your 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 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 bible ministration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan, we all recognized we needed to withdraw and is 1500 hours gmc, this is out here. we're bringing your life coverage of your secretary and state anthony lincoln, who's on capitol hill, as you can see, answering questions from senate leaders about the withdrawal from afghanistan as continues listening to iraq. and one of the reasons was that we wanted to complete the mission and app ganesh damn when we had a chance to do it. when the top on was diminished. after

a military came in after tack on our country. but instead we went into iraq, which was not engaged in the 911 activities. and we never finished half got us in 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 ministration 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. so we'll 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 del, considering the crisis that developed evacuating a 124000, was a miraculous test. so we can graduate 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've filtered information into you about vulnerable people in an effort to get them out of afghanistan today, or offices are still being diluted by requests to help people that are in afghanistan, n g o are working very aggressively. can you share with us the process that you're using in order to filter information about americans? there's still an afghan. stan who want to leave those that apply for sci fi 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 the bath down to stand? as thank you center. as i noted, we've established a task force focused entirely on relocation help. those who wish leave afghanistan, whether there be any remaining american citizens, whether it's s i, b applicants, whether it's afghans at risk, whether it's the nationals of a partner, countries get out. and that involves a number of things and involved 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 leave. this here is the sum total of cases brought to us by members of this committee, just this committee that all of you are many of you have been working and we are deeply grateful for those efforts for this information. it ensures that 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 with you. and i recognize that especially in the, in the early going during the evacuation itself. some of the, 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 some cases, we didn't get back to people 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 26000 inquiries from congress. we've

responded to that, but 21 or 22000 of them. we still have the categories that reporters that work for us that are still in afghanistan. we have women officials that were officials and up can stand that are at risk. we have n jose that worked with us and i've got a standard employees that are at risk, that 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 us. absolutely, and we very much invite that and we want to make sure that we have as best possible a unified coordinated list so that we know what, what everyone is working on. and we can track and, and we can help or we can take on, depending on the can i get your best guess on the numbers. at one point, when we 1st started, we thought there might be somewhere around less than 100000 of us citizens s i.

these and afghans at risk that wanted to leave. obviously, that number was, well, we've already evacuated over 124000. do we know how many us citizens are in afghanistan that want to exit today? how many are an s i b 's 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 people were more in direct contact 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 lead. others continue even now to raise their hands and say, i'm an american citizen in afghan. this can someone who had not identified

themselves before. and again, i think it's 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. you have numbers for f, i, d, and for so that so the, the numbers that we're tabulating right now because we're trying to account for everyone who has come in, some people remain in transit countries. other people who are now in the united states were putting all of those numbers together to determine that the, over the overwhelming majority of afghans who have come out of afghanistan, thanks for evacuation effort or in one way or another. afghans at risk. some will be s i, the applicants, others will be p one or p 2 applicants. others will be none of those categories, but africans 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 send a rubio. thank you. secretary and your statement. i think that the most talk my

thing is the following. quote from you even the most pessimistic assessment did not predict the government forces in cobble would collapse while us forces remained at back that up. i think you also cite general mili. you said there was no indication that there would be a rapid collapse of the afghan army and government. 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 the here, i can just, obviously i can't quote the titles of the pieces, but let me suffice to say that there are numerous pieces that will be categorized as it's going to hit the fan. and, but let's just for a moment put that aside, kick us, did i think any analysis of those pieces would have led anyone to that conclusion? putting that aside from on 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 our missions, we had

a really already really bad status quo in afghanistan, ok, we had a small footprint, but we had a strong commitment to air support and that sustained the afghans security forces ability to resist the taliban. the security forces can affect, were suffering at $10000.00 casualties a year. the taliban was suffering casualties too, but they enjoyed safe haven and pakistan. they were able to go there to rest a wreath refit to train to recruit. and so on summary, even before the withdrawal, we had a terrible status quo security forces. small number of us forces, you know, continued to, to die. we had us losses as well. i want to mention at that the african government was still fractious and corrupt, and the taliban and challenge. safe haven and pakistan are put another way and paraphrasing your own words from your opening statement. if after 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars and support equipment and training, there's not enough for the afghan government or the can't security forces to become

