Blinken testifies in front of Senate on Afghanistan withdrawal | Day 2

demonstrator covered in blood after being severely beaten and saw taliban militants abusing prisoners one of nemot's colleagues said they were mocking us and saying you want freedom what freedom this is not the taliban of 2001. this happened last week amid the extensive oversight work planned in afghanistan we must not lose sight of people like nemot and the courageous women who continue to protests in the streets calling for freedom in the face of violence and threats a repression of the afghan people is happening in real time and the world must bear witness and hold the taliban let me turn to the focus of today's hearing mr secretary the execution of the u.s withdrawal was clearly and fatally flawed this committee expects to receive a full explanation of the administration's decisions on afghanistan since coming into office last january there has to be accountability we will have other hearings to develop a set of lessons learned over the course of the war to understand the many mistakes made over the course of 20 years the diversion of attention and resources when the bush administration decided to invade iraq despite its irrelevance to the 9 11 attacks the double dealing by pakistan in providing a safe haven to the taliban and the list goes on we need to understand why successive administration made so many of the same mistakes repeatedly perhaps most urgently we need to understand why the afghan government and military collapsed so precipitously this rapid collapse laid bare a fundamental fact that successive administrations lied to the congress over the years about the durability of afghan military and governing institutions and we need to understand why the chaos of last august is due in large part to the february 2020 surrender deal negotiated by president trump a deal that was clearly built on a set of lies a deal that led to the release of 5 000 hardened taliban fighters boosting the militant group on the battlefield this summer we know now that the taliban had no intention of pursuing a political path and peace deal with the afghan government it had no intention of pursuing a democratic path it had no intention of breaking ties with al qaeda and it clearly had no intention of allowing women to have their rightful seat at the table and to participate fully in society to demand the taliban abide by its commitments now and expect a different result i think is somewhat absurd the taliban rules afghanistan so we will have to deal with it in some form but let's not kid ourselves there is no such thing as a reformed taliban this group is woefully stuck in the 14th century with no will to come out their concept of political representation and legitimacy is based squarely on the use of violent force and intimidation the administration says that we should judge the taliban by their actions and i agree and their actions since taking over afghanistan have been pretty horrifying beating women activists murdering ethnic and religious minorities such as the hazara separating classrooms by gender shutting down local media refused with a break with al qaeda appointing the head of a foreign terrorist organization that's designated by our government from the akane network to lead the ministry of interior and the list goes on with this in mind the united states and the united nations should maintain existing sanctions on the taliban the u.s should reimpose those sanctions that were waived during the negotiations process and the u.s should consider new measures to impose higher costs on the group and its leaders while ensuring that life-saving humanitarian aid is able to assist those most vulnerable to hunger disease and disaster nor should any country be in a rush to unilaterally recognize this regime at a minimum the following criteria must be met before recognition is even considered absolute representation of the taliban of all cross-border terrorism including al qaeda and associated groups equality of rights for girls and women protection of minority ethnic and religious groups commitment to democratic elections and ending all narcotics related activity so yes the taliban now run afghanistan but that does not mean we ever accept their behavior i supported the decision to eventually withdraw our military from afghanistan i have long maintained however that how the united states left mattered doing the right thing in the wrong way can end up being the wrong thing and to get this right the biden administration needed to answer two fundamental questions first would the withdrawal leave a durable political arrangement in its wake second with the u.s and our allies maintain an ability to collect intelligence conduct counter terrorism operations in a region still rife with groups including isis k seeking to do us harm i believe the u.s clearly fell short on the first measure and time will tell on the second but the prospects don't look promising so let me start with some framing questions about the biden administration's afghanistan decision-making first upon coming into office how did the biden administration assess the impact on the ground of president trump's flawed deal with the taliban did the administration attempt to negotiate better terms with the taliban upon coming into office second did the president's april withdrawal announcements set in motion any explicit contingency planning in the event that the taliban rapidly took over the country what was the plan to evacuate all americans what was the plan to evacuate sivs p1s p2s and other at-risk groups what was the plan to evacuate staff and those affiliated with radio free europe radio liberty voice of america the national endowment for democracy and other u.s funded organizations president trump uh with stephen miller intentionally blocked sivs from being processed which i think is a barbaric and cruel decision which likely resulted in death for some u.s partners how did the biden administration specifically accelerate processing sivs upon coming into office and third what was the plan to avoid or deal with a refugee and humanitarian crisis i expect you'll address some of these issues in your opening remarks let me applaud the efforts of the personnel on the ground from the departments of state and defense who worked under horrific circumstances their actions and evacuating over 120 000 individuals were nothing short of heroic and these personnel deserve answers the american public deserves answers and the afghan people certainly deserve answers so let me close with three points first while communication from the administration has been frequent throughout this crisis information from state the pentagon and the white house has often been vague or contradictory this was obviously a fluid and difficult situation frustration among many members was high and this has to improve and to put this in context member frustration came on top of years of stonewalling by the trump administration and its refusal to engage the senate on the taliban negotiations this is one of the examples why i have been trying to pursue on the case act to understand what are the written agreements that come between an administration and others maybe if we had seen all of the elements of it we would have been poised in a better position second i'm very disappointed that secretary austin declined our request to testify today a full accounting of the u.s response to this crisis is not complete without the pentagon especially when it comes to understanding the complete collapse of the u.s trained and funded afghan military his decision not to appear before the committee will affect my personal judgment on department of defense nominees i expect the secretary will avail himself to the committee in the near future and if he does not i may consider the use of committee subpoena power to compel him and others over the course of these last 20 years to testify third i implore the administration to remain focused on afghanistan it's critically important that the world bear witness and take action when possible in response to taliban abuses your visit mr secretary to qatar and germany sent the right message and i strongly urge sustained attention to afghanistan in the months and years to come i also urge the administration to strengthen its resolve and efforts to secure the relocation of our civil society partners now at grave risk who were left behind in afghanistan they include heroic individuals working for organizations on the front lines of u.s efforts to strengthen democracy and human rights including the rights of afghan women and girls finally i know that senator young is not with us today he is home in indiana attending the funeral of marine corporal umberto sanchez corporal sanchez was among those killed in the horrendous terror attack on august 26 at the kabul airport i'd like to suggest that we have a moment of silence and pay our respects to all those brave american service members who were killed or injured on that day and that we also honor the thousands of american service members afghan soldiers and civilians who were casualties of this 20-year war please join me in a moment of silence thank you without letting me turn to the distinguished ranking member senator richard is opening comments uh thank you very much mr chairman secretary blink and good morning and welcome back to our committee uh you're doing the right thing testifying here today and i thank you however like the chairman i am disappointed some of your colleagues have declined to testify particularly secretary austin there's there's questions that we really need to have answered and it's uh disheartening that they declined to testify uh the debacle in afghan in afghanistan is an inter-agency failure and the fact that you're the only one stepping up is disheartening i agree with the uh chairman that this was a uh that withdrawal was a dismal failure one of the things we need to get to the bottom two is who's responsible for this who made the decisions uh there there's real questions right now as to who's making the decisions we know for a fact that the president united states is somewhat disadvantaged here in that someone's calling the shots he can't even speak without someone in the white house censoring it or or signing off on it is uh recently as yesterday in mid-sentence he was cut off uh by someone in the white house who makes the decision that the president united states is not speaking correctly so i'd like to know who this person is this is a a puppeteer act if you would and we need to know who's in charge and who's making these decisions and the only way we're going to get that is when we have people like you come in and answer answer questions and when we get the question i'm going to have more questions for you in that regard well i supported a responsible end to the war in afghanistan no american thinks we should have left this way america cannot end war simply by walking away it is naive to assume our enemies will lay down their arms leave us alone and suddenly enshrine human rights if we go home indeed there is a fierce battle of ideas and ambitions on the world stage and the us cannot remain neutral however president biden presented the american people with a false choice in afghanistan and the rushed and embarrassing retreat is a stain on america's credibility that will have implications for years to come there were other options that could have protected our national security interest allowed for a more measured reduction in force and preserved american credibility i feel this administration is trying to blame the prior administration and uh contrary to some that have said that uh the the prior administration started this is responsible that's simply not true uh the uh the prior administration when they took steps towards withdrawing from afghanistan entered into an agreement that had very very specific conditions i was privy to those so i have personal knowledge of this and february 2020 agreement was contingent contingent upon the taliban reducing violence meeting counterterrorism commitments and engaging in substantive talks with the afghan government these were all very important and most importantly most importantly it was telegraph telegraphed to the taliban that failure to meet their commitments would be met with grave grave circumstances for them the taliban failed to meet any of these commitments and yet yet this administration turned the country over to them president biden chose to withdraw from afghanistan without conditions and without prudent planning and obviously without most important telegraphing to the taliban that they would enforce the conditions that the taliban had agreed to it didn't happen it was a strategic unforced air and he did this against the advice that commanders on the ground one of the most embarrassing things i thought was the strike that was made and obviously we can't talk about what we we know from an intelligence standpoint but the kinetic strike that was made after the taliban entered the country this this uh de minimis strike had dire consequences for civilians but not for the taliban these are these are facts and the president's withdrawal led to a taliban offensive to topple the dramatic democratically elected government slam the door on any chance for a final peace agreement reverse the hard-earned rights of afghan women and minorities and will result in a safe haven for terrorists many of whom wish to attack the united states the biden administration left afghanistan in total disarray and single-handedly created a humanitarian crisis with thousands of refugees and internally displaced afghans in need of immediate emergency assistance uh secretary blinken you characterize the evacuation as an extraordinary effort you've touted over 124 000 evacuees however we abandoned the people we have prioritized for departure the department's efforts were played by lack of basic planning a failure to identify americans a failure to energize the siv process months in advance ignoring repeated congress congressional offers to help and a failure to recognize the taliban for what it is a terrorist organization the numbers are telling you evacuated 6 000 40 americans and say only a couple hundred remain your own department told this committee in july that there were 10 to 15 000 americans in afghanistan there's a huge difference between 6 000 and 15 000 what happened to these other americans the situation with the special immigrant visa evacuations is even more disturbing not counting the sivs that arrived before couples fall you evacuated 705 of roughly 20 000 principal siv applicants what happened to these people this committee reached out to the department in april may and june to help expedite siv processing we asked that additional authority we asked what additional authorities or resources you needed for months we received contradictory responses or no responses at all i'll take a minute here to defend the state department one of the biggest problems to helping process sib uh sivs was the enormous failure of the department of defense to provide the records needed to validate the afghans who bravely helped our forces the fact that dod didn't keep accurate records is irresponsible and a slap in the face to those who fought alongside of us obviously we want to talk to secretary austin about this despite the enormous efforts of our troops and diplomats on the ground the preventable tragedy that unfolded at the airport in kabul was a disaster of leadership and of the administration's own making not only were you unable to ensure that americans had access to the airport many were turned away repeatedly after braving taliban checkpoints but americans outside of kabul had absolutely no chance of evacuation green card holders and sivs should have been prioritized for access to the airport as well but there was no mechanism to get inside it was an informal network of americans that helped get americans and afghans around the bureaucratic wall the administration set up at the airport it should not have come to that the administration is paying itself on the back for this evacuation is like an arsonist taking credit for saving people from the burning building he just set on fire we know the us military and our diplomats can do so much more than they did if only their political bosses had gotten out of the way now we have an untold number of americans u.s contractors and sivs still in afghanistan despite re repeated assurances you will get them out you've been unable to do so planes are stranded in northern afghanistan our voice of america employees and female afghan students on scholarships have been abandoned and our sib applicants are in hiding as taliban death squads hunt them down you said you would have mechanisms for continued evacuations after 31 august where's your plan i have not seen it i don't know that i've talked to anyone who has seen it what i have seen is a rebuke from our european allies they begged us for help but where we were not helping our own citizens how could we help them instead we had to rely on the generosity of partners like qatar what we have all heard and read is that the united states is no longer a reliable ally and frankly the way this evacuation evacuation was conducted i cannot blame them for years despite strange strains in our relations with europe and other allies everyone knew the united states was the competent and capable partner they trusted us to be the steady hand at the wheel that they that could navigate out of any difficult situation that confidence has been shattered now across the globe allies doubt our resolve and our competitors like china and russia see weakness and think they can exploit this situation the biden administration alone is responsible for this difficult debacle and its consequences going forward the challenges become even harder to resolve us actions must rebuild our credibility and re reestablish deterrence the us will need more proactive policies on counterterrorism and security around the globe to discourage our competitors over the weekend we mark the 20th anniversary of september the 11th but we have yet to receive details about how the administration's so-called over-the-horizon counter-terrorism plan will succeed the taliban's takeover destroyed the basis of that strategy and despite repeated requests from the hill we have yet to receive a single piece of information about the administration's revised counterterrorism plan meanwhile the taliban continues its relationship with al qaeda and the new interior minister has a 10 million u.s bounty on his head for killing americans any hope that the taliban will protect american security is a fatally flawed assumption you must redouble efforts with afghanistan's neighbors to reach ct agreements and preserve disappearing intelligence networks additionally any country that offered support to the taliban in the recent offensive should risk a strategic downgrade in their relationship with the united states we also must understand pakistan's role in this entire matter as the chairman has alluded to this is a difficult but important situation i also remain concerned that the administration is rushing to normalize ties with the taliban government this must not occur without extensive congressional consultations your notification that you intended to restart foreign assistance is deeply deeply concerning i suspect there's other members of this committee that are going to speak to to that that's going to be a heavy lift for you on the security front the united states spent over 80 billion on afghan security forces many of these funds bypass the oversight of the state department in this committee we now see the consequences of a department of defense that operates security cooperation on its own the taliban is now one of the best armed terrorist organizations on the planet we have sent repeated requests for the administration's plan to address the captured equipment we have yet to receive any response as secretary i would hope you would demand that all dod assistance programs once again require state department concurrence in closing i'd like to speak directly to our diplomats our men and women in uniform our gold star families our humanitarian workers and our veterans on behalf of the american people i'd like to say thank you the ineptitude of this administration does not tarnish your service what you did mattered you stood you served nobly you stood on the wall and prevented a terrorist attack against the united states for over 20 years at enormous cost to you and your families america will always be indebted to you thank you thank you senator rich mr secretary the secretary has agreed to stay with us to each member has an opportunity to answer their questions as such and because of the nature of the subject matter i've agreed the secretary has an extended opening statement with that mr secretary you're recognized mr chairman thank you very much ranking member rich thank you very much and to to all members i appreciate the opportunity to be with all of you today to discuss our policy on afghanistan including where we are how we got here and where we're going in the weeks and months ahead for 20 years congress has conducted oversight and provided funding for the mission in afghanistan and i know from my own time as a staff member here in this room for then senator biden just how invaluable a partner congress is as i said when i was nominated i believe strongly in congress's traditional role as a partner in foreign policy making i'm committed to working with you on the path forward in afghanistan and to advance the interests of the american people on this 20th anniversary of 9 11 as we honor nearly 3 000 men women and children who lost their lives we are reminded of why we went to afghanistan in the first place to bring justice to those who attacked us and to ensure it would never happen again we achieved those objectives a long time ago osama bin laden was killed in 2011. al qaeda's capabilities were degraded significantly including its ability to plan and conduct external operations after 20 years 2461 american lives lost 20 000 injuries 2 trillion spent it was time to end america's longest war when president biden took office in january he inherited an agreement that his predecessor had reached with the taliban to remove all remaining u.s forces from afghanistan by may 1st of this year as part of that agreement the previous administration pressed the afghan government to release 5 000 taliban prisoners including some top war commanders meanwhile it reduced our own force presence to 2500 troops in return the taliban agreed to stop attacking u.s and partner forces and to refrain from threatening afghanistan's major cities but the taliban continued its relentless march on remote outposts checkpoints villages and districts as well as some of the major roads connecting the cities by january of 2021 the taliban was in its strongest military position since 911 and we have the smallest number of u.s forces in afghanistan since 2001. as a result upon taking office president biden immediately faced the choice between ending the war or escalating it had he not followed through on his predecessor's commitment attacks on our forces and those of our allies would have resumed and the taliban's nationwide assault on afghanistan's major cities would have commenced that would have required sending substantially more us forces into afghanistan to defend ourselves and to prevent a taliban takeover taking casualties and with at best the prospect of restoring a stalemate and remaining stuck in afghanistan under fire indefinitely there's no evidence that staying longer would have made the afghan security forces or the afghan government any more resilient or self-sustaining if 20 years hundreds of billions of dollars in support equipment training did not suffice why would another year