>> brennan: we now turn to the growing opioid crisis, and we want to welcome to the program anne milgram, the head of the drug enforcement administration. good morning to you. >> good morning. thank you for having me. >> brennan: why is it so hard to cut off the flow of fentanyl, which is the drug that seems to be fueling these overdoses. >> fentanyl is a different drug threat than we've seen before. it is man made, made of chemicals, and right now those chemicals are largely sourced from china, they're going to the mexican criminal drug cartels that are then mass producing fentanyl. fentanyl, tiny, tiny amounts can be deadly. >> brennan: are people

is iust somg they'redrug, or surprised is mixed into the drugs their seeking? >> the cartels are mass producing these pills in mexico mostly, and they're making them look like they're real oxycodone, percocet, aderol. and so you have a teen on snapchat, an older american looking for a pain medicine they might be able to get cheaper on line, and they're finding these pills -- americans believe they're getting the actual harmaceutical pill. they're not. what they're getting is fentanyl. and that is why we're seeing 100,000 overdose deaths this year, 64,000 of those are attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. >> brennan: president biden signed two executive orders to fight drug trafficking, and it allowed for a crackdown on fentanyl producers, particularly in china. what tools does this give you now? how do you get beijing to

hand over the bad guys? >> there are hundreds of thousands of unregulated chemical companies in china that are sending these drugs, these precursor chemicals that can be made into fentanyl. so we know what they're doing. china knows what they're doing. they need to do more. what the president's executive order does is gives us new tools, particularly around illicit finance. one of the things that drives drug trafficking worldwide is money laundering, takes taking those finances and laundering them. the president set up an organization across government focused on trans national organized crime, that is narcotic trafficking. >> brennan: the social media companies, you have said, are very much a conduit, tiktok, snapchat. >> yes. >> brennan: are people seeking out these drugs intentionally on these

social media platforms? and what are you doing to get the companies to crack down? >> drug traffickers are harnessing social media because it is accessible. they are able to access millions of americans and it is anonymous. they are able to sell these fake pills and to lie on the social media sites. we know every single day that drugs are being sold on snapchat, tiktok, facebook, those social media sites. when you go yart phone, tse traffickers are there, too. they are there and waiting. they want to make it one click to get drugs into people's hands. we know what is happening, and so do the social media companies. in our takedown, 76 of our cases are directly linked to social media websites -- >> brennan: so you're building a case against the social media companies? >> we built a case at this point the criminal networks. we have drawn the line

between the mexico criminal cartels that are making these fake pills and pouring it into the united states. what we're doing is investigating. we want to understand everything about how this is happening. and, of course, the social media companies need to do more. >> brennan: what would you tell parents who are listening at home, terrified at what you're describing, what can they actually do? >> they need to sit and talk to their kids. the researcher is clear, when parents talk to their children, drug use goes down in half. we know there are kids who don't understand these risks. and there are older americans as well. this is a new threat. people shouldn't be expected to know it. we need to help people understand one pill can kill. the only medicine they should take is what is prescribed to them personally and filled at a local pharmacy. and, also, the other piece of this is what we see dealers and drugow is their lacing other drugs with fentanyl, they're lacing

methamphetamine and there was a case with marijuana being laced with fentanyl. no drugs are safe because fentanyl is being put into those drugs because it is highly addictive. >> brennan: but then they're killing their costumers. >> they're killing their costumers. >> brennan: why isn't intervention working? >> it is working in the sense we've taken off 20 million pill, and we estimate four in 10 of those pills are potentially deadly. we have taken off enough lethal doses that are enough to kill every single american. we're working on tracking the overdose deaths and working back to understand the full network, from mexico to main trea street that is causing harm. we have to be targeted at the entire network so that we can take them down. >> brennan: what is the current mexican government doing when you ask them to help you? >> we have to do more than we have ever done before.

and so does mexico and so does china. the administration has a new high-level security dialogue with mexico. our message is that is stan u moreooterican it >>anbut e you do fit into the r now? is stopping the flow of drugs a required step to stop the flow of people as well, if it is the c who are behind both? >> the cartels will do anything to get drugs in in every way you can imagine. yes, we see it coming through the border, through ports, through airplanes, through freight services -- fentanyl, tiny quantities are deadly and extremely potent and addictive. it is not like years' past where someone would have to bring kilos among kilos into the united states, so the threat has changed enormously. >> brennan: thank you for your time.

we'll be back in a moment. huh. is that true? geico's been saving folks money for 85 years? yeah, that's right. wait — so if geico's 85, that makes you — are you asking if i'm 85 years old? i mean sea turtles live to 150, so...nn — i — i was not. do i look 85? what! no! you, you look young, fff...you...you, you look young for...however old you are. geico. saving people money for 85 years.

>> brennan: we learned

last week that more than 60,000 afghans, who had helped the u.s., were left behind, following the chaos of the biden administration's scramble to get americans and those who support us out of afghanistan. re crisis.ban control,se the u.n. predicts that more than one million children under the age of five could die of starvation this winter. we have spoken with u.s. officials about the afghanistan withdrawal and the day the elected president, ashraf ghani, fled the country. but president g ghani has not spoken publicly. and we're hearing for the first time from hamdullah mohib, the national security advisor under former president ashraf ghani. we begin by playing a

clip of the president. >> biden: the afghan president gave up and fled the country. the afghan military collapsed without trying to fight. we gave them every tool they could need. we provided close air support. we gave them every chance to determine their own future. we could not provide them the will to fight for that future. >> brennan: what do you make of that assessment. did you lack the will? >> absolutely not. the afghan people made tremendous sacrifices for afghanistan. it would be a dishonour to take that away. what happened is that the rug was pulled under the afghans' feet. the decision to talk directly and engage the taliban and make a deal with the taliban that didn't include the afghan government was protested by myself in this city about

what was going to happen to our government, what was going to happen to us. >> brennan: the u.s. agreement under the trump administration with the taliban that the biden administration honored? >> in those decisions, that decision to talk directly to the taliban without the presence of the afghan government, and then the full transparency with the afghan government led to the collapse that happened on august 15th. >> brennan: that was the day that the taliban seized control. they were already in the city, and by the end of the day they seized control. did you have any idea that day, when you woke up, you would be fleeing the country? >> no. in fact, my staff contacted me and asked if we should start shreddng sensitive documents. we didn't believe it would be so soon. we thought the taliban at

least two more weeks. we had cities that were still under afghan government's control. but by 4:00:00 a.m. in the morning, we had lost -- >> brennan: you woke up that morning knowing that the taliban is essentially knocking on the door of the capital? >> yes. >> brennan: when you did decide to flee? >> about 2:30 p.m. the news that came in led me to know we have no consolidated source. there was no single power to control it. most of them had abandoned their posts. kabul was a city that was not ready for that kind of fighting. it was a city where i i security forces could do harm, but they weren't able to fight against the taliban in that kind of battle. we saw the police and many

other forces abandoning their posts and not turning up to work that day. but what happened at 2:30 was that i got the news that two helicopters, one that was part of the president's fleet, was hijacked by