,
so they had to go ahead and unflip all those vehicles,
(26:33):
clean up trash, rotten food in this entire area where
people had been Afghan uh, you know, evacuees had been
defecating and all kinds of other things. That senior one
of the senior NCOs from the unit described to Pentagon
investigators that it was just filled with people who had
(26:55):
been defecating and doing quote other unspeakable things. And he
he said it was the most grading experience of his
military career. And it's just one more fact or incident
that the American people have never been told about this
whole withdrawal. And that's why Jerry and I wrote Kabble
is because the American people deserve to know the truth.
(27:15):
Number one and number two, we wanted to make sure
it never happened again.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Take a quick commercial break, and then more on the
disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. And we did leave billions of
weapons behind to the Taliban and including Blackhawks. You know,
what do we know about the state of Afghanistan right now?
And do you think those weapons will be used against
(27:41):
us in the future.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Well, we do know for a fact that some of
them have made their way into places like Iran, some
of them have made their way into Pakistan. In fact,
the Pakistani government just five or six days ago alleged
that militant groups in Pakistan are now using American made
weapons to attack Pakistan. And Pakistan shares a large share
(28:03):
of you know, as a large share of blame for
failures in Afghanistans. So I don't feel particularly sympathetic to them,
but we do know that they're you know, they're they're
traveling far and wide on the black market, and almost
certainly they will be used in terrorist attacks. Again. But
beyond the weapons, we left behind a significant number of
(28:28):
Afghan commandos who served alongside US Special Forces units, and
we were able to obtain documents that are now highly
classified showing that Iran in particular has been recruiting and
debriefing those commandos about things like how US Special Operations
(28:52):
units plan for missions, what their capabilities are, how we
react in certain circumstances. And we also know that that
Russia was trying to recruit them to fight on behalf
of the Wagner Group in Ukraine. In fact, there were
Afghan passports found on the battlefield in Ukraine. So that
that's one of the things that we cover in the
(29:13):
final few chapters of Kable is that unlike all of
you know, the Americans, that the administration willfully left behind,
these these failures and these consequences are not going to
stay in cobble. They're going to be felt across the
region and across the world.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
And it's not just what we we left behind either,
it's also what we've allowed to enter into the United States.
You know, there were reports at the time that the
government had handed out blank copies of visas in Afghanistan
meeting that we weren't just letting allies on those planes
that exited or you know planes. You know, in the
aftermath of it coming to the United States, you report
(29:53):
in your book that there were are more than sixty
five terrorists that have been allowed into the United States.
Tell us a little bit more about that, and then
you know how susceptible are do we to a terrorist
attack in the United States based on the people we've
allowed in?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
I would say there probably that the security threats is
probably that it's the term the government used, and so
I'll stick with that. But that's it, you know it
six to one a half dozen of the other. Really,
this this goes back to what I mentioned about President
Biden change it panicking and changing the entry criteria on
(30:29):
the fly. And we actually obtained an email that the
State Department sent down after that call that President Biden
had with senior State Department officials, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan,
and General o' donaho, and we're Admiral Vassili, who was
in charge of US Forces Afghanistan. And what we detail
(30:54):
is that they were very frustrated about the low numbers
they were getting pointed questions, and it's what they opted
to do was just juice their numbers by, instead of
focusing solely on US citizens and Afghan allies, to allow
any Afghan who appeared to be part of a family
(31:14):
unit or appeared to be quote at risk, and then
to air on the side of letting people l And
those are all directly from Joe Biden. Those were his directives.
And what that meant was that over the course of
about thirty six hours, you had tens of thousands of
(31:36):
people on the airfield, most of whom had no connection
to the US government or to the Afghan government and
hadn't been vetted at all. And in fact, the military
had to shut down evacuations for twenty four hours to
just deal with the overload. But what that meant by
bringing all kinds of unvetted people in was that only
(32:02):
after the fact, when they the National Round Intelligence Center
compared fingerprints taken from people and allowed into the country
against a Pentagon database of known security threats, did they
realize that there were Initially they found fifty and that
number has risen to sixty five individuals who the Pentagon
(32:24):
had flagged as security threats, and that included people's people
whose fingerprints have been found on diffused IED's in Afghanistan,
and that we have no way of tracking these individuals
now they're just in the country. And more to the point,
(32:44):
there are also plenty of people came here and I
wouldn't say the majority by any means, but a substantial
number who committed horrific crimes against children and women in
terms of abuse when they were on US military basins.
Because again, these weren't the people that we had vet it.
There were people that were brought in because the administration
(33:04):
wanted to be able to say, which now they have
done at nauseum, that it was the largest airlift in history.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
So we've now ceded Afghanistan to terrorists while also allowing
these terrorists into the country where it would not be
that difficult for them to coordinate with the people back
in Afghanistan of how to coordinate an attack against the
United States within our own country.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
That's a pretty accurate way to say, Lisa sad as
it is.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I mean, this really is just a story of disgrace, right,
I mean, I don't know if I don't think there's
been a time as an American in my thirty eight
years where I have been more ashamed of my own government,
more shamed of my own country than what happened with
the withdrawal that led to so many people dying. And
(33:54):
then secondly, just a story of just utter incompetence, which
just baffles the mind of how people who are in
these positions could be so dumb, so disgraceful, and so incompetent.