another five another ten conversely there is nothing that strategic competitors like china and russia or adversaries like iran and north korea would have liked more than for the united states to re-up a 20-year war and remain bogged down in afghanistan for another decade in advance of the president's decision i was in constant contact with our allies and partners to hear their views and factor them into our thinking when the president announced the withdrawal nato immediately and unanimously embraced it we all set to work together on the drawdown similarly we were intensely focused on the safety of americans in afghanistan in march we began urging them to leave the country in total between march and august we sent 19 specific messages with that warning as well as offers of help including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets despite this effort at the time the evacuation began there were still thousands of americans in afghanistan almost all of whom were evacuated by august 31st many were dual citizens living in afghanistan for years decades generations deciding whether or not to leave the place that they know is home is a wrenching decision in april we began drawing down our embassy ordering non-essential personnel to depart we also used this time to significantly speed up the processing of special immigrant visas for afghans who worked for us when we took office we inherited a program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by congress involving multiple agencies and a backlog of more than 17 000 siv applicants there had not been a single siv applicant interview in kabul in nine months going back to march of 2020. the program was basically in a stall within two weeks of taking office we restarted the siv interview process in kabul on february 4th one of the first executive orders issued by president biden directed us to immediately review the siv program to identify causes of undue delay and find ways to process siv applications more quickly this spring i directed significant additional resources to the program expanding the team of people in washington processing applications from 10 to 50 doubling the number of sib adjudicators in kabul in our embassy there even as many embassy personnel began to return under ordered departure we sent more consular officers to kabul to process siv applications as a result of these and other steps including working with congress especially this committee senator shaheen and others by may we had reduced the average processing time for special immigrant visas by more than one year even amid a covert surge in kabul we continued to issue visas and we went from issuing about 100 special immigrant visas per week in march to more than 1 000 per week in august when our evacuation and relocation effort began that emergency evacuation was sparked by the collapse of the afghan security forces and government throughout the year we were constantly assessing their staying power and considering multiple scenarios even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict that the government forces in kabul would collapse when u.s while u.s forces remained they were focused on what would happen after the united states withdrew from september onward as general mille the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has said nothing i or anyone else saw indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days nonetheless we planned and exercised a wide range of contingencies because of that planning we were able to draw down our embassy and move our remaining personnel to the airport within 48 hours and the military placed on standby by president biden was able to secure the airport and start the evacuation within 72 hours and yes that evacuation was an extraordinary effort under the most difficult conditions imaginable by our diplomats by our military by our intelligence professionals they worked around the clock to get american citizens afghans who helped us citizens of our allies and partners and at-risk afghans on planes out of the country off the united states or to transit locations that our diplomats had arranged for negotiated in multiple countries our consular team worked 24 7 to reach out to americans who could still be in country making 55 000 phone calls sending 33 000 emails by august 31st and they're still at it in the midst of this heroic effort an isis k attack killed 13 service members working the gates at hkia wounded 20 others killed and wounded scores of afghans our service members gave their lives so that others can continue to live theirs in the end we completed one of the biggest airlifts in history with 124 thousand people evacuated to safety and on august 31st in kabul the military mission in afghanistan officially ended and a new diplomatic mission began i want to acknowledge the more than two dozen countries that have helped with the relocation effort some serving as transit hubs some welcoming afghan evacuees for longer periods of time and as the 911 report suggested it is essential that we accelerate the appointment uh process for national security uh officials since a catastrophic attack could occur with little or no notice today there are nearly 80 state department nominees pending before the senate nearly two dozen have already been voted out of this committee on a strong bipartisan basis and simply await a vote in the senate for our national security i respectfully urge the senate and this committee to move as swiftly as possible to consider and confirm all pending nominees and to address what is a significant disruption in our national security policy making now let me briefly outline uh what the state department has done in the last couple of weeks and where we're going in the weeks ahead first as you know we moved our diplomatic operations from kabul to doha where our new afghan affairs team is hard at work many of our key partners have done the same thing they've joined us there in doha second we've continued our relentless efforts to help any remaining americans as well as afghans and citizens of allied and partner nations leave afghanistan if they choose last week on thursday a qatar airways charter flight with u.s citizens and others on board departed kabul and landed in doha on friday a second flight carrying u.s citizens and others departed afghanistan these flights were the result of coordinated efforts by the united states qatar and turkey to reopen the airport and intense diplomacy to start the flights in addition to those flights half a dozen american citizens a dozen permanent residents of the united states have also left afghanistan via overland routes with our assistance we're in constant contact with american citizens still in afghanistan who've told us they wish to leave each has been assigned a case management team to offer specific guidance and instructions some decline to be on the first flights on thursday and friday for reasons including needing more time to make arrangements wanting to remain with extended family for now or medical issues that precluded traveling last week we will continue to help americans and afghans to whom we have a special commitment depart afghanistan if they choose just as we've done in other countries where we've evacuated our embassy and hundreds or even thousands of americans remain behind for example in libya syria venezuela yemen somalia there's no deadline to this effort third we're focused on counter-terrorism taliban is committed to prevent terrorist groups from using afghanistan as a base for external operations that could threaten the united states or our allies including al-qaeda and isis k will hold them accountable for that that does not mean that we will rely on them we will maintain a vigilant effort to monitor threats uh robust counterterrorism capabilities in the region to neutralize those threats if necessary and as we do in places around the world where we do not have military forces on the ground fourth we continue our intensive diplomacy with allies and partners we initiated a statement joined by more than 100 countries and a united nations security council resolution setting out the international community's expectations of a taliban alleged government we expect the taliban to ensure freedom of travel to make good on its counterterrorism commitments to uphold the basic rights of the afghan people including women girls minorities to name a broadly representative permanent government to force wear reprisals the legitimacy and support that it seeks from the international community will depend entirely on its conduct we've organized contact groups of key countries to ensure that the international community continues to speak and act together on afghanistan and to leverage our combined influence last week i led a ministerial meeting of 22 countries plus nato the eu the united nations to align our efforts and fifth we'll continue to support humanitarian aid to the afghan people consistent with sanctions this aid will not flow flow through the government but rather through independent organizations like ngos and un agencies yesterday we announced the united states has provided nearly 64 million in new humanitarian assistance to the people of afghanistan to meet critical health and nutrition needs to address the protection concerns of women children minorities to help more children including girls go back to school this additional funding means the united states has provided nearly 330 million in assistance to the afghan people this fiscal year in dohan ramstein i toured the facilities where afghans that we evacuated are being processed before moving on to their next destinations here at home i spent time at the dulles expo center where more than 45 000 afghans have been processed after arriving in the united states it's remarkable to see what our diplomats our military employees from many civilian agencies across the u.s government have been able to achieve in a very short time they've met an enormous human need they've coordinated food water sanitation for thousands of people they're arranging medical care including the delivery of babies they're reuniting families that were separated caring for unaccompanied minors it's an extraordinary interagency effort a powerful testament to the skill the dedication the humanity of our people and i think we can all be deeply proud of what they're doing and as we've done throughout our history americans are now welcoming families from afghanistan into our communities helping them resettle as they start new lives and that's something to be proud of as well with that i thank the members of this committee and look forward to your questions well thank you mr secretary um let me first begin by asking an adam's consent to enter to the hearing record a letter by the u.s afghan women's council calling on the biden administration to take immediate action at the united nations to protect afghan civilians particularly women and girls without objection it's so ordered all right let's start a series of seven-minute rounds i'm going to hold the time tight so that every member can get their opportunity and i'll start off by making sure that i don't exceed my seven minutes so uh prior to the final uh flight out we heard from both american citizens and afghan partners seeking to access the airport but they were either not being allowed to the gates being sent back home or simply abandoned while we understand and appreciate the security issues that were at play it's confounding that such a chaotic process arose to begin with so when did the administration begin to plan for a worst-case scenario contingency in the spring and summer in the spring and summer of this year yes multiple uh interagency uh meetings uh exercises looking at the different contingencies and and so what was the specific planning put into the likely scenario that american citizens were going to have to evacuate under hostile conditions well planning went to a number of things including the ability to move our embassy quickly as we did in 48 hours including the effort to make sure that we could control the airport uh bring flights in and evacuate people out one of the things that happened as you know mr chairman is that the situation outside the airport became incredibly chaotic with thousands uh of people massing at the airport uh massing at the gates of the airport and that created among other things uh a very very challenging situation should we not have started earlier should not have been a bigger surge on the sib issue i i recognize uh i think it's only fair to put in context that your own testimony suggested that there was a 17 000 siv backlog they hadn't nine months had passed by without a single interview so obviously you inherited a significant uh backlog but and how many sivs were awarded during the trump administration um i don't have the numbers uh in front of me but uh i think over the course of the administration there must have been several thousand okay so the question is then should we not have surged more significantly i know you said you put up to 50 individuals but knowing that you were preparing for a contingency of the worst case scenario should not back in march there have been a more significant surge to process sivs and determine the entire universe and who needed to be taken out well i believe we did uh surge those those resources as i said we we quadrupled the number of people in washington doing processing of sivs and this is at a critical stage in the processing as i think many members know the most important stage in many ways is the so-called chief of mission approval that's the stage at which siv applicants are actually deemed eligible under the criteria established by congress for the uh for the program uh and by the way those who apply those who actually get chief admission approval the washout rate is about 40 historically that's because it turns out that many people who apply don't qualify under the criteria set uh by congress or they're unable to get the documentation i think this was alluded to uh to prove that they had worked faithfully and loyally for the uh for the united states uh there's some uh situations where people are committing fraud in order to get into the program maybe for understandable reasons but uh the point is we have a very lengthy process 14 steps uh multiple agencies involved we work to try to streamline that i think there's more work that we would like to do going forward to do that but the bottom line is we did significantly surge uh our our resources to that particularly to the chief of mission approval process quadrupling them and ultimately we went from 10 uh to 50 to now i believe 61 or 62 working on that stage of things we doubled the resources we had in kabul uh all in an effort to expedite and uh we did we went from 100 visas a week to a thousand visas a week but what was not anticipated was the collapse in 11 days of the afghan government and the afghan military let me ask you this there have been numerous press reports over the past week about a new or refined process for the state department to lead efforts in coordination with the department of defense to work with outside groups to evacuate american citizens and afghan allies left behind in afghanistan can you tell us exactly what these new us government-led efforts are how coordination with outside groups and individuals being handled by who what is the nature of the state dod cooperation give us a sense of that sure uh we have uh within the department led by our former ambassador to afghanistan john bass uh who went back to kabul to the airport to help lead the evacuation efforts uh he is leading an effort to manage coordinate all of the ongoing efforts to bring people who wish to leave afghanistan out and that includes among other things a coordination with the many outside groups as well as members of congress who are working themselves heroically to help uh in this effort i met myself with about 75 veterans organizations a couple of weeks ago given the extraordinary efforts that veterans either individually or as groups are doing to help and we want to make sure that we are as coordinated as we possibly can be uh on these efforts to make sure that we know um who is doing what what assistance we can provide uh and uh to make sure that uh we're working together going forward we have many other people working on this on this task force some dedicated to american citizens others focused on sivs and other afghans at risk others focused on coordinating with different groups including members of congress let me give you one in my final minute i'd like to give you an opportunity to set the record straight on one point several commentators have suggested that had the department move forward with the crisis contingency and response bureau proposed by the trump administration as it was walking out the door it would have been able to respond better to the afghan situation but it's my understanding that that bureau had not been stood up yet when you decided to curtail the proposal nora's proposed that it actually add any additional resources or capabilities to those that state already had it was a bureaucratic movement not creating or getting rid of actual capabilities just a new organizational chart and in that bureaucratic resourceful and potentially creating damage to the department's operations it's not solving them is that a fair statement that is a fair statement mr chairman okay if it's not the ccr then what is the answer well here again to your uh to your point uh with regard to uh to the ccr uh whether it became a bureau or not uh there was no change in the assets that we already had at hand uh to work uh on these efforts uh and uh the focus of uh this group either in its existing organizational structure or had it become a bureau which among other things it didn't because there were congressional holds from across uh across the aisle on this effort the previous administration nonetheless uh went through and uh tried to move it forward we decided that we needed to review it we did the review and as you described very uh very accurately uh we found that uh this would add no assets to what we already had at hand it would simply create a different bureaucratic uh structure but uh having said that again this was this is something designed primarily for individual extractions medical emergencies these men and women who are part of our operational medical unit are remarkable and do incredible work but not the kind of work that would have uh been applicable to the large evacuation that we had to conduct senator reid stan thank you thank you very much mr chairman um mr secretary i can tell you i've listened to you and a handful of other people try to put the best face on this possible and i can tell you that the temperature of the american people is not there with you and that i'm not talking from a partisan basis this this goes both ways you know there is not enough lipstick in the world to uh put on this pig to make it look any different than what it actually is so i somebody need we need the american people want to know who's responsible for this so let's start with this who is responsible who made the decisions on this was it the president of the united states uh ultimately uh the president makes the decisions that's correct did he in this case as as in every case ultimately decisions that can only be decided by the president are decided by the president well and now of course to be to be specific uh uh senator there are hundreds thousands of decisions uh every single day uh that go into a situation as complex as this one the big strategic decisions those are decided by the by the president the tactical operational decisions are made by uh by different agencies agency heads uh agency officials well i'm more interested in in the top decision making look we've all seen this we saw it as as recently as yesterday somebody in the white house has authority to press the button and stop the president cut off the president's speaking ability and sound who is that person i think anyone who knows the president including members of this committee knows that he speaks very clearly and very deliberately for himself uh no one else does well are you saying that there is no one in the white house that can cut him off because yesterday that happened and it's happened a number of times before that it's been widely reported that somebody has the ability to push the button and cut off his sound and stop him from speaking who is that person there is there is no such person again uh the president uh speaks for himself uh makes all of the strategic decisions uh informed by the best advice that he can get from the uh the people around him so are you unaware that this is actually happening because it happened yesterday at the interagency fire center it was widely reported the media's reported on it and it's not the first time it's happened it's happened several times are you telling this are you telling this committee that this does not happen that there's no one in the white house who pushes the button and cuts him off in mid-sentence that's correct so this didn't happen yesterday nor on the other occasions where the media showed the american people that his sentence was cut off in mid-sentence are you saying that didn't happen senator i i really don't know what you're what you're referring to all i can tell you is uh having worked with the president for now 20 years both here on this committee and in over the last nine months at the white house the president very much speaks for himself well let's take a different attack he does speak for himself but what happens when somebody doesn't want him speaking you're telling us you don't know anything about this that that somebody cuts him off in mid-sentence is that what you're trying to tell this committee because everybody here has seen it senator i'm telling you based on my own experience with the president over the last 20 years anyone who tried to stop him from saying what he wanted to say speaking his mind would probably not be long for their for their job let's turn to the descent cable that you received in july are you willing to give a copy of this descent cable that you got from two dozen diplomats regarding the imminent uh catastrophic collapse in afghanistan are you willing to give a copy of that to this committee senator this this dissent channel is something that i place tremendous value and importance on uh it's it's a it's a way for people in the state department to speak the truth as they see it to power and these uh cables i've read every single one of the of the descent channel cables that we've gotten during this administration i've responded to every single one i factored what i read and heard into um into my thinking and and into my actions but the legitimacy of the of the channel the ability for people to be able to uh with confidence uh share their thoughts uh share their views even when they run counter uh to what uh their uh their seniors uh have said or the policies being prescribed it's vitally important that we protect that channel protect its integrity and it is designed by its very regulations uh only to be shared with senior officials in the department and what i don't want to see is some kind of chilling effect going forward uh that says to those who would think of writing a cable in the future that uh this uh this will uh you know get out widely be uh be distributed uh in ways that um uh that would have that uh that would have that chilling effect do you admit that you received a descent cable in july signed by two dozen diplomats that warned about the imminent uh catastrophic collapse that was coming in afghanistan senator i certainly uh received this uh the cable in uh in mid-july i read it i responded to it i factored uh its contents into my my thinking and what the the cable said broadly uh is was two things it did not uh suggest that the