more resilient or self sustaining. 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 an exquisite piece of intelligence or some brilliant analysis to read, to conclude that if you radically changed and already bad status quo as you by removing us and nato forces by ending enablers and arrow 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 the ship has sailed. ok, can i know a lot of time has been spent on justifying the withdraw. we're not debating the withdraw. what i'm arguing is we had a terrible status quo, as is by your own admission. the african government, even after billions of dollars and 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 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 the small afghan outpost to, to actually getting them into court. and we were seeing african outpost begin to court. they were, they weren't the topic now. we're surround, they went from surrounding the small provisional provincial capital to surrounding major cities with 5 to 8000 taliban fighters. this is weeks before, by the way, this is 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 there were methodically and carefully splintering the skarasettic remains of any sort of resistance which before the fall of couple you can see the taliban was on the verge, was headed towards doing something they hadn't done before. they were going to

isolate cobble from the north, cutting off all their supply routes. so we knew before we before that we were headed for taliban control, the north, all the traditional routes of taliban encroachment and cobble were nearly sealed, the south and the east. cobb faced the prospect of no fuel. the african government faced the prospect of being unable to mount any viable opposition and sustained defense. what did we think was going to happen? all of those things were in place at the time. and i, the most concerning part of it is that if we didn't have an analysis that looked at all this, this isn't a failure of intelligence is a failure of policy and planning. we have the wrong people analyzing this. someone didn't see this either. someone didn't see this, someone didn't want to see this because we to stablish 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 $911.00. the fact that matter is where it leaves us. now, on top of all,

the 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 box which botch withdrawal. what they see is and competence that they think that might be able to exploit, may lead to miscalculation. i think the europeans are allies who have 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 an india and i know that was announcement today to be a meeting of the quad fairly soon, which is a good development accepted in the pacific region of your india. you're looking at this and saying if the united states allowed pakistan to unravel their standing because the pakistani rolling all this, entering multiple administrations are guilty of ignoring it. the pakistani role and enabling the taliban is ultimately

a victory for those pro taliban hardliners in the pakistan government. they have to be look at this thing. if the united states could have, you know, a 3rd rate power like pakistan unravel. it's aimed. 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 of these factors and conclude that there was a very real possibility of a rep, very rapid collapse. then we've got the wrong people making military and diplomacy, decisions and our government senator happy to respond briefly in the time that we have as you know, from your own expertise and leadership on these matters. there are constant assessments being done and in this particular case, assessments being done of the resilience of african security forces of the afghan

government and different scenarios established from worst case to best case to everything in between. and ultimately, the preponderance of the, of the intelligence and assessments land, someplace in there go, there are always going to be voices and critically important that we listen. all of them who may be talking about exclusively the worst case, some best case, some in between. here's what i can say in this setting, and we can take this up as well and in other settings, back in february, the assessment of the overall assessment of the community was it after a complete u. s. military withdrawl that could potentially in the worst case scenario, lead to the taliban, capturing couple within a year or 2. so that's back in february. and that was more or less where things stood in the winter and into the spring by july. and you're exactly right that the

situation was deteriorated as the taliban continued to make progress on the ground . throughout the summer. in july, the i see 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 that said, we, the intelligence community did not say that the country wide collapse of all meaningful resistance would be likely to occur in a matter of days. and you referenced german mili as i did earlier, nothing that, that he saw 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 because to your point, we collectively over 20 years invested as crowded re, amounts in those security forces in that government. hundreds of millions of

dollars, equipment, training advice support. and based on that, as well as based on what we were looking at real time again, we did not see this collapse in a matter of 11 days, but it is important that we go back and look at all of this. the time has expired. thank you. senator shane. thank you mister chairman and thank you secretary blank and 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 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's 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. i'm her 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 as high the applicants to the united states. and i want to know where that outrage was during the negotiations by the trump administration and former secretary palm pay when they were giving away the rights of women and girls. when secretary, palm pale, came before this committee and blew up 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 recrimination 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 mister 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 her pack or see about who's to blame. there are a lot of people to blame and we all sharing it. now mister secretary is, you know, i, i was one of those who was opposed to are withdrawn 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. 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 center and let me just start by thanking you personally for your leadership for a long time. now, on these issues, both on the s i these 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 is on unlimited girls from advancing women, patient security. and that agenda to ensuring that there's an equal playing field for women and girls made a huge difference. and i have to say over the last 20 years, we have made a difference 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 and opportunity. all of that was as a result of many of the efforts that we made. and that this congress made and, and supported, including with very, very significant assistance. this is, this is hard. i was in capital after the president announced this decision, i met with women leaders from then parliament, n g o. this lawyer, human rights defenders listened. heard from them about their concerns about the future just the past couple of weeks and i was out in doha. and then in ramstein, i talked to young women and girls who we'd evacuated and heard from them both of