You're a former Army captain or I guess you know,
once an Army captain, always an Army captain, and an
Afghanistan veteran.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Was it hard to write this book?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, honestly it was. It was. It was pretty gut wrenching.
And when we started out writing it, Jerry and I
kind of thought that we had an idea about everything
that went on, and we realized that we even though
we were paying close attention and we were talking at
the time to people who were on the ground. I
(34:34):
was trying to help get friends interpreters out, and thank god,
we got a good amount of them out. But you know,
we thought we knew and we didn't even know a
third of it. And yeah, some of the most difficult
things for me to hear. We're talking to these eighteen
nineteen twenty twenty one year old mareens and soldiers who
(34:56):
were at the gates and what they had to deal
with because I remember, you know, leading people that age,
and how they're they're they're all in and and they
do so well, trusting that the people above them have
their best interests in mind. And yeah, as as as
(35:17):
evidenced by this whole collapse, that wasn't the case. But
they saw it. I mean, they performed heroically. Honestly, this
was the average American at its very best and an
American government at its very worst. Uh. But but they
you know, they they saw things like babies being trampled
underfoot in the mob right in front of them. There
(35:41):
were women that were trying to throw their babies over
the razor wires so that they could at least their
babies could get out, and sometimes they uh, they didn't
throw them far off. So the babies landed in the
razor wire. Uh. There were the Taliban was beating Americans,
you know, and and Afghans and in some cases executing
(36:02):
Afghan allies in full view of these soldiers and marines.
And one thing that came up time and time again
during these hours and hours of conversations that I had
with these these soldiers and marines was the concept of
moral trauma, in that you know, they're under the rules
(36:26):
of engagement, they couldn't do anything, and yet they had
to just stand there and witness all this kind of
just horrific, all these horrific things, and at other times
tell people that they were allowed in or they weren't
allowed in, knowing that when they turned people away that
there was a good chance at the Taliban we're gonna
you know, kill them because they had tried to come
(36:47):
to the airport.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I mean, that just makes you you know, even as
you were just talking, I just felt stick to my
stomach just imagining these young men and women to have
to see all this and as you mentioned, to not
be able to do anything when they're sent there to
to serve and protect. So I can't imagine how difficult,
and I can't imagine how difficult to this day it's
got to be for the people to side. That's just
something you probably never forget in your entire life.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
One of the things that they said was was just
solving the wounds. Was while they were dealing with this,
seeing news reports from from the White House describing the
Taliban as you know, again quote business like and professional
and saying that they were letting people through when they
knew for a fact that that was not true.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
And then of course they lied to us about the
aid worker that they droned and told us it was
you know, I think an isis guy and it was
an AID worker and his kids. So I mean, it's
just it's it's probably one of the more disgraceful chapters
in American history. You know, you had mentioned, you know,
one of the objectives is that to write this book
(37:51):
so that it never happens again. What do you hope
the lesson is after writing this? You know, what do
you hope we learn as a country, as a people?
What do you hope for government learns after writing this book?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I hope that the decisions that people like Secretary Blincoln made,
Secretary Austin made follow them for the rest of their careers,
and that they dealt In a just world, they wouldn't
be able to give a press conference without being asked
to justify that the things that they did. But on
(38:24):
a broader sense, you know, the first step to making
sure something doesn't happen again is for people to know
what happened. And the administration has no absolutely no intent
of holding anyone accountable. Number one, because that would have
that would involve admitting that this was not a success
(38:44):
as they have claimed. But two, telling the American people
the full story. And I think once people understand just
the scope and the magnitude of the failure, how preventable
it really was, and the human kind of suffering and
the consequences geoplitically even that that are flowing from this,
(39:06):
that the administration will have to count for that, whether
that's you know, next November or sooner than that. And
we've we've been able to speak a lot with members
of Congress, and obviously Jerry Now after the Congressman read
our book, hired him to lead the investigation. So we're
(39:28):
going to just keep pressing to make sure that there
is a measure of accountability and kable at least you know,
writing Kable at least for us was a start.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Well, James, I appreciate your service to this country. I
appreciate you co authoring this book Kabble, The Untold Story
of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors who Fought to
the End.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Everyone should go check it out.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Thank you for both your service and for putting in
the work to write this book and bring it to
the American people.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Thanks so much, Lisa, I really appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
That was James Hastan, co author of Kavel, The Untold
Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors who Fought
to the End.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I mean, wow, it's.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Infuriating to hear how this was all preventable, that those
thirteen lives were preventable. It's just disgraceful. But I appreciate
him for taking the time to join the show as
service to the country. Appreciate you guys at home for
listening every Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout
the week. What do I think John Cassio, my producer,
for putting the show together. Until next time,
Host
Lisa Boothe
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