government and security forces were going to collapse prior to our departure it did express real concerns about the durability of that government enforced after our departure and it focused on the efforts that we were making particularly on the on the sie front uh to try to expedite moving them out and in fact a number of the recommendations the very good recommendations it made were already entrained others were not but one of the ones that was entrained was the establishment of operation allies refuge we received the cable on july 13th that operation was actually put in into force on july 14th it would already been planned for some time and this was an effort to expedite the um identification and relocation of sivs actually putting them on planes which as you know is not part of uh of the program actually relocating them and working to establish transit sites so that we could put them there while we finish processing them well you see that's the problem with us not having access to that cable you're telling us that but we have uh been told by others that it was it was significantly different than what you're saying uh also we really would like to see the response to that because i think history is going to be interested in that particular cable and your response to it i'll save my next question for the next round thank you mr chairman thank you thank you senator carr and i've asked senator cardin to in addition to his questions uh preside for a few minutes since i have a hearing that i have to just go to thank you thank you mr chairman secretary blinken thank you so much for being with us today and thank you during the afghan evacuations for almost the daily briefings you have for all members of the united states senate and keeping us totally informed as to the events unfolding i contrast that to what happened during the trump years where we were not kept informed at all about the negotiations between the trump administration and the taliban that we had no briefings or information at all in regards to the summit meetings between the united states and north korea or the united states and russia where our committee could not conduct the oversight that is so important as you have pointed out working with the executive branch in a check and balance for the unity of our country so i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made as you pointed out the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan we all recognized we needed to withdraw the options were extremely limited the mistakes made by previous administrations we've talked about it but i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq and one of those reasons was that we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had a chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country but instead we went into iraq which was not engaged in the 9 11 activities and we'd never finished afghanistan a mistake made by the bush administration and we've already talked about the trump administration and setting a deadline and releasing prisoners and moving forward with the reduction of troops when there was really very little options that the administration had it doesn't negate the information that was made available to you about the strength of the afghan security forces and the ghani administration is willed to stick with it in afghanistan and i think many of us are interested in knowing how intelligence got that so wrong and the contingency plans are ones that we really do want to review because it seems to us there had to be better ways to secure passage into the airport than what ultimately happened but considering the hand that you were dealt considering the crisis that developed evacuating 124 000 was a miraculous test so we congratulate all that were involved in the evacuation of so many people under such a short period of time under such difficult circumstances i want to get to where we are today during this process the state department was very open to all members of congress democrats republicans as we filtered information into you about vulnerable people in an effort to get them out of afghanistan today our offices are still being deluged by requests to help people that are in afghanistan ngos are working very aggressively can you share with us the process that you're using in order to filter information about americans that are still in afghanistan who want to leave those that apply for siv status and those afghans that are at risk how do we transmit that information and what process is in place so that we can try to get these people out of afghanistan yes thank you senator as i noted we've established a task force focused entirely on relocation to help those who wish to leave afghanistan whether they're the any remaining american citizens whether it's sib applicants whether it's afghans at risk whether it's the nationals of partner countries get out and that involves a number of things it involves for the american citizens case management teams 500 individuals whose task is to be in constant contact with any remaining american citizens who wish to leave and that's what they're doing it also includes together with our legislative affairs office being in constant contact with you as well as with outside groups who have identified and are trying to help people who seek to leave this uh here is the sum total of cases brought to us by members of this committee just this committee that all of you or many of you have been working and we are deeply grateful for those efforts for this information it ensures that uh when you send us the information we put it into our database if it's not already there we make sure that we're able to track it we make sure we're able to coordinate uh with you and i recognize that especially in the uh in the early going during the evacuation itself some of the uh the feedback was lacking we were trying to do all of this in real time making sure that we took in the information that that you were providing and acting on it and in in some cases we didn't get back to people uh to say here's what we've done and we've been working to make sure that we we get back to everyone i think we had 26 000 inquiries uh we've from congress uh we've responded to 21 or 22 000 of them so we still have the categories of reporters that work for us that are still in afghanistan we have uh women officials that were officials in afghanistan that are at risk we have ngos that worked with us in afghanistan they're employees that are at risk so you're saying we still have an opportunity to work with you to get that information to the sources that you're using to try to arrange for their exit from afghanistan absolutely and we very much invite that and we want to make sure that we have as best possible uh a unified uh coordinated list so that uh we know what uh what everyone is working on and we can track uh and uh and we can help or we can take on depending on the and can i get your best guess on the numbers at one point when we first started we thought there might be somewhere around a little less than a hundred thousand of u.s citizens sivs and afghans at risk that wanted to leave obviously that number was low we've already evacuated over 124 000. do we know how many u.s citizens are in afghanistan that want to exit today how many are in siv status that want to exit and how many afghans at risk we want to help on the american citizens who wish to leave the number is about 100 and it's very hard to give a real-time number at any given moment because it's very fluid by which i mean this some uh people and we're in direct contact uh with with this group some for very understandable reasons are changing changing their mind from from day to day about whether or not they want to leave others continue even now to raise their hands and say i'm an american citizen in afghanistan someone who had not identified themselves before and again i think as all of you know very very well we do not require as a country our citizens to register or identify themselves to our embassies in any country in the world when they travel there or if they reside there and do you have the numbers for siv and for so so the the siv numbers that we're tabulating right now because we're trying to account for everyone who has come in some people remain uh in transit countries other people are now in the united states uh we're putting all of those numbers together to determine uh the the over the the overwhelming majority of afghans who have come out of afghanistan thanks to our evacuation efforts are in one way or another afghans at risk some will be siv applicants others will be p1 or p2 applicants others will be in none of those categories but afghans at risk we're breaking down all of those numbers and we should have a breakdown for you in the next couple of weeks thank you look forward to seeing that senator rubio thank you secretary in your statement i think that the most troubling thing is the following quote from you even the most pessimistic assessment did not predict the government forces in kabul would collapse while u.s forces remained i'd back that up by saying you also cite general milley who said there was no indication that there would be a rapid collapse of the afghan army and government uh you know for much of last year i was the acting chairman of intelligence i'm now the vice chairman of intelligence i've been tracking this very very closely and just going back to the beginning of this year i can just obviously i can't quote the titles of the pieces but let me suffice it to say that there are numerous pieces that would be categorized as it's going to hit the fan and uh but but let's just for a moment put that aside okay because i think any analysis of those pieces would have led anyone to that conclusion putting that aside for a moment we had every reason we had every reason to believe and to plan for the rapid collapse of the afghan military and the afghan government at the beginning of 2020 by all admissions we had a really already really bad status quo in afghanistan okay we had a small footprint but we had a strong commitment to air support and that sustained the afghan security forces ability to resist the taliban that the security forces of afghanistan were suffering with 10 000 casualties a year the taliban was suffering casualties too but they enjoyed safe haven in pakistan they were able to go there to rest to refit to train to recruit and so in summary even before the withdrawal we had a terrible status quo uh big the security forces a small number of u.s forces you know continued to to die we had u.s losses as well i want to mention that but the afghan government was still fractious and corrupt and the taliban had an unchallenged safe haven in pakistan or put another way in paraphrasing your own words from your opening statement if after 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in support equipment and training there's not enough for the afghan government or the afghan security forces to become more resilient or self-sustaining you know what did we think was going to happen as that support began to be removed what do we think was going to happen when that terrible status quo was changed it doesn't take some exquisite piece of intelligence or some brilliant analysis to rio to conclude that if you radically change an already bad status quo as you by removing u.s and nato forces by ending enablers in air support the status quo was going to collapse in favor of the taliban this is not an argument in favor of staying i think that ship has sailed okay and i know a lot of times has been spent on justifying the withdrawal we're not debating the withdrawal what i'm arguing is we had a terrible status quo as is by our own admission the afghan government even after billions of dollars in 20 years was not self-sustaining was not resilient we should have known that as we began to draw down support we were going to see the potential for a collapse and that's what all these pieces pointed to as well so it's concerning that no one saw all of this and concluded that there was no evidence or no reason to believe that there could be a rapid uh collapse more to that point we began to see clear signs weeks ago that this is where it was headed without airstrikes the taliban now began to mass and maneuver going from intimidating these small afghan outposts to actually getting them into courting we were seeing afghan outposts begin to quit they were they went the talmud could now surround they went from surrounding these small provisional provincial capitals to surrounding major cities with five to eight thousand taliban fighters this is weeks before by the way this is at the same time as i believe on july 8th president biden was still giving this naive optimistic prediction about the fighting capabilities of the afghan forces and so forth we could see them meticulously focused on the north you could see that they were methodically and carefully splintering the sclerotic remains of any sort of resistance weeks before the fall of kabul you could see the taliban was on the verge was headed towards doing something they hadn't done before they were going to isolate kabul from the north cutting off all their supply routes so we knew before we knew weeks before that we were headed for a taliban control of the north all the traditional routes of taliban encroachment on kabul were nearly sealed the south and the east kabul faced the prospect of no fuel the afghan government faced the prospect of being unable to mount any viable uh opposition and sustained defense what did we think was going to happen all of those things were in place at the time and i think the most concerning part of it is that if we didn't have an analysis that looked at all this this wasn't a failure of intel this was a failure of policy and planning we have the wrong people analyzing this someone didn't see this either someone didn't see this or someone didn't want to see this because we'd established this we wanted to be out by september 11th so that we could have some ceremony arguing that we got and pulled out of afghanistan on the anniversary of 9 11. the the fact of the matter is where it leaves us now on top of all the other things that have been mentioned here from a geopolitical perspective is not a good place i think china and russia and iran they look at this bot which botched withdrawal what they see is incompetence that they think they might be able to exploit may lead to miscalculation i think the europeans our allies who had very little say of any or control certainly over the timing and the execution of all this they're now number one have to be one wondering about our reliability the credibility of our of our defense agreements with them but they also have to be really really upset at the prospects of a massive refugee crisis landing right on their borders here very soon and india and i know that there's an announcement today there'll be a meeting of the quad fairly soon which is a good development except that in the pacific region if you're india you're looking at this and saying if the united states allowed pakistan to unravel their standing because the pakistani role in all this and i think multiple administrations are guilty of ignoring it the pakistani role in enabling the taliban is ultimately a victory for those pro-taliban hardliners in the pakistani government they have to be looking at this and saying if the united states could have you know a third-rate power like pakistan unravel its aims what chance do they have of confronting china so i think this leaves us in a terrible situation but i go back to the initial point i don't know how it's possible if in fact the people in charge of our foreign policy did not see all these factors and conclude that there was a very real possibility of a very rapid collapse then we've got the wrong people making military and diplomacy decisions in our government senator um i'm happy to respond briefly in uh in the time that we have as you know from your own uh expertise in leadership uh on these matters there are constant assessments being done and in this particular case assessments being done of the resilience of afghan security forces of the afghan government and different scenarios uh established from worst case to best case to everything in between and ultimately the preponderance uh of the uh of the intelligence and and assessments land uh someplace and they're go they're always going to be voices and critically important that we listen all of them uh who may be talking about exclusively uh the worst case some best case some in between uh here's what i can say uh in this setting and we can take this up as well in uh in other settings back in february uh the assessment of the the overall assessment of the uh of the community was that after a complete u.s military withdrawal that could potentially in the worst case scenario lead to the taliban capturing kabul within a year or two so that's back in in february and that was more or less where things stood uh in the winter and into the spring by july and you're exactly right that the situation was uh deteriorating as the taliban continued uh to uh make progress on the ground throughout the summer in july the ic indicated that it was more likely than not that the taliban would take over by the end of the year the end of this year um that said uh we the intelligence community did not say that the countrywide collapse of all meaningful resistance would be likely to occur in a matter of days and uh and you referenced uh chairman milly as i did earlier nothing that that he saw uh that i saw that we saw suggested that this government and security force would collapse in a matter of 11 days and you're right that i think we need to look back at all of this uh because to your point we collectively over 20 years invested extraordinary amounts in those security forces and in that government hundreds of billions of dollars equipment training advice support and based on that as well as based on what we were looking at real time again uh we did not see uh this uh collapse in a matter of uh of 11 days but it is important that we go back and look at all of this the time has expired thank you senator shaheen thank you mr chairman and thank you secretary blinken for appearing before the committee today i appreciate and share the frustration of my colleagues over the challenges with the evacuation over the situation of special immigrant visa applicants and the taliban's treatment of women and girls and other minorities but i also agree with your assessment and that that's been given by several others that where we were when we got to that evacuation was because of the failure of both democratic and republican administrations and i want to know where that outrage was when year after year for 10 years starting with senator mccain i and other in the senate tried to get more special immigrant visa applicants through the process so that they could leave afghanistan leave the threat and come to the united states and there were a few republicans in the senate who blocked us year after year from getting more siv applicants to the united states and i want to know where that outrage was during the negotiations by the trump administration and former secretary pompeo when they were giving away the rights of women and girls and when secretary pompeo came before this committee and blew off questions about what they were doing to pressure the taliban to have women at the negotiating table for that peace treaty so i think there is a lot of regret and a lot of recriminations to go around and the important thing for us to do now is to figure out how we can work together to address those people who still need to be evacuated from afghanistan and also to ensure that we can do everything possible with the international community to help protect the human rights of the women and girls who remain in the country and those minorities so mr secretary that's where i'm going to put my effort i do think we need an accounting that's important for history and for us going forward but let's stop with the hypocrisy about who's to blame there are a lot of people to blame and we all share in it now mr secretary as you know i i was one of those who was opposed to our withdrawing from afghanistan i'm not going to revisit that but a lot of my concerns were around the rights of women and girls if afghanistan fell into the hands of the taliban so i i want to ask you now and you've been very specific on briefing calls that you share the concern and i recognize that you believe it's a priority for this administration to do what you can to protect the rights of women and girls so can you talk specifically about what steps the department is taking to provide for the safety of women and girls and how we're trying to rally the international community behind that effort yes thank you senator and let me just start by thanking you uh personally for your leadership uh for a long time now on these issues both on the sivs and the work that we've actually been able to do to try to improve the program but more work needs to be done as well of course as on on women and girls from you know advancing women peace and security and that agenda to uh ensuring that uh there's an equal playing field for women and girls um you've made a huge difference and i have to say over the last 20 years uh we have made a difference uh collectively in afghanistan and possibly the biggest difference we made was for women and girls access to education access to health care access to work opportunity all of that um was as a result of many of the efforts that uh that we made uh and that this congress uh made and uh and supported including with very very significant assistance this is th this is hard uh i i was in kabul uh after the president announced his decision i met with um women leaders from the then parliament uh ngos a lawyer human rights defenders listened and heard from them about their concerns about the future just the past um a couple of weeks when i was out in doha and then in ramstein i talked to young women and and girls who we'd evacuated and heard from them both of their gratitude for having been uh evacuated but also their deep concerns more than deep concerns about the the future for the uh women and girls who remain in afghanistan so with that very much in mind um we have uh done a few things and this is where we really want to work closely with you and with that with every member one we've worked to rally the the international community to set very clear expectations of the uh taliban uh going forward to include the expectation that it will uphold the basic rights of women and girls as well as uh minorities and that's uh visible in the statement that more than 100 countries have signed at our initiative it's also in a u.n security council resolution that we initiated and got passed and i know people say oh it's a it's a a statement or a security council resolution doesn't it doesn't matter well in the case of the security council resolution just to cite one example uh there are significant sanctions that from the united nations on the taliban there are travel restrictions on the taliban and the idea that if the taliban is in violation of the security council resolution that we established it will get any relief just on that alone the u.n sanctions or travel restrictions um i think that's pretty clear that that won't happen that's just one point of leverage we've been working to make sure that the international community speaks with one voice and acts together including on this that's one second uh we want to make sure that assistance continues to flow uh humanitarian assistance including assistance this directed at the special needs of women and girls we're doing that consistent with our sanctions uh and we're able to do that by working through ngos uh and the u.n agencies now i i don't want to sugarcoat