their gratitude for having been evacuated, but also their deep concerns. more than deep concerns about the future for the women and girls who remain in that canister. so with that bring mind we have done a few things and this is what 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 taliban. going forward to include the expectation that it will uphold the basic rights of women and girls as well as minorities. and that's visible in the statement that more than a 100 countries aside at our initiative, it's also in a un security council resolution that we initiated and got passed. and i know people say it's, it's a statement or security council resolution doesn't. it doesn't matter. well,

in the case of the security council resolution, just to say one example, 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 establish, it will get any relief just on that along un sanctions or travel restrictions. i think that's pretty clear that 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. we want to make sure that assistance continues to flow. humanitarian assistance, including assistance. this directed at the special needs of women and girls were doing that consistent with our sanctions and were able to do that by working through n jose. and he went agencies, now i, i don't want to sugar coat this because we know that while the taliban sees and

will probably support and protect basic humanitarian assistance through these agencies like for food and medicine, it may be a different story when it comes to things that are direct specifically women and girls. so we're going to be very focused on that and trying to make sure that that assistance can go through that. it's monitored 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 for the next, we will soon appoint my direction senior official responsible for focusing and marshalling all of our efforts on support for women girls and minorities that have canister. and 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 in the,

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 born? and yes, of course. thank you. thank you. sort of the center johnson famous chairman, secretary, if i were just to read your testimony, not having watch 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 was incomplete debacle. and i think what concerns me the most among many things is that detachment from reality. so it's the same now reality for example, on, on the border self inflicted wound. a crisis created by present binds policies that are completely thrown open our borders. and yet demonstration denies that we have a problem at the border. so let me, 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 centered? i believe the equipment provided over the last 20, less than 2015 years was about $80000000000.00 of that equipment that that remains as you know, it was given over the can security forces. and of course some of that is now in the hands of the source i was, i was also struck by your comment that to the test more the even the most pessimistic assessment didn't predict the government would collapse as much as quickly as you did. but you just in your testimony said that the realistic predictions before the complete withdrawal was that it was going to collapse by the end of this year. so the administration continued with their plans and withdraw all of evacuation of surrender. knowing the taliban would be in control of $80000000000.00 worth of sophisticated equipment at the end of that correct. i mean,

did that, did that, that, did that ever? did that discussion ever come up in terms of maybe that wouldn't be a good idea leading all that equipment behind as we bug out of afghanistan. that assessment came in july, much of the equipment. 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 in operable . other, other pieces of equipment will become inoperable because there is 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 our can, a stands neighbors. what we're looking at a form. so we have an oversight letter. we'd like response on that. what's your quick talk about the decision to close down bog? i mean, again, the president says this was, you know, unanimously decided by the, by the military. but isn't it true that the press and 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 military hands, right? it really in the end it was his decision. it wasn't military decision because i'm president makes the strategic decisions when it comes to the actual draw down the retrograde to use the the, the technical language. those were decisions made by his military commanders. he sought their best advice and that was carried out including the timing of the decision to another another, another troubling piece year. just when you said, when the president announced the withdrawal nato, immediately unanimously embraced it. joseph brow. the foreign affairs chief of the european union. his statement on the surrender surrender is that is called a catastrophe. the african people for western values and credibility and for the developing of international relations. the wall street journal summarizes quite nicely and their piece. just the title. how biden broke nato, the chaotic f,

the chaotic afghan will draw his shocked and angered u. s. allies. again, that's, that's detachment from reality. there are near allies on board of this thing. they're not said we're hearing, senator, i went to, to nato. well before the president's decision, along with secretary of defense, austin, and spent the day with all of our nato allies listening to them, their views, their prescriptions, their ideas for what we should do moving forward and f canister. and i shared some of our initial thinking at that point we factored in, everything we heard from allies into our own decision making process when the president, just like you plan for everyone, just like you plan for every continuous, like i got it. if i can, you know it's bureaucratic speak, i have some questions. so again, my concern is dipaq detachment from reality. so as we're, as we surrendered, as we're evacuating, as we're bugging out, we're hearing all these soothing comments from the ministration. this is almost

like a well oiled machine. here we've got, you know, flights just leaving and 124000 people being evacuated. we heard something completely different. so tell me what is wrong about what i had heard for? first of all, prior to the taliban providing perimeter security, there was no security and basically tens of thousands of the f. danny is flooded into the cobble airport, correct? there was for security around the airport establish, but we literally had tens of our legal we, we did, we did not know who these people were. it wasn't like people, we invite the national guard on the order act, control the city. we control the airport, sorry. but again, so we had tens of thousands of people in campbell airport. the reports we are getting on the ground is many didn't have had no form of id whatsoever. when i went to fort mccoy, i asked grant in general again, although every contingency plan for asked.