this because we know that while the taliban seeks and will probably support and protect basic humanitarian assistance through these agencies like uh for food uh and medicine uh it may be a different story when it comes to things that are directed uh specifically women and girls so we're gonna be very focused uh on that and trying to make sure that that assistance can go through that it's monitored uh effectively including by the agencies doing it and i spent some time talking with the head of the united nations effort on this in terms of having a clear monitoring mechanism for this and to carry that forward next um we will soon appoint at my direction a senior official responsible for focusing and marshaling all of our efforts on support for women girls and minorities in afghanistan i think it's very important that we have a focal point in the us government at the state department whose responsibility is to carry forward this agenda working closely with you uh in the uh in the weeks and months ahead well thank you very much i'm out of time but can you share with us who that official is as soon as they're appointed yes of course thank you thank you senator senator johnson thank you mr chairman uh mr secretary if i were just to read your testimony not having watched any news i would literally think this was a smashing success but i do read the news as most americans do and we realize this is a complete debacle and i think what concerns me the most among many things is that detachment from realities it's the same denial of reality for example on on the border a self-inflicted wound a crisis created by president biden's policies that have completely thrown open our borders and yet the administration denies that we have a problem at the border so let me just i've got a number of questions first of all approximately what is the dollar value of the equipment that's been left behind that now the taliban controls what's the dollar value that uh senator i believe the equipment provided uh over the last uh 20 well a little less than 20 years 15 years was about uh 80 billion dollars uh of that equipment that that remains as you know it was given uh something under the afghan security forces and of course uh some of that is now in the hands of the tower so i was i was also struck by your comment that uh in your testimony even the most pessimistic assessment didn't predict the government would collapse as quickly as it did but you just in your testimony said that the realistic predictions before the complete withdrawal was it was going to collapse by the end of this year so the administration continued with their plans of withdrawal of evacuation of surrender knowing that taliban would be in control of 80 billion dollars worth of sophisticated equipment at the end of that correct i mean did that did that did that ever did that discussion ever come up in terms of maybe that wouldn't be a good idea leaving all that equipment behind as we bug out of afghanistan uh that assessment came uh in july much of the equipment uh and again i'll defer to my colleagues at the pentagon who are more expert in this than i am much of that equipment was made inoperable other other pieces of equipment will become inoperable because there is a no ability on the part of the taliban to maintain it none of it to the best of my knowledge poses a strategic threat to us or to any of afghanistan's neighbors what we're looking at uh okay okay so we have an oversight letter we'd like uh response on that um let's just quick talk about the decision to close down bagram i mean again the president says this was you know unanimously decided by the by the military but isn't it true that the president decided what the troop level would be a very minimal troop level the president decided that we would keep the embassy open and had to be protected he forced the military's hands right it really in the end it was his decision it wasn't the military's decision to close the bagram president makes the strategic decisions when it comes to the actual drawdown the retrograde uh to use the uh the technical language uh those were decisions made by his military commanders he sought their best advice and uh that's what was carried out including uh the timing of the decision to another another another troubling piece of your testimony you said when the president announced the withdrawal nato immediately unanimously embraced it joseph brell the foreign affairs chief of the european union his statement on the surrendo surrender is that it's quote a catastrophe for the afghan people for western values and credibility and for the developing of international relations uh the wall street journal summarizes it quite nicely in their piece just the title how biden broke nato the chaotic af the chaotic afghan will draw his shocked and angered u.s allies again that's that's detachment from reality that our nato allies are on board with this thing they're not uh that's not what we're hearing senator i went to uh to nato well before the president's decision along with secretary of defense austin uh and spent uh the day with all of our nato allies listening to them uh their views their prescriptions their ideas for what we should do moving forward in afghanistan i shared some of our uh initial thinking at that point we factored in everything we heard from our allies into our own decision-making process won the presidency just just like you planned for every president just like you planned for every contingency okay i got it if i could continue now listen it's it's bureaucratic speak i have some questions so again my concern is the depart detachment from reality so as we're as we've surrendered as we're evacuating as we're bugging out we're hearing all these soothing uh comments from the administration this is you know like almost like a well-oiled machine here we've got you know flights just leaving and 124 000 people being evacuated we heard something completely different so tell me what is wrong about what i had heard first of all prior to the taliban providing perimeter security there was no security and basically tens of thousands of afghanis flooded into the kabul airport correct there was perimeter security around the airport established but you had but we literally had tens of thousands of people we we did we did not know who these people were it wasn't like people were invited in there were special immigrants could not control the city we controlled the airport sorry if you but again so we had tens of thousands of people in kabul airport the reports we were getting on the ground is many didn't have had no form of id whatsoever when i went to fort mccoy i asked the commanding general again all every contingency plan for ask commanding general when did you first find out that your mission would be as an intake facility for the afghanistan refugees he said 10 days ago i asked the commanding general i asked the representative for the department of state as well as from department of homeland security do we know that every refugee that you've received so far and there's only a thousand at that point in time that do we know that they at least have some form of id and we didn't we're hearing all these assurances that uh we're getting biometrically screened you know a 14-step plan you know i asked the the head of northern command he was at fort mccoy describe those steps to me what do we screen them against i mean are isis terrorists our al-qaeda terrorists have we by biometrically screened them in the past that we can compare them to a database what is that 14-step process in detail not not just 14 steps tell me describe to us in detail how are we keeping this nation safe from such a chaotic situation so senator the 14-step uh process refers to specifically to the special immigrant visa applicants and there is a lengthy process so how about for the other 124 000 people so yes so to come to your point uh senator a couple of a couple of things we arranged as you know transit countries so that any afghan coming out of uh afghanistan would initially go to a transit country where we could initiate the screening the vetting the background checks we surged customs and border protection officials to those transit points as well of course as other security law enforcement agencies to do these checks with biometric biographic other information that we have then as people are cleared in these transit points they then come into the united states but they're not being resettled immediately they are going once they land at dulles or in philadelphia uh they are then being sent to uh military bases where the checks continue and are completed uh but but again what checks we we need specifically what panics are going to be the senator has expired uh i'm sure if you can follow up for the rest of your questions senator coons thank you chairman menendez ranking member rich for this hearing and thank you secretary blinken for your service and your testimony today we have i'm sure lots of opportunities to look backwards at the 20 years of our engagement in afghanistan and decisions but i had hoped this committee would rise above the temptations of partisan politics and use this hearing to consider the urgent question still before us and i hope we'll get a few minutes to focus on this mr secretary how do we get the remaining american citizens legal permanent residents and those afghans who served alongside us or worked with and for us and who are most at risk out of afghanistan how do we make sure afghanistan doesn't become a safe haven for terrorists again and and deal with the taliban what leverage do we have in doing so and to also make sure humanitarian aid gets into afghanistan and most urgently how do we support and resettle those afghan refugees whom we've evacuated to third countries and that much smaller population that has reached the united states let me just start with my thanks to the state department uh to the employees in kabul and qatar um and the d.c based task force that's worked with the evacuation repatriation of americans and afghans and to the many delawareans and americans who i've heard from former military folks who served in afghanistan former diplomats and development professionals eager to help and i look forward to continuing to coordinate with you and with agencies of our government advocacy groups and other partners on resettlement efforts i'm glad that the former governor of delaware jack markell has been asked to step forward and help coordinate this resettlement effort and i was encouraged today to see welcome u.s launch a broad multi-faith bipartisan national organization co-chaired by three former presidents bush and obama and clinton and dozens and dozens of faith groups and non-profits to welcome afghans to the united states so let me just start with a question about visa status senator sullivan and i wrote a bipartisan letter in mid-august urging expanded eligibility for the siv program i'm interested in how you're working to expand eligibility under the existing visa programs to include family members and to support those the u.s government supported and worked alongside but who were not direct employees i want to start if i could mr secretary by asking you just yes or no questions about three groups that other senators have mentioned sure there's about 550 employees and family members from voice of america radio for europe radio liberty who were not evacuated is the department prioritizing their evacuation yes and the department committed to evacuating our partners from ned the national endowment of democracy ndi ira are those also being prioritized yes they are and our partners from the american university of afghanistan as well yes and so if you would take the four minutes we've got left and explore with me how do we ensure safe passage across land borders whether into tajikistan or pakistan safe and regular flights out of afghanistan whether from missouri sharif or kabul and how do we get documents into the hands of those who don't have identity documents either because they were destroyed in our embassy or they destroyed them themselves out of fear of the taliban and how do we make sure that we're providing the financial support needed for the whole group of refugees who after thorough vetting ultimately reached the united states yeah thank you very much senator those are all very important questions and let me try to respond briefly to them and we can uh take on the details uh after this session if need be uh first uh we we need it and we have established a clear expectation from the the taliban about allowing people to continue uh to leave the country to include uh american citizens uh green card holders afghans who have uh who are who are properly documented with the visa including specifically those who worked in some capacity uh for the united states um and not only do we have that understanding in public statements by uh the taliban of course it's built into everything we've done with a large coalition of countries in terms of setting an expectation and making very clear that uh the failure to fulfill that expectation will have significant consequences which we can get into second very important to actually make sure that there are um ways to travel freely from the country we made an intensive effort before we left to understand and share with qatar and turkey the countries that stepped up to to do this what was necessary to make sure that the airport in kabul could continue to function and ultimately not have charter flights and then commercial flights going in under international civil aviation organization standards we did intensive work we brought the american contact contractors back in the midst of the evacuation uh who had been running the airport to work that we handed off a very detailed plan which is now being implemented third the the land crossings we've worked with pakistan uzbekistan tajikistan on this to make sure that as we moved people out of afghanistan they would facilitate their crossing into their countries we would have consular officials surged in the necessary places to handle people coming out uh in that fashion uh and now to your very important point about documentation and this is something that maybe we can take offline we are working on a mechanism and a means by which and there are multiple ways of doing this to make sure that people who don't have the necessary document for example a visa from us a physical visa uh to uh to get that to them um and i'd prefer to go into more detail on that in a uh in another setting understood if i might just as a as a closing question you were asked at the outset sort of what are the factors we ways we decide the future of our relationship with the taliban and we're in this difficult situation many of us recognize the taliban is a terrorist organization that's done horrific things within afghanistan in the past yet we need to have some working relationship with him to secure the safe passage out of thousands of people uh who we still care deeply about a number of american citizens with delaware ties who i've been in contact with didn't leave because their families were still in afghanistan and there are clear measures that they should be expected to meet that you laid out in your opening statement what do you think will be the most important aspects of our leverage to ensure the taliban perform in ways that we would accept and what do you think will be the turning point at which we'll make decisions with our allies to take sharper and harsher measures against the taliban so simply put the the nature of the relationship that the the taliban would have with us or most other countries around the world will depend entirely on its conduct and actions specifically with regard uh to freedom of travel uh as well as to making good uh on its uh counterterrorism commitments upholding basic rights of the afghan people uh not engaging in reprisals et cetera these are the things that not only we but countries around the world are looking at and there is i think significant leverage that we and other countries hold when it comes to things that the taliban says it wants but won't get if it does not act in a way that meets these uh these expectations for example we talked a little bit before about the existing u.n sanctions uh on the taliban uh these are significant uh as well as travel restrictions uh there's now a new security council resolution that we initiated setting out the expectations for what the taliban has to do if it's not if it's in violation of that resolution it's hard to see any of these u.n sanctions being um lifted uh travel restrictions being lifted and indeed additional sanctions could well be imposed similarly uh the foreign reserves of afghanistan are almost exclusively uh in um in banks here in the united states including the the federal reserve other banks about uh nine billion dollars all of that has been frozen uh there are significant resources as well that are in the international financial institutions that afghanistan normally would have access to those two have been frozen over the last 20 years or so the international community has provided about 75 of the afghan government's annual operating budget that too has been frozen so among uh many things that the taliban says it cease both basic legitimacy and basic support uh the united states the international community uh has a hand on a lot of that uh much of that most of that and so we'll have to see going forward what conclusions the taliban draws from that and what what its conduct will be matching these basic expectations that we've set thank you senator romney thank you mr chairman and thank you mr secretary for taking time to answer our questions today um i'd like to associate myself with the comments that senator rubio made about planning for a potential immediate collapse of the afghan government and security forces it seemed that as the taliban was running the table throughout afghanistan that the prospect of them continue to run the table by coming into kabul was uh was a significant probability that that should have been uh planned for um in your view mr secretary has has the taliban abandoned their sympathy and colle collaboration with groups like al qaeda and the haqqani network um do do they continue to have the same aim and are are they uh are they of like spirit or uh or or has that uh has that relationship been been severed uh the relationship has not been severed uh and it's a very open question as to whether um their views uh and the relationship has changed in any kind of definitive way i think it's fair to say two things uh one whatever the taliban's views uh on al qaeda they do know that the last time they harbored al qaeda and it engaged in an outwardly directed attack an attack on our homeland certain things followed which i believe would have an interest in not seeing repeated so whatever their views on al qaeda there is a strong disincentive built in to allow it to engage in outwardly directed attacks which the assessment of the intelligence community is they're not currently capable of doing isis k the other main group that's a different thing as you know because the taliban and isis k are sworn enemies and in fact over the last five or six years since the emergence of isis k the fight has actually been between the taliban and isis k with the taliban taking most of the territory that isis case sought to hold on to in afghanistan the question there i think is less whether they have the will to uh deal with isis k and more whether they have the capacity given that that response uh i know that that previously the position of the administration and the state department was that the 2001 aumf no longer played a a role of significance but given the developments in afghanistan and the taliban's ongoing collaboration with and sympathy with al qaeda and the county network and like-minded groups is it not appropriate for the state department to revisit your recommendation that we abandoned the 2001 aumf i think senator we need to look to make sure that we have all the authorities that we would need for any potential contingency including the reemergence as a threat of al qaeda or the further emergence of isis k as an outwardly directed threat if uh if we don't have uh those authorities we should get them whether that means um re-looking at those authorizations or writing new ones which i think would be uh the most appropriate thing to do if necessary uh we need to look at that i i appreciate your willingness to to change your point of view and in part because the conditions that have developed uh in the most recent weeks um nothing wrong with conditions leading to a change in perspective uh i for one uh thought some years ago that we should withdraw from from afghanistan the conditions i saw in the ensuing years convinced me that i was wrong and i like senator shaheen was one of those that felt that that president trump was wrong to enter into an agreement to withdraw i thought president biden was wrong to enter into an agreement or to continue with that agreement to withdraw and and of course i was appalled by the disastrous withdrawal process itself um for us today however i guess i'd like to focus more on the the moral stain of leaving people behind and and understand what we can do to make sure that we are not leaving uh people behind i understand we're down to a small number of americans it's hard to know exactly how many are left behind but in terms of legal permanent residence is your priority just as high to get them out as it is to get out citizens or is there a different level of commitment for a legal permanent residence return to the united states relative to a citizen um senator our number one priority is american citizens and that has i think long long been the case uh in this uh situation in afghanistan in this emergency evacuation uh in afghanistan uh we did everything we could as well to make sure that uh legal permanent residents green card holders would also identify themselves to us we don't like with american citizens we don't know at any given time uh how many there are in any given country around the world and to make available resources to help them but our number one priority is any remaining american citizens who wish to leave i didn't realize there's a secondary level of priority then for a legal permanent resident if that's the case how many of them approximately you said we don't know the exact number but but how many legal permanent residents are are we uh convinced they're still in afghanistan we don't we don't have an exact number but it's around the number of thousands pardon in the thousands in the thousands uh likewise in terms of siv holders or siv applicants uh or people who've worked with us that have been our our partners uh through the years how many of them approximately are still in afghanistan that want to come to the united states so this is what we're doing an accounting of right now based on on two things based on the the the pipeline of applicants as it existed uh before the evacuation and then looking at uh those who we were able to evacuate we don't have those numbers yet because as we've moved to evacuate people a number of them are still at transit points around the world others but it would be tens of thousands so realistically uh two things um one we talked about this a little bit earlier but of the uh of the applicants uh in the program the and as i said we inherited about 18 000. about half of those uh and this remains more or less the case now are at a point where it's before the chief of mission has given his or her approval that they are in fact eligible for the program we focused on the po i was looking for a number and i guess the question i was leading to was this which is given the fact that the siv process was so slow and not undertaken during the trump years in a significant way you sped it up that's great although no you knew that that there was no way you were going to get all these people out in time let me find out on a rap given given the rapid collapse of the afghan security forces and and and you said yesterday that you inherited a a date but in fact you didn't inherit the date the date was may 1st and you push it to august 31st why didn't you push it much later so that we would have been able to process the siv applicants as well as those who had worked with us that had not yet applied i don't understand why why a date was actually not inherited and a date was not selected that would be sufficient to actually remove people from the nation in a way that would be in keeping with our moral commitment to honor our citizens our green card holders as well as those who've worked with us over the years uh two things if i may first the uh we we took some risk uh in terms of what the taliban would do or not do after may first in pushing uh beyond may first and we of course uh worked this very hard because it's a world it's a risk with other people we took it's a risk the risk was on people we care for yeah just to be be clear if i let me if i could um the military uh told us that in order to um do its retrograde its drawdown from afghanistan in a safe and orderly way it needed three to four months that's why we pushed uh to move beyond may first uh and to get to the end of august early september second to your point which is an important one and a good one um our expectation uh was that beyond august 31st beyond the military drawdown uh the government the security forces were going to remain in control of uh of kabul uh of the major cities our embassy uh was fully planned to remain uh up and running uh we were leaving about 600 military uh behind to make sure that we could secure the embassy uh so that it could continue to operate we had robust programming plan to include continuing to bring out anyone who wished to leave uh notably uh notably sivs so that was very much the plan and the expectation what was not what we did not anticipate was that 11-day collapse of the government security forces that's what changed everything thank you senator murphy thank you mr chairman uh thank you mr secretary for spending so much time with us i think what links our failures in iraq and afghanistan is that they're both fundamentally failures of hubris believing that we can control things and influence events on the other side of the world that are beyond our control or influence america can be a force for good in the world but there is a limit to what we can achieve and so there's been decades-long magical thinking with respect to what's in our control and what's outside of our control as it turns out it wasn't within our control to be able to stand up in american style democracy an american-looking military in afghanistan that was going to be able to protect the country from the taliban but we spent 20 years trying to achieve it and so mr secretary you covered some of this in your opening remarks but i wanted to ask you a series of questions to try to level set for the committee the situation you inherited right what was in your control what was outside of your control and then to look at the events of the last 30 to 40 days with that same lens what was in your control what was outside of your control i think these are yes or no answers um some of you you've covered in your testimony but i think it's important to get it on the record so mr secretary if president biden had chosen to breach the agreement that president trump had signed with the taliban would the taliban have restarted attacks against u.s troops and bases yes as you said in your opening testimony by the time you administration took office the taliban was on the outskirts of several provincial capitals if president biden had chosen to breach the agreement between president trump and the taliban with the taliban have begun offensives on these urban centers yes so if the taliban had begun its siege on these cities and resumed attacks on u.s troops would 2500 troops have been enough to keep the country from falling to the taliban no would double that number have been enough do we know how big our force would have had to have gotten i think it was the assessment of our military leaders that uh not to put a number on it but significant additional u.s forces would have been required both to protect uh ourselves and to prevent the uh onslaught from the taliban against the provincial capitals and ultimately against kabul this wasn't a decision between leaving and the status quo this was a decision between a significant commitment of new u.s resources to the fight or the continuation of withdrawal plans correct okay let's talk about the last month so once the afghan government and the military disintegrate all at once it seems to me it was pretty predictable and understandable that there would be panic on the ground amongst the afghan people so could it be expected that a few thousand u.s troops and diplomats on the ground at the time would have been able to prevent this panic no much has been made about these dramatic and heartbreaking scenes at the airport were 2500 or 5 000 troops enough to stop the afghan people from rushing to the airport it created this security nightmare for you but was there any way for the limited number of personnel that were there to prevent individuals from rushing to the airport no they could uh control the airport as we did they could establish a basic uh immediate perimeter around the airport as we did but they couldn't control what happened beyond that perimeter and so let's talk about that perimeter others say well we should have controlled a bigger perimeter we we should have um taken back over parts of kabul to secure the passage of americans and afghans to the airport i mean let's say you would quadruple the number of troops you had there let's say you had 10 000 troops there without the afghan military or a functioning government would that have been enough to retake kabul to be able to secure the passage of everyone to the airport i don't want to profess to be a military expert so i'd really defer to uh to my colleagues at the pentagon on that but i can say that i think safely say that it would have taken a substantial number of forces uh to try to retake uh the city or establish a much broader uh perimeter and of course if that was ultimately opposed by the taliban in a sense it would have defeated the purpose because anyone outside that perimeter would not have been allowed to get through it to come to the airport among other things right so once the afghan military collapses it disintegrates we don't have enough troops to retake kabul and we are in the position of having to rely on the taliban or at least communicate with the taliban to make sure that we get individuals to the airport that's correct okay i i just think this is important to put on the record in a clear and concise way because we have to have a reckoning in this country about what we can accomplish and what we can't accomplish it's extraordinary that this administration got 130 000 people out of afghanistan given those circumstances given the situation that they inherited that you inherited in january of this year and my worry mr chairman is that um the malady that we suffered for the last 20 years this idea that it was just a bad plan but it was just a failure of execution as to why we couldn't succeed in iraq or afghanistan is plaguing us again today that right now we're having a conversation as if if we just had a better plan if we just executed better we could have avoided these scenes at the airport we could have guaranteed the easy and safe passage of everyone into that facility it is heartbreaking what happened it was impossible for americans to watch but if we just simply leave today believing that if we had planned better if we had uh better execution we could have avoided this panic and confusion i think we're just inviting another iraq another afghanistan in the future um finally mr secretary just quickly expand on your point about the message that sends to china um this idea that the chinese would love it if we stayed another 10 or 20 years and why this isn't a sign of weakness and in fact this is an ability for you and the national security infrastructure to be able to reorient reorient resources towards fights that we actually can win well i think i think senator you put it uh very well uh in in my assessment uh and the assessment of many others as i said there's nothing that uh strategic competitors like like china uh like russia or uh adversaries like iran and north korea would like better than for us to re-up the war double down on it uh and remained bogged down in afghanistan for another year five years ten years uh 20 years with all of that dedication of resources uh all of that uh energy uh and focus on that as opposed to the challenges that uh we we have to face today and i might add this committee has done a i think a very good job on on trying to refocus this on notably uh the competition from uh from china so i think that would have been doubling down on this on this war after 20 years after nearly 2 trillion after 2461 american lives lost 20 000 injuries and not uh to preserve the status quo that existed before may 1st that would have been one thing um but to be in a situation where the war with us was restarted the taliban attacking our forces attacking our partners and allies going on an offensive across the country to retake uh the cities um that would have required a doubling down on a war and the bottom line is this we were right to end the war we were right not to send a third generation of americans to afghanistan to fight and die there and i believe we were right in the extraordinary efforts that were made to make sure we could bring out as many people as possible and now we have an obligation to make sure that we continue to do that and of course to guard against the re-emergence of any threats coming from afghanistan thank you mr chairman and i appreciate the fact you're having this critical hearing today i must say um i'm going to change how i was going to talk about based on the last interaction thank you for being here i wish general austin were here because secretary austin could answer many of the questions that have just been posed i fought respect for my colleague senator murphy as he knows but this was not a choice between either a dangerous escalation of the war which has just been laid out or a precipitous chaotic withdrawal that embarrassed us around the globe to say that it was not a sign of weakness the way we left i mean i don't know who you're talking to but if you're talking to our allies in nato they will say it was a sign of weakness if you're talking honestly to our adversaries they will certainly say it's a sign of weakness as will terrorist groups around the world so i i hope the lesson we learn here isn't that this was the right way to leave i hope the lesson we learned here is that there was a better way to leave if the decision was made to pull out it should not have been a precipitous chaotic and unfortunately deadly departure this afternoon i'll be speaking on the floor about max soviet he's a navy corpsman who's one of the 13 american soldiers sailors and marines who were killed on the wall trying to help others escape from the tyranny of the taliban he should never been put in that position it was an impossible position for our troops for your diplomats and the impossibility that they faced was due to our policy decisions there was an alternative bagram air base i mean it was shut down in the middle of the night with no notice to anybody it was a surprise i've talked to people who know a lot more about the military side of this and haidu who told me that yes the afghan were troops disappointment but that's partly because they were used to having americans provide that close air support and if they had that they could have pushed back against the taliban i think you hear that from your military and if general austin were here we would hear this but we just left like just pulled out all the military underpinnings so without the cover literally of close air support and other military support yeah it became extremely dangerous and chaotic and we left a lot of people behind senator romney's asked you to give him some numbers and you said you're still working on that hear the numbers that i have the best that i have as the ranking member on the homeland security committee where we pushed and pushed and pushed 18 000 applicants for siv we got 705 out you said earlier the overwhelming number of people who were at risk got out i don't think that's true if i if i could just give you the numbers that i that i have we think about thirty thousand at risk afghans were evacuated out of an estimated sixty thousand that's the best numbers we can come up with because we can't get good numbers from the administration but that's the best estimate so that's true that we left people behind who had stood with us and helped us obviously american citizens were left behind green card holders are left behind but thousands of people who stood with us and helped us and then let's ask about who came earlier there was discussion about what kind of vetting has taken place the best numbers we have is that about three quarters of the people who were evacuated we're not green card holders we're not american citizens we're not siv applicants we're not p1 or p2 visa holders so about three quarters of these individuals may not have qualified in the sense now you say that they're being vetted good they should be and you know nobody knows because we can't get good information from the department of homeland security from the state department and others but you know from the start many of us have said what we do there needs to be based on conditions on the ground quite frankly the president's decision was not based on conditions on the ground that's why it was a disastrous withdrawal that's why it puts so many people at risk it should have been an orderly withdrawal under the cover of superior us and nato military force we did have 2 500 troops there but we had 7 500 nato troops with us too again many of their commanders were shocked at what happened because they were surprised because there was not good coordination there was a lack of coordination with the people who had stuck with us i talked about bagram there was also a lack of integrated interagency planning of course we've seen this in terms of how the chaotic withdrawal occurred these were preventable problems and they put our military and your diplomats in this impossible situation they did the best they could and i commend them for that in an impossible situation it's amazing that they were able to perform but it was so rushed and so chaotic that again we didn't get the right people out and many who we did get out seemed not to fall into the categories that we were concerned about so now what do we do let's look forward as was suggested by senator coons and i agree with that you said that you don't believe it will be a platform for terrorism going forward that the current government the taliban government has said that they will fight back against terrorists do you believe that the pakani network and particularly the new secretary of the interior who is a wanted terrorist based on your administration's assessment do you believe that that is an indication that they are going to fight back against terrorists the question um senator from our perspective and uh and our partner's perspective is whether the taliban will make good on commitments to ensure that afghanistan is not used as a place for outwardly directed uh terrorist attacks uh and they've made commitments but we're not relying on those commitments uh we're going to make sure that we have in place the ability to detect any re-emergence of that threat and to be able to do something about it if it does re-emerge something that we can talk about in in more detail is the haqqani network considered a terrorist group uh it is is it true that the interior minister is a leader of the county network that is accurate i just think sadly we have shaken the foundations of a lot of our alliances and we have work to do and i think we have demonstrated weakness and made the world more dangerous as as a result um let me ask you about one specific question well i guess the time of the summer has expired i will follow up with regard to some of the international financing questions a letter we sent to secretary ellen from senator rubio and myself regarding foreign assets good thank you thank you senator oh thank you mr chairman and thank you mr secretary i want to turn to the humanitarian situation in afghanistan the world food program observed that half the children under five are acutely malnourished in the country that 14 million individuals in afghanistan are on the brink of starvation that 31 of 34 provinces are at risk of losing their health services entirely and that one percent of the country is vaccinated do you this is a fairly accurate description of the the challenge for both food and for health care it is the humanitarian situation is dire thank you and the u.s just participated in an international conference in which 1.1 billion dollars was pledged in humanitarian relief from a variety of of nations including an additional commitment by the united states but ngos non-governmental organizations that often are essential for providing aid are very concerned about a legal pathway to do so because in 2002 the taliban was listed as a specially designated global terrorist organization under the international economic emergency powers act and it doesn't have a humanitarian exception uh previously where we face this situation in in yemen the treasury department stepped in to create a legal pathway and a number of senators have written to secretary yellen and with copies to you and to samantha powers saying let's use that same pathway here in which the office of foreign asset controls issues a general license creating kind of legal insulation providing humanitarian assistance will are you engaged in a conversation about how to create a legal pathway to provide humanitarian assistance yes we are we've we've issued one initial license as you know the treasury issued about 10 days ago and we're looking at what other authorities might be needed to make sure that humanitarian assistance can flow as best as best possible in afghanistan great thank you that's absolutely essential i think we we have a significant responsibility we have the the chaos of of of war in combination with the the pandemic uh and general disruption in the country and and uh it's a moral responsibility to provide assistance i'm going to ask to enter for to the record the letter from september 2nd that the senators and members of the house sent to the administration without objection thank you uh so as provincial capitals started to to fall and we had nine provincial capitals fallen six days there was a lot of discussion about whether the government of afghanistan would direct a reconsolidation of forces to essentially consolidate protection of the territory still held which was a shrinking did did the government of afghanistan take key strategic military decisions to consolidate its forces it did not and this was a source of tremendous frustration across the uh administration from the uh president uh on down as the summer uh went on and uh we saw the uh the taliban moving across the country we repeatedly pressed the the afghan government to do just what you described which is to consolidate its forces and to defend what was essential to defend uh and what could be defended not to extend itself across the entire country which it didn't uh have the full capacity to do um and uh unfortunately that uh that consolidation uh and the the plan that we urged on them uh for how to effectively defend uh the uh the major cities uh never took shape what was the response of the of the of the government or from president ashraf ghani about why they chose not to consolidate their forces to protect the areas they controlled well in in uh different moments there were different responses at some point i think initially uh the response was oh we can't uh we can't be seen to be giving up on any part of the the country never mind that you know over the last uh five or six years uh the amount of the the the partial the part of the country by population controlled by the government afghanistan if you go back to 2014 2015 uh went from about uh 60 percent to at the at the end of last year uh about uh about 48 so this was this was happening at to some extent outside the cities of course um relentlessly slowly but relentlessly uh but then uh as we pressed and pressed and pressed on them the response was yes will do it but they didn't well we have seen over a number of years we had the challenge of elections that were considered uh illegitimate by a portion of the country we had abdullah abdullah and ashraf ghani kind of facing off against each other and creating paralysis great difficulty appointing key ministers to key positions as we analyze and try to understand the the rapid collapse did the the was there essentially a failure to create an effective decision making capability within the afghanistan government i think there are a number of factors and this is something that uh i hope we all look at going back uh really over the last over the last 20 years at very few points uh certainly there was a lack of unity uh in in the government because it was comprised of different uh different groups different factions uh and despite again uh very significant efforts to get them to act in a unified way they couldn't or wouldn't uh second uh i think in terms of their effectiveness there are obviously serious concerns and that manifested themselves uh and third one of the endemic problems that we've had over the last 20 years that we've not been able to effectively address is pervasive corruption and that has so many consequences one of the consequences though is that if you're being asked to to fight and put your life on the line for a government or for an institution uh that's corrupt that's a pretty hard uh decision to make and so i think um as we saw with many uh afghan forces uh soldiers fighting very very bravely and giving their lives but institutionally the military collapsed in totally unanticipated ways in the course of 11 days i think as we go back and look one of the things we have to look at is the impact that this pervasive corruption had in terms of giving the the institution the will to uh to fight for the country absolutely in those final days as the provincial capitals were following president ghani refused to acknowledge that there were falling capitals it was almost like a a world in which he was disengaged and then the finance minister resigned and said he was leaving the country for family reasons but it was taken as a symbol of the government on the verge of collapse and then shortly thereafter president ghani fled himself i think it was august 15 sunday august 15th and did we have forewarning of this beginning of the cabinet to essentially flee the country and how did we respond to that we did not on saturday as it happens i spoke to president ghani uh we were working on a on a plan to have a transfer of power to a taliban-led but but more broadly representative government to include many of the different actors in afghanistan working on that in doha i was calling president ghani to make sure that he would support that that was critical he told me he would but he said if the taliban wouldn't go ahead with it he would and i'm paraphrasing here fight to the death that was saturday he left afghanistan the next day on sunday thank you thank you uh for the uh awareness of senators there's a vote going on there's a subsequent vote going on as well it's my intention to try to continue through the process uh but i just want to make members aware senator paul i've advocated for an end to the afghan war for over a decade i'm glad it's finally over but never in my worst nightmares could i have imagined that an administration would leave and leave 80 billion dollars worth of weaponry to the taliban dozens of planes and helicopters thousands of armored carriers hundreds of thousands of automatic weapons and worst of all 13 of our brave young men and women never in my worst nightmares did anyone or conceive of such a colossal incompetence abandoning bagram air force base will be remembered as one of the worst military decisions in our history holding no one accountable having everyone circle the wagons and say hey we all agreed abandoning bagram air force base was a great idea this is going to be remembered by the people holding no one accountable for letting the base go it will be remembered to add insult to injury this week you've now released 64 million dollars in aid to afghanistan don't we have some prohibition against giving aid and comfort to the enemy now the argument from the biden administration is oh we're giving it to charities and it's for the good of the people for poor people and for women well the taliban has a history of taking this throughout their governance they would take the money that this was a big complaint we had when they were in power the last time they now have 80 billion dollars worth of weapons 350 000 automatic weapons do we really are we really naive enough to believe that we're just going to keep sending charity to afghanistan and they're not going to interrupt it i think that's a foolish notion the 64 million though is the tip of the iceberg there's still about 10 billion dollars out there that was designated for the afghan government can you pledge today without equivocation that the byte administration will not release any of this money to the taliban uh absent the taliban making good on the commitments and expectations of the international community that i've outlined previously that's correct maybe we could deduct a fee for the weapons they took so uh senator uh on the uh on the weapons again i'll defer to my my colleagues at the pentagon who are more expert in this uh you're right that about uh 80 billion dollars worth of weaponry has been provided over the course of the last 15 or 16 years uh much of that uh this the significant weaponry planes helicopters is actually inoperable will soon become inoperable because it can't be maintained in terms of the strategic threat that that weapon reposes uh it doesn't to us or to afghanistan's name you can't say you're not going to give them the money if they behave you're going to give them the money why don't we subtract the 80 billion from the 10 billion you're going to give them then their minus 70 still i mean really the fact that you're entertaining good behavior that they'll get more money i think is a big mistake and a naive notion that we're going to somehow change this stone age philosophy by giving them more of our money we've sunk trillions of dollars over this our chance to have a peace dividend let's quit sending good money after bad the guy the biden administration droned was he an aid worker or an isis k operative the administration is of course reviewing that uh that strike uh and i'm sure that a you know full assessment will be will be for you i don't know if it was an aid worker or an isis k operative uh i can't speak to that and i can't speak to that in this setting in any event so you don't know or won't tell us uh i don't i don't know because we're reviewing it well see you'd think you'd kind of know before you off somebody with a predator drone whether he's an aid worker or he's an isis case see the thing is is this isn't just you it's been going on for administration after administration the obama administration droned hundreds and hundreds of people and the thing is is there is blow back to that i mean i don't know if it's true but i see these pictures of these beautiful children that were killed in the attack if that's true and not propaganda if that's true guess what maybe you created hundreds or thousands of new potential terrorists from bombing the wrong people so you got to know who you we can't sort of have an investigation after we kill people we have an investigation before we kill people we've got plenty of bombs we can bomb almost anything we want from anywhere in the world maybe we should have bombed the helicopters and the planes that we left behind i mean even though you said you didn't know any of this and was all surprised once they took all of our stuff we should have said you got 20 minutes to get out of it because we're going to blow it all up then you would have sent a message of strength instead we bombed somebody who were not sure whether it was an aid worker or an isis k operative see that's not a that's not sending a signal of strength and in the end there will be more blow back from it if you killed an aid worker on accident i mean do you think we're better off because of that you really could have acted a position of strength but you could have made the basic decision that the basic fundamental decision that that really ruined the whole thing for you was a military decision to abandon bagram air force base before before you left before the americans were out anybody can argue and you may have a point that it happened quick more quickly than we thought it was going to happen okay that's an honest mistake still a huge mistake and when people make judgments mistakes in the military they ought to be relieved of their post but leaving bagram air force base i think is an unforgivable sort of mistake it's going to be remembered in history but if you do nothing about it you leave all these people in place and say oh well we all agreed it's like then maybe everybody needs to go i mean but really it was a terrible mistake but releasing money to the taliban will add insult to injury it'll be terrible for the memory of the 13 soldiers who died in the end who are the final soldiers to die in this war if you end up giving money to the the people that you know have been ruining the middle east and afghanistan for decades i hope you won't release the money and i think it'll be a big mistake thank you i understand senator schatz is with us uh virtually yes mr chairman and uh before senator schatz begins i'm going to ask senator kane to preside so i can vote and come back thank you thank you mr chairman secretary blinken thank you for appearing before the committee i want to sort of zoom out a little bit the defense establishment political appointees so-called think tank experts defense contractors are complaining loudly about tactics because it's their strategy that failed they're complaining about how america's longest war ended because they didn't want it to ever end and they're mad because they think we should be an occupying force indefinitely and they know that position is untenable so they dive into tactics they want to talk about holding on the background for longer or sending forces into kabul they won't acknowledge the fundamental mistake was that we invaded a country in central asia without a good understanding of its people its history or if it's clear of its culture after 20 years trillions of dollars spent and training of hundreds of thousands of afghan security forces the afghan government we install was no more capable of being the referee in a civil war than before we invaded that's not the fault of our service members or diplomats it's the fault of policy makers who set unrealistic goals and so the basic question i have for you mr secretary is what are the lessons of the last 20 years of war well senator i think you actually summed it up uh extremely well and i would say two things just to put a fine point on it we went to afghanistan for one reason and that was to deal with the people who attacked us on 9 11 to bring them to to justice and to the best of our ability make sure that that would not happen again from afghanistan and we largely succeeded in that effort a long time ago with bin laden being killed in in 2011 and al qaeda in terms of its capacity to conduct attacks on the homeland from afghanistan uh vastly uh degraded uh to the point where the it is currently assessed that it does not have that uh that capacity somewhere along the way with the best of intentions uh we also sought to remake the country and in effect to use military force to remake another society and i think to your point and the point that senator murphy and others have made whatever our intentions that is probably something that is beyond our capacity and the net of that is that we were there for 20 years we lost 2 461 americans 20 000 were killed were injured excuse me uh about two trillion dollars were spent um in direct and indirect costs that's the equivalent of about 300 million dollars every single day for 20 years on average and to those who say well yes but you you arrived in a place where the expenditures in terms of people and resources uh were sustainable well that's simply not the reality that we faced uh because as we've discussed given the deadline established for the removal of u.s forces by the previous administration the choice we had was either to go through with that and withdraw our forces or to re-up the war to escalate to send in more forces more loss of life more loss of resources uh indefinitely and to what end to what result in terms of having something sustainable in a government or in security forces that could protect the country and uphold basic rights so i think those lessons are uh are important they're profound and i hope all of us together we'll we'll reflect on those and other lessons that we've learned both in what we've done tactically including uh in this administration as well as what we've done strategically across many administrations over over 20 years thank you mr secretary i i am worried about reports that we're seeing about acts of violence against journalists women and girls and the taliban targeting minority groups like the hazara people groups who have a brutal history of committing violence against against them are probably going to get worse so what are we doing to ensure physical access for the ngos that service these constituencies thank you senator uh these reports which i've also seen whether uh in media reporting and videos and and other reports are deeply deeply disturbing and i think whether it's us or whether it is many other countries around the world that we've been working to to organize and to focus this of course violates the basic expectations that we have of a taliban-led led government in terms of its need to not abuse these rights but to uh to uphold them so we are working to make sure that we are all both speaking with with one voice and acting uh together uh when it comes to using the influence and leverage we have with the taliban uh to insist that it meet these expectations second when it comes to humanitarian assistance and other kinds of support besides providing that support to ngos to the united nations and its agencies we are doing whatever we can to help ensure that those agencies and those ngos are able uh to operate uh pressing directly and and indirectly on the uh the taliban-led uh government to uh ensure their ability to do that and uh and their protection uh but this is uh very much a moving picture and something we're very focused on uh right now and in the in the days and weeks ahead well one final question i understand i understand this is not the main thing i understand there are people who remain in mortal danger but from your standpoint the department of state you've got to be a little worried about morale for those people who have dedicated the better part of 20 years um to this effort and so what can we do not what can we say but what can we do on behalf of the foreign service especially at a time when we need to be building back our diplomatic core yeah thank you for raising that senator because it's you're exactly right and it's it's very very important to me and it's very very important institutionally i um i've spent time uh with um all all of our returning diplomats from uh from afghanistan either personally or or virtually depending on on where they were and spent a lot of time listening to them uh hearing them uh and trying to address the concerns that they have and to your point we have so many people who've invested their their work their careers their lives uh in afghanistan developed relationships um a deep love for the country um and this uh this is very uh challenging uh painful uh for for many of them and of course those who participated in the evacuation itself who were literally at the gates at the cabin airport side by side with these extraordinary uh men and women in in uniform uh doing that work including the 13 who lost their lives who were killed in the h in the uh in the terrorist attack i had officers who were literally serving next to them up to a couple of hours before that attack knew them by first name and so the impact both over 20 years and more immediately uh with um our people who were there literally pulling people in uh to safety helping to to talk people in to walk people in officers around the department who've stood up and volunteered to help in some way and many of them who ran into hkia to the airport to help get people out so we're spending time talking to them listening to them and also providing them the support that uh that some of them may need uh including mr secretary emotional support sum up we're over time and there's still eight senators who want to ask questions senator senator barrasso thank you senator schatz thank you very much mr chairman uh mr secretary president biden has described the evacuation from afghanistan as an extraordinary success his words extraordinary success this has to be the lie of the 21st century it's dishonest and if he believes it is delusional america can no longer ever say we leave no american behind because joe biden did and by your own testimony and your words this morning there are still about a hundred americans trapped behind enemy lines we've heard a lot about the thirteen u s service members who died a couple of weeks ago one was riley mccollum of jackson hole wyoming was 20 years old signed up for the marines on his 18th birthday his wife gigi expecting a baby the baby was delivered just yesterday a baby girl i stood with riley's family and his then pregnant wife on friday in jackson hole wyoming as his remains were brought back in a flag draped coffin from afghanistan never made it back home alive as a result of this administration's failures people wyoming view this as having lost one of their sons one of their children it is a devastating loss and they really do believe believe that is the administration who should hold the blame for what has occurred look this withdrawal and you've heard it from other senators on both sides of the aisle has been an epic failure no planning no strategy no it was cobbled together at the last minute disorganized it didn't have to be this way i'm thinking back to your confirmation hearing i've raised a number of questions and concerns about your record on foreign policy failures in syria in libya in iran i said these botched decisions of serious consequences i said i believe they embolden terrorist organizations around the globe i said your decisions in the past have put lives of men and women who serve our nation at risk because of these failures and i said i think it would be a grave mistake to confirm a secretary of state who has a demonstrated track record of repeatedly making the wrong decisions when it comes to american foreign policy and national security and the actions i've seen from you over the last seven months have proven my assessment to be correct the biden administration's missteps are numerous failed to start evacuation operations until the fall of kabul in august despite announcing the withdrawal in april failed to heed the warnings of a collapse of the afghan government and security forces in spite of warnings failed to prepare for a rapid taliban takeover failed to adapt the politically motivated deadline for uh withdrawal to the situation taking place on the ground because they were so focused on the calendar on the wall failed to keep bagram air force base a place i've visited about eight or nine times the us military base two runways that could be used to help evacuate civilians and we just heard failure to brand advanced arsenal of weapons from getting into the hands of the taliban i mean it seems the most egregious though that i hear about in wyoming and people all across the country are most offended by is abandoning american citizens as well as abandoning our allies in afghanistan senator portman went over the numbers the washington post called it a moral disaster i think it's a moral disgrace you nearly dislocated your shoulder though patting yourself on the back for the great job you've done i mean just yesterday you stated we did the right thing by our citizens in working feverishly to get every one of them out but you didn't get every one of them out you've admitted again and again we're talking about over a hundred americans the top priority must always be getting all americans home safely and now with no u.s personnel in afghanistan the americans that president biden left behind instead of going on national tv and saying we will not take the troops out until every american is out their options for escaping are dwindling so i'm trying to put this all together to say how did we end up here in april the president made a decision that uh to announce everyone would be out by august 31st may 8th there was a rehearsal of of concept which is they address rehearsal for withdrawal i i know that the the national security council was there the secretary of defense chairman the joint chiefs of staff secretary of homeland security they were all there um my understanding is that you did not attend is that true my deputy uh responsible for uh the the operation was there i know where you were i think you should have been here instead i understand in late june the state department was getting nervous because the military drawdown was moving on schedule but not the civilian drawdown you were running behind i understand state department was talking to the defense department to slow down the pace of military withdrawal calling actually for quote tapping the brakes on military withdrawal isn't that true senator i'm uh not going to get into any uh internal deliberations or discussions that uh that we had uh we worked on this together every step of the way in july you got more warnings state department things were getting bad when did the state department formally make the request to the department of defense for military assisted evacuation the non-combatant evacuation operation because that's a secretary or ambassador job uh the the end the the the neo is being planned if necessary uh throughout the spring and summer we revised the uh the plans uh on a number of occasions and ultimately when the uh government security forces unexpectedly collapsed in the 11 days uh the neo went into effect so middle of august that's correct and why did you wait so long because we had a government and security forces in place uh that by every uh estimate uh would be able to protect the city protect kabul protect the other provincial capitals uh certainly through the year so yesterday you testify that the taliban has been designated a terrorist organization i want to be very clear on this because that's what you said yesterday quote the taliban has been designated a terrorist organization does this administration believe the taliban is a terrorist organization uh it's designated under one of the designations uh and any engagement that we have will be purely for the purpose of advancing our interests under one of the designations when does this administration plan to list the taliban as u.s designated foreign specially designated terrorist organization that's correct and you testified this morning about the siv washout rate i think it's about 40 percent that they don't before the chief of mission approval that's correct so what percentage of the afghan population that left afghanistan as part of our u.s evacuation uh efforts what percentage of those were vetted before they actually got on the airplanes uh before they got on the airplanes uh to leave kabul uh certainly not most of them were not that's exactly why we established transit points in countries through negotiations with those countries to make sure that before anyone came to the united states uh they would be uh vetted by the different law enforcement and security agencies so we established agreements uh with uh well more than a dozen countries so who were you letting on the planes anybody that showed up well initially uh as you know there were people who managed to flood the airport uh we had to do an uh immediate assessment of those we had to make sure we could clear people out of the airport so that the flights could come in go out but no one came to the united states uh without being checked somewhere else first to make sure that they don't pose a security threat my times expire thank you very much mr chairman i would just have to say i spent time overseas last week talking to our nato allies at a security conference as well as with nato individuals and i'll tell you our enemies are emboldened and our allies are enraged senator thank you secretary thank you for being here and thank you for uh allotting so much time and taking every single question posed to you uh i want to uh first maybe just pick up with what my friend and colleague asked could you characterize the americans that are still there i i know there are a lot of them that didn't necessarily want to come back there were there's a whole array of different reasons could you give us a better understanding of those that have remained and what their circumstances are certainly the senators we've noted uh starting back in in march we issued 19 separate messages to any american citizen who was registered with the embassy uh urging them to to leave afghanistan to avail themselves of commercial uh flights that were running offering assistance if they needed it because we knew it was a very volatile uh security environment uh and as especially when we uh went started the order departure of our embassy on uh april 27th it's also very incumbent upon us to make sure that we are making clear to any american citizens that they should take the opportunity to leave by the time of the evacuation despite these 19 separate messages there were still somewhere around five or six thousand american citizens left in afghanistan and as we've noted earlier we never know whether it's afghanistan or any other country around the world at any given moment how many american citizens are there because uh they're not no one is required when you travel abroad when you reside abroad you're not required to register with uh the embassy uh or with anyone else many people do many don't uh but we made a a massive effort to try to determine how many people were there so the reason to get to your point the reason that despite uh all of these warnings despite the environment people remained is because for virtually all of them afghanistan was their home they'd lived there for years for decades for generations their extended family was there and it is the most wrenching of all decisions to have to decide whether or not to leave i wanted to know i wanted to give more texture to this complex situation this is not that there were people there there are many people fall into the category of not being abandoned by our country but have made the conscious choice to stay in country correct that's correct um you you have been i've only been here eight years but i will say to you and your staff you have been the most responsive state department team that my office has dealt with we have brought many as you know people to your attention both american citizens and afghanis who wanted to get out have worked with us to many different degrees of success and i'm i'm i'm grateful for that um i have now witnessed uh with my senior senator uh we went to our joint base and saw the facilities being done for those who have met extreme vetting and have made it to the united states what is going on with the 13 000 expected in new jersey and the 65 to 70 000 is america at its best i met from military personnel state department personnel talking to me about this being some of the proudest work they've ever done and i think americans should be aware of that and what's going on we are a great nation and this is a reflection of those words on the statue of liberty um i want to pick up though on uh the situation as it is i think it was senator merkley who brought up uh the concerns about humanitarian interest a humanitarian crisis that is that is really boiling over there and i want to just get you to reiterate uh that uh you issued one license uh but we we really need more correct yeah i understand that and that's exactly what we're looking at we want to make sure that all the authorities exist to provide that humanitarian assistance including by not just our own uh ngos but uh but others as well and it's a strategic uh situation we know we control significant resources the afghan government has been relying on to run basic services this is a strategic leverage that we have over the taliban to continue uh to try to pressure them into honoring human rights honoring the rights of women countering some of the terrorist concerns that we have and it's very important however given what we understand without those resources there are going to be continued uh humanitarian suffering as new york times reported um the world food program is estimating about 40 percent of afghans crops are going to be lost it's going to be tremendous hunger as the price of wheat expected to go up 25 uh the world food program's own food stock is expected to run out uh by september uh and so this is tremendous suffering that will come it's going to be exacerbated by climate change uh we can literally see issues of starvation hitting the general population i guess if you give me specifically what assurances has the biden administration have been able to secure from the taliban as it remarks as it is to humanitarian access and how's the state department working with international partners because it's not just our responsibility to coordinate and provide near-term and long-term assistance for those afghans who've ended up uh in locations without the proper support mechanisms yeah uh first you're exactly right i think to to draw a distinction between basic humanitarian assistance to to respond to what is a crisis uh among so many afghan people uh by the un's estimates uh well over 50 are in need of humanitarian assistance we've had a we've had a drought we've had uh horrific economic conditions uh we've had coveted everything piling on uh to one of the poorest countries on earth to begin with so when it comes to food when it comes to medicine when it comes to the basics the we the international community irrespective of anything else ought to be able to provide that provided that we can do it uh knowing that the assistance is going to get to the people uh who need it and not diverted or used in any other uh in any other way we have long-standing mechanisms and arrangements in place including with leading ngos including with the un agencies to do just that as well as very clear monitoring mechanisms to make sure even in an environment that we don't control that assistance gets to the people uh who need it and i spent time with the head of the u.n agency responsible for that to make sure that that's what's happening we're coordinating with dozens of countries on this uh the un is playing a lead role we they just had a donor's conference to make sure that everyone else is is feeding into this as well i just want to end by saying thank you to uh many of the state department personnel still in that region as well as here in the united states that are working through this crisis thank you thank you senator rounds i understand is with us virtually yes mr chairman thank you sir uh secretary blinken um thank you for your willingness to appear before the committee and answer questions on the afghanistan withdrawal i understand you've been there for almost three hours now i appreciate your persistence in this um mr secretary my staff has been working very closely with yours on the issue of afghan special immigration applications or sivs some of which have been initiated for over three years as you are aware i sent a letter to you last week that outlines my concerns and i spoke to deputy secretary mcewen three weeks ago due to the preparation for the hearing i received updates on three of the five siv cases my staff has been working for months on i sincerely appreciate the efforts of your staff to get me this information which i provided last night to the south dakota veterans who requested my help and for that i want to thank you i would however like you to be aware of my concern pertaining to a key reason that has hamstrung my efforts to assist siv applicants this is the department's position stated to my staff on multiple occasions uh that it is precluded by law from providing updates are noting any potential defects in applications mr secretary if true this would prevent members of congress from executing oversight and constituent service responsibilities specifically when they're advocating in support of an applicant it would also incidentally violate the department's own foreign affairs manual will you commit to me today that you will review the department's procedures and fix this unacceptable procedure uh senator um i'm happy to review that um and let me say uh first thank you thank you thank you for the the work that you and your team and staff have done uh to help folks in need and to um make sure that we had the information that we needed uh to try to be helpful and to get people out i'm really grateful for that and grateful for the uh the work that we've been able to do together uh we'll certainly review all of these procedures there are um requirements either built into the law privacy concerns et cetera that may have to be uh addressed but we should look at everything well mr secretary i think this is important enough to where we will follow up and hopefully within a time certain we'll be able to come up with what changes need to be made either statutorily or within the rules process to clarify this because this shouldn't be that hard to be able to stay in contact and to make to make those those communications between your department and members of the united states senate um our adversaries mr uh secretary are celebrating the departure of u.s troops and they will certainly are celebrating the creation of a power vacuum um most certainly they are also prepared to take this opportunity and use it to their advantage china has announced last week that it will send 31 million dollars worth of aid to taliban controlled afghanistan there have also been reports that they are looking at bagram air base for their own use the russian embassy in afghanistan has remained open and the ambassador met with taliban leadership after the takeover pakistan is considering the taliban government as a partner to counter india and the iranian president openly called this an american military defeat and is considering working with the taliban did the administration consider all of these foreign policy implications before such an abrupt withdrawal and if they did does the department have a strategy to counter our adversary's malign influence in the region uh we certainly did we factored everything into uh the decisions we made including the impact that uh it might have on the neighboring countries uh regional countries and others with various interests in afghanistan a number of the countries that you cited have a whole series of different interests in afghanistan to include uh making sure that it is not a place for terrorism directed against them to ensure that it is not a source of drugs flowing out into their countries to make sure that it is not a source of uh potential refugees flowing out into their countries as well um so all of those things are in play and countries are uh looking to take steps they need to take to uh protect some of their their basic interests at the same time we've established uh across more than 100 countries and in the u.n uh through a security council resolution basic expectations of the uh taliban-led led government and if those expectations are not met and other countries are aiding and abetting uh so that the taliban is able to not uh fulfill those uh those expectations uh there'll be consequences for that too uh and secretary if i could what i'm really curious about is do you have a strategy that you've established did you have enough time before this withdrawal to actually establish a strategy knowing that there would be a void in afghanistan the work that we've done to bring together across dozens of countries very active contact groups looking as we work together across these countries with nato the uh the eu as well as as the u.n we have a collective strategy on the way forward and we're working that as we speak in our country do we have do we have a strategy it i mean if if this has been laid out and based upon the need to move out as quickly as we did did you have time to actually establish a strategy to take care of what will be this power void and i understand that you've been there now for almost three hours but simply to say that you're working on it with our with our other countries seems to me looks to me like we need our own strategy here and it doesn't sound like you're in a position to share with us that that strategy actually exists today um i'm happy senator follow up with you and to uh uh to share both our our thinking and more of our uh our work on that uh but we have organized uh several dozen countries that are collectively working working on and implementing a strategy is that if you would whether it be in a classified setting or publicly if you could share with us in the next week to 10 days what that strategy is uh and if it needs to be a classified setting i'd ask the chairman to provide us with that opportunity but most certainly i think it's important that we have a strategy to combat what will be a void uh in afghanistan which is a void now and most certainly is something that we should be in a better position i believe than what it sounds like you're able to articulate today mr chairman i would suspect that my time is up at this time at this point thank you senator markey thank you thank you mr chairman very much um thank you mr secretary thank you for your uh thank you for all of your work and all of your colleagues as well uh president biden was right to end the united states longest war if leaving afghanistan was ever going to be clean and easy one of the president's three predecessors would have done so if we've learned anything from our 20-year war in afghanistan it's that it's easier to get into a war than to get out of one however given the amount of second guessing and armchair quarterbacking that i've seen over the last month i fear that we haven't learned anything we must reimagine a national security policy that prioritizes diplomacy and stops endless undefined military engagements before they can begin and i want to be sure that americans at home understand the position president biden was placed in president trump's deal with the taliban exchanged a halt in taliban offensives against our troops for a commitment that we would leave the country by may of this year president trump with the support of his national security team and many republican members of congress negotiated this deal without the participation or buy-in of the afghan government president biden faced a choice of having to break that deal essentially restarting the war in afghanistan and risk increased attacks against u.s troops are to get our troops home as promised but president trump of course did not leave an actual plan to evacuate well all of those who should have been taken out of afghanistan and president trump's vision without a plan is and was an hallucination so that left it then ultimately to the biden administration which did its best in order to effectuate that agreement which president trump uh in fact made and president biden ultimately was right to follow through on that commitment to end our country's longest war one that claimed uh so many military lives so many tens of thousands of afghan civilian lives and saddled u.s taxpayers with two trillion dollars worth of debt over the last two decades and the tremendous cost of war hit home in its final chapter as our armed forces and diplomats executed one of the largest airlifts in u.s history we owe them a debt of gratitude yesterday senator warren and i uh both attended the funeral service for u.s marine corps sergeant johanni rosario pachado in lawrence massachusetts one of the 13 american heroes who lost her life on august 26th in that suicide bombing as she was guiding afghan women and girls to safety at the kabul airport's abbey gate the work of purple heart recipient sergeant rosario and others during operation allies refuge save thousands of innocent lives and we have to ensure that our own commitment to help the afghan people endures past the takeoff of that last u.s military transport plane two weeks ago but we honor her and we honor all of those who gave their lives and sacrificed in afghanistan and every member of this committee i think has to agree that we have to ensure that there is humanitarian aid that goes into afghanistan to help those who are in need we spent 300 million dollars every single day to conduct the war in afghanistan roughly equivalent uh to what we spent the this entire year in humanitarian assistance for afghanistan uh mr secretary i sent a letter with four of my colleagues today uh asking for the administration uh to ensure that the money previously allocated are requested for afghan war efforts be repurposed to assist afghans in need uh can you give your view as to what should happen with that funding now that uh the defunct afghan defense and national security forces uh are not there to receive this funding in terms of ensuring that we have uh avert a further humanitarian catastrophe in afghanistan yes thank you senator and i uh got your letter uh uh we're looking at all of that we want to make sure in the first instance um that we are uh making good on our own contributions to the humanitarian assistance that the afghan people need we did we did that again yesterday at the pledging conference organized by the uh by the united nations we're going to continue to look at the needs going forward and to look at what uh what we can do effectively to make sure that assistance is getting to the people who need it uh not diverted of course to the taliban-led government uh and making sure that uh agencies uh whether the u.n or ngos can operate safely and effectively in afghanistan yeah thank you and as the last planes left many international relief organizations stayed behind we owe it to them not to create red tape and free them from the risk of sanctions are you working with the treasury department to issue a general license so that these groups life-saving work can't continue we are working on the necessary licensing authorities as you know we issued one license the treasury did a couple of weeks ago we're looking to see what additional authorities may be needed to make sure that humanitarian assistance can can get in there freely thank you i think that's very important and i think telescoping the time frame to get that completed is very important and just about every major refugee assistance group has call for lifting the um level to 200 000 people as refugee admissions into our country what is the administration's view on that 200 000 person goal in order to ensure that we deal with the magnitude of this humanitarian crisis uh senators you know uh we've already significantly lifted the uh refugee cap from its historic lows that were in place when we uh when we took office uh and of course we were assessing whether there are going to be additional needs having said that uh the the work we're doing now to bring afghans in need uh were vetted and uh and checked uh into this country including um support we need from congress on that uh will not for the most part uh tap into the uh to the refugee cap there are other um means and mechanisms by which we're looking to uh bring people in to ensure uh with your support that they're given the assistance that they would get uh were they coming in as as refugees but not uh actually cutting into these uh to the existing cap or any future cap i i thank you and thanks for all your great work i i just would hope the 200 000 is the goal the resettlement agencies are pointing towards that number uh and i think it's a number that we should all strive to meet uh in order to ensure that these individuals not only survive but thrive in their new environment thank you mr secretary for all your great work senator hagerty thank you senator kaine ranking member rich secretary of lincoln better before i start i'd just like to acknowledge um young man army staff sergeant ryan canaus uh ryan's a tennessean one of the 13 service members who lost his life at the airport and a couple trying to rescue and save others my heart goes out to he and his family and the tragic loss associated with this evacuation and regarding this evacuation i agree with senator barrasso for president biden to call this an extraordinary success is beyond the pale when we leave americans when we leave our allies when we leave those that have helped us behind and i've also just been over to visit with our allies in the uk and in nato and their sense of surprise and enragement is palpable we have a very significant failure that's taking place here a failure of global proportion and it's placed our allies in the position of questioning america's resolve of questioning our nation's integrity and frankly they put us in a situation where they're questioning whether we're a reliable partner a reputation as a nation i think has been put at risk as a result of the failed evacuation here and our job now is to get to the bottom of this failure as a committee this failure that's left the world a more dangerous place for the united states for our allies for those that depend on us it's almost it's also armed our enemies like never before and it's emboldened our strategic adversaries there must be accountability secretary blinken my office and other congressional offices have heard rumors regarding potential cabinet resignations over the situation in afghanistan so i want to ask you have you submitted your resignation regarding this issue i have the not of accountability here the lack of accountability in this administration is shocking to me i'd like to turn to another question regarding the intelligence that we've relied upon in an internal report given to the state department by embassy kabul on august the 16th there is warning of a breach of the kabul airport and said i quote a breach cannot be fully prevented at current force levels mr secretary did you see that report i'm sorry can you tell me the date again senator august the 16th a report given to embassy kabul an internal report from embassy kabul to the state department saying that a breach at the airport cannot be fully prevented at current force levels um i can't tell you whether i saw that specific report but that's exactly why the president had on standby uh six thousand forces to be able to deploy immediately into afghanistan into the airport in case the airport uh was in jeopardy and that's exactly what we did well this uh the the force levels being insufficient uh i think was a significant reason for concern something that uh in a plan of action i think should have been accounted for certainly earlier um and going to the neo plan i'd like to cover that with you for a few minutes the non-combatant evacuation operational plan for afghanistan would be a plan on how we evacuate american civilians from a foreign country should a dangerous situation arise that's correct uh prior to turning over the bagram air base in july on july 2 did the neo plan to evacuate americans have the bagram air base as a critical element of its strategy the critical element uh for any evacuation was actually the airport in kabul known as hkia because as you know senator bagram is about 40 miles from kabul to the extent that the population that you're seeking to evacuate is mostly in kabul uh the airport by far most convenient uh to them would be the the airport in kabul ichikaya a civilian airport in a neighborhood that's much more difficult to protect than an airway airport the size of a bathroom with two runways and the ability to land and lift off uh significa significant airlift capacity uh i'm frankly quite shocked that our neoplan would have had no inclusion of the bagram air base but if i understand you correctly it did not include bagram the plan focused on the airport in kabul i wonder how the evacuation plan was updated mr secretary as things began to change on the ground what was the process that you deployed there senator through the course of the spring and and summer we reviewed uh all of these plans different contingencies including the uh the neo plan uh of course the element that no one anticipated as we've discussed on numerous occasions was the rapid collapse of the afghan government and the afghan security forces in the space of about 11 days having said that we had plans in place to do the two critical things that that we did we were able to evacuate our embassy all its personnel destroy uh sensitive materials get people to the airport in 48 hours and in many cases much less than that second as i mentioned the president ordered that there be a standby force in place to make sure that uh hkia the airport in kabul uh was secured uh planes could come in planes could take off and we had a secure uh facility uh and we did that in the course of about 72 hours back to the neo discussion in an august 14th briefing the pentagon spokesman john kirby denied that there was a neo operation in afghanistan at that point but two days later on the 16th he blatantly admitted there was a neo operation going on and so i'm curious mr secretary what date did the administration actually decide to execute the neo plan and when did they begin to actively evacuate all americans allies i believe senator was triggered by the uh the collapse of the of the government uh and the security forces who would have made the decision to execute the neo uh ultimately uh the the president would uh would be asked for uh his uh decision approval to uh to do that uh based on the recommendation of the different government agencies involved is that what happened in this case i believe that's right yes sir um you know oversight isn't a simple check the box exercise it requires getting to the bottom of what's come to be the greatest u.s foreign policy disaster at least in my lifetime mr chairman we need more hearings on this afghanistan withdrawal failure i'd also like to say this leadership requires owning one's mistakes and leadership requires introspection and a commitment to achieve what's right what we've witnessed here has been a failure of leadership what it is has been a tres brest driven spin cycle it's one that's deflected blame and it's one that shamed us as a nation it's time to leave senator if i could just say uh briefly uh in response plea please please be brief yes um i am responsible for the decisions i make i'm responsible for the actions of my department uh i'm responsible for learning any lessons that flowed from those decisions or those actions and i'm also responsible to holding myself accountable uh to you uh and through you to the american people which is exactly what i'm doing here today uh what i've been doing these past weeks in repeated conversations and briefings with members of congress both the senate and the house and what i will continue to do uh going forward uh and we can all uh draw our own conclusions uh from that uh i respect yours i may just i may disagree with them but that's exactly the process uh that i'm engaged in uh and that we're engaged in and we'll continue to do that going forward well my constituents expect that sort of accountability as well particularly the veterans that serve in tennessee and across the nation that have reached out to me they're absolutely heartbroken about what's going on there's been loss of life there's been loss of treasure we've now armed terrorists at a level that i've never expected our allies are more proximate to this threat than we are they could not have been more frustrated with me when i spoke with them they're concerned that we now have a threat level that we've never seen before and we've got to find ways to work together with them to address that and i'll look to you for accountability on that as well as we move forward mr secretary mr van hollen thank you senator mr secretary um welcome and i recognize what a huge undertaking it is to airlift every american out of afghanistan and work to get some of our closest afghan partners out of harm's way after 20 years of american presence and troop troops in afghanistan the united states government conducted the biggest airlift in our history over 120 000 people and i understand and want to thank all the people who were involved in that that said uh i really urge you to have the state department surge more people to this process to help the remaining americans out of afghanistan to help others legal permanent residents and others um secretary i have with me a list of a lot of the constituent cases that are on office um i'm going to give it to you and your staff if i could just get your commitment that you'll get back to us on these pieces thank you because um we've had your help we have one case of a two-year-old american citizen and we've been working with you on that we also have uh cases of about 15 legal permanent residents and a number of our close afghan partners and at this point the system at the state department and dhs is overwhelmed we're just getting back form responses uh without any feedback as to the state of the case so i really urge you to keep at that i must say um i guess i shouldn't be surprised but as senator shaheen said the level of hypocrisy in this room in this congress is staggering uh you know we should have more hearings on what happened to afghanistan starting with the decision to divert huge amounts of u.s troops and resources to iraq in one of the biggest strategic wonders in modern american history where it's a clear matter of record that iran has been the biggest beneficiary of that decision and let's fast forward now to the trump administration i did not oppose the decision of the trump administration to open up negotiations for the taliban everybody in this room i suspect recognized there was no military solution to this conflict that there had to be a political solution so i supported opening up that process mr secretary isn't it a fact that the trump administration asked the pakistani government to release three top afghan taliban commanders as part of that process oh that's correct and one of them is um the person who's now number two baradar right that's correct he's the person everybody saw in those photos in kabul right that's correct right and there was another senior commander released and they began the discussions in doha that's right they did not include the afghan government did they that's correct right and they in fact essentially ordered pressured the afghan government to release 5 000 taliban fighters right that's correct many of those fighters involved in the attack on kabul today right yes okay now let's see what the negotiation was here was the negotiation i supported the beginning of it the united states will leave by date certain may of this year right correct you can't attack american forces but you can attack afghan forces with impunity right that's correct that's right and so we pick a date we say to the taliban you can attack afghan forces and then we say okay now let's negotiate the future of afghanistan in that the way it was set up when you walked in that's essentially correct yes there's a saying in afghanistan that uh foreigners have the watches we have the time and so the trump administration through those negotiations set it up perfectly for the taliban green light to attack the afghan forces no discussion going forward and then isn't true that uh the former president criticized president biden for for not pulling out our forces earlier i believe that's accurate i think he said you got to stick to our may timetable so president trump stick to our may timetable and by the way i'm handing you negotiation where i've already said we're getting out and i've said go ahead and attack the afghan forces and now we're going to talk about the future so that's the hand you've been dealt let me talk to you a little bit about the future and i'm glad you brought together the ministerial meeting with our nato partners with surrounding countries this will never work if the surrounding countries don't participate in others in the region you had both pakistan and india at the table right that's right okay now i'm very much in the mode and i know you are too you watch what they do not what they say right exactly the taliban clearly have new pr people they also recognize that their actions they have to take in order to get any kind of support whatsoever from some of the western countries right that's correct okay so i've heard you testify today to some of those conditions uh free and safe passage for people who want to leave right right okay access by international human and humanitarian organizations directly to the afghan people not through any taliban godzilla right protection of girls women and minorities that's right this is going to be one obviously we have to keep a very close eye on fourth you can't use the territory of afghanistan as a base for future terrorist attacks whether it's al-qaeda or anybody else that's right and a more inclusive government because right now we have a government comprised of taliban including two members of the akani network um you know one of who's wanted uh for questioning and uh for violent activities uh so my question to you is that was a really important first step because we want everybody on the same page meaning the our close partners and surrounding countries right that's right all right what do you have that buy-in from all the partners around the table that we will act in unison uh we do have that buy-in we have that buy-in not only from the uh the meetings we have we have that buy-in uh in the statements that many countries have signed on to we have that in a u.n security council resolution that we initiated and uh critically we have uh moving forward established an ongoing group of countries and institutions that are going to work together to track this to continue to make sure we're speaking with one voice and acting uh in unison now there are countries that may be outliers uh in this uh in this effort some of them have been referenced to include uh to include china uh to include russia to include pakistan and uh that's something we're being very very vigilant about as well well i i know the time is up but i would just uh i think um a number of those countries at least pakistan like india like the others have an interest in prohibit preventing chaos and civil war uh in uh afghanistan and obviously um we asked them to release prisoners that they had locked up taliban prisoners so uh yeah obviously we have to keep an eye on the isi we get that but let's all work together to achieve the goal of a stable afghanistan that protects the rights of its people thank you appreciate that thank you senator cruz mr secretary thank you for being here senator president biden and the biden administration have presided over the worst foreign policy catastrophe in a generation americans across the nation are horrified our service men and women our active duty military are angry they're disillusioned and they're frustrated our enemies across the globe are emboldened which makes the world more dangerous today for america and our allies are dispirited ever since the disaster began unfolding in afghanistan we've seen the biden administration making political excuses we've seen democrats on this committee explaining at great length how everything that happened in afghanistan is trump's fault it's all trump's fault mr secretary joe biden is the president of the united states kamala harris is the vice president of the united states you are the united states secretary of state just like jimmy carter owns the disaster of the iran hostage crisis you own this the biden administration caused this disaster it was caused by two things number one ideological naivete and extremism repeatedly mr secretary in this hearing and also on multiple conference calls over the last month you keep saying things like the steps the taliban needs to take to be welcomed into the community of civilized nations mr secretary they don't want to be welcomed into the community of civilized nations they are terrorists who want to murder us this administration doesn't understand that joe biden doesn't understand that but sadly that ideological extremism was combined with manifest incompetence there were four decisions this administration made that i think were utterly indefensible number one abandoning the bagram airfield giving it to the taliban that is a decision that a hundred years from now will be studied at war colleges as a colossal strategic mistake giving up two secure airfields necessitating an evacuation from a dense urban environment a commercial airport which led tragically to the suicide bombings and murders that killed 13 american service men and women had we've been evacuating from bagram with a secure perimeter the odds are quite high that attack either wouldn't have happened or if it had happened it would have been far less severe in its consequences secondly the biden administration giving the taliban a list of americans and of afghans we wanted out third the decision to leave americans behind hundreds of americans perhaps more perhaps thousands thousands of green card holders tens of thousands of afghans who assisted the us military the biden administration abandoned them and left them behind and fourth leaving billions of dollars of american military equipment that the taliban will now use to threaten our lives earlier in this hearing you you said about that equipment quote none of it poses a strategic threat to us or their neighbors that does not pass the laugh test when you're looking at the taliban potentially having 64 000 machine guns 33 black hawk helicopters 16 000 night vision goggles we will see american blood spilled because of these colossal mistakes now abandoning bagram wasn't your call it was the pentagons and the white houses ultimately but i want to ask you flat out did the state department give the taliban a list or multiple list of americans and or afghans that we wanted out those reports and the idea that we would do anything to endanger our citizens or anyone else at a time when we were trying to save their lives is flat out wrong let me know just like a yes or no did you give them let me let me be very clear senator if i may please thank you um in limited instances where we were seeking to get a bus or a group of people through a checkpoint we gave a manifest to the people at the checkpoint to demonstrate that those people were expecting roughly how many names were on the list you gave doesn't matter because they all dozens hundreds thousands give us some order of magnitude this happened in a handful of situations where dozens so is it your testimony it wasn't hundreds i want to understand did you give them thousands of names no we did not okay hundreds not going to put a number on it but it was again why not this is a hearing to discover how many names and how many of those individuals you gave the taliban the name to have been targeted for torture or murder senator by definition these were uh in limited instances with a bus or a group of people to get them through a checkpoint they got through the checkpoint so not only did you fail to evacuate americans and green card holders who were there but you also brought in tens of thousands of afghans who had wholly inadequate vetting bringing many of them to the united states and one of the things that has done is that has brought in a humanitarian crisis to america child marriage and domestic abuse tragically are widespread in afghanistan according to the world health organization more than half of the women in afghanistan are married as child brides and 90 percent of women are subject to domestic abuse 90 percent on august 27th according to public reports you distributed internal documentation highlighting numerous instances in intake centers of sexual abuse in which much older grown afghan males appeared with children young children claimed they were their brides claimed they were their wives and the documents said the state department urgently requested guidance that was your word urgently subsequently the department of homeland security said that it showed the desperation of families that they were willing to give little girls to grown men to be subject to sexual abuse and child wives my question is as follows did you receive that urgent guidance how many children have been subject to sexual abuse what have you done to rescue young children from illegal and abusive relationships after being brought to america by the state department across the entire government everyone involved in the evacuation effort whether it's at a transit point uh in one of the countries that we negotiated with whether it's here in the united states at dulles or philadelphia or the military bases we have all of our officers at extreme vigilance to look for and to deal with any cases or concerns uh that did you receive the urgent guidance and how many child rides have you seen i i don't know the specific guidance you're referring to i'm happy to look uh to look at it so is there not urgency to discover it was absolutely abused absolutely a limited number of cases where we have separated people because we were concerned uh that they were uh the cases i'm aware of a handful senator kane you have the last word today thank you mr chair and ranking member rish um secretary blinken thank you for the time that you've spent with us today it's an important hearing and there will be many more i'm going to a second one in the armed services committee in about two hours and i expect over the course of the next weeks there will be many and i'm just i'm just going to really speak from the heart to kind of set out what i'm thinking at a very important moment a complicated moment i'm the father of a marine i come from a state that is very very heavily affected by the wars of the last 20 years it was one of the states that was attacked on 9 11. and in the weeks of august and early september this is basically what i've done i've watched afghanistan on television i've talked to active duty and veterans i've talked to you and other colleagues i have visited the pentagon for the pentagon employees commemoration of the 9 11 attack i went to arlington on 9 11 to go to the fire station where the relief effort was spearheaded i've also gone to fort lee to as you have to see the incredible work that's being done to help afghans who've stood with us integrate into american life i've been to the dulles expo center to see these families that have traveled halfway around the world still traumatized but looking forward to a chapter where they can be free and i have a lot of emotions and so let me just tell you what they are their sadness and their anger and their pride and their relief sadness i'm saddened by the unnecessary deaths of the 3 000 or so who were killed on 9 11. i'm saddened by the deaths of more than 7 000 u.s troops i'm saddened by the deaths of more than 8 000 american contractors i doubt there's been a war in the history of the united states where more contractors died than troops but this global war on terror is one such war i'm saddened at the deaths of 400 000 innocent civilians in iraq afghanistan and syria i'm saddened that those who are now going to have to live under taliban rule i'm particularly saddened for the families of the 13 troops who were killed to lose a child in any circumstance is horrible and war is horrible but in the last days of war in the last days of war that has been declared over and is winding down i don't know how that wound could ever heal for a parent and yet those 13 died to save the lives of about 120 000 people who will have the chance to live in a freer and better society because of their heroism i'm angry i'm angry at the terrorist impulse i was angry about it on jan on on 911 the urge to destroy with the planes flying into buildings and killing people indiscriminately young old america and other nationalities muslim christian jewish no religion that indiscriminate urge to destroy to blow up a demolition vest at the kabul airport and kill 13 american troops and hundreds of your own country men and women for what that angers me i'm angered that after 20 years of american investment in an afghan security force dramatically larger than the taliban dramatically better equipped than the taliban that security force just melted away and failed and and the one thing i would be a little bit critical of you in the administration is the same point that senator romney was making earlier and senator rubio the notion that general milley said that nothing i or anyone else saw indicated a collapse of this army in this government in 11 days i just don't think that's true i know it wasn't the consensus opinion and i know it wasn't the most likely possibility but the possibility of a collapse was not zero percent and it wasn't one percent and probably wasn't 10 it was probably based on what we've been hearing this committee and others have too that was always a fairly s it was a possibility that had to be grappled with and i guess one of the questions that i'll get into over coming weeks is if the administration really said nobody could see this coming then that probably suggests that the contingency planning for something that was a real possibility wasn't all that it should have been my anger at the collapse of the security force we've got to get in we've got to get into it and we have to decide did we train them wrong did our equipping them lead to corruption did they were they good fighters that lack confidence in their own military and civilian leadership did we want things for afghans that the afghan leadership didn't want for themselves we had good intentions about what we might have won in afghanistan but let's face it we can't get 30 percent of americans to get a vaccine we can't get 30 percent of americans to acknowledge the results of a presidential election we really think that we can determine what the culture of another country should be i'm proud i'm proud of those who've served in so many different ways from first responders who ran into the buildings on 9 11 to this generation of americans many of whom didn't come from military families necessarily but who volunteered to serve and not just serve once or twice but this is the only generation i believe of the american military that has seen five six seven eight nine deployments again and again and again injured wounded carrying some invisible scars that will affect the rest of their life i'm proud of their service i'm proud of the country and my virginians for what they're doing in helping welcoming afghans here the the outreach from virginians to my office from our vietnamese community we want to help afghans settle from churches where do we donate how do we give to resettlement agencies when i visited fort lee and and dulles to hear the afghans express their appreciation to the united states and even in the midst of their trauma and their anxiety about the next chapter to be excited about the opportunity to live in a place not under taliban rule and have a an opportunity for better lives of their children i'm proud that even amidst all of the challenge that's the way they look at us and i'm proud of the military who are there who say i've been deployed five times this mission is the most important mission i'll ever undertake but the last thing and mr chair if you might indulge me because i may go another 30 seconds past i'm relieved no one has said this yet i'm relieved that a child born at a nova fairfax today is not born into a nation at war some will challenge my characterization because the world's a dangerous place and american troops are deployed all over the world and there's risks and there's threats but we have been a nation at permanent war for 20 years we were never supposed to be that nation never never we were never supposed to be that nation i heard a college student at george washington say recently i know nothing of war because with an all-villain volunteer army she doesn't have to but all i know is war all i know is war president biden had the courage to say this nation is not a nation that should be permanently at war it's going to take a while for people to wrap their head around the notion that though there are serious threats for it for us everywhere we're not a nation now that is at war ground wars in the middle east it's going to take people a while to get used to it some people will resist it some people will want to say no we've got to be on the front edge of our feet and be on permanent war footing at all moments for now into infinity but i am relieved i am relieved that for the first time in 20 years children being born in this country today are not being worn into a nation at war i yield back mr chair thank you uh let me move into place in today's hearing record a statement in afghanistan from recently exiled afghan women leaders and human rights defenders it urges the united states to continue to support women's groups across afghanistan essential drivers of change mr secretary uh thank you for your testimony you've been here over three and a half hours i think the interest every member of the committee was present and had an opportunity to ask questions and you give substantive answers i'll just close by saying while the focus today has been the president administration's decisions this is going back 20 years and as someone who sat here as a staff director of this committee as someone who was at the nsc at one time as someone who was an assistant uh deputy secretary when uh and now the secretary i think you might join me in saying that over the last 20 years um at different times congress has been misled uh assessments were definitely overly rosy to say the best and if we are not to repeat the past we need to learn from it and that's what the committee's ultimate pursuit will be the record of this hearing will remain open until the close of business on thursday and with the thanks and respect of the committee for your participation this hearing is adjourned thank you thank you um yep okay breakfast screaming [Laughter] you

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Length: 221min 35sec (13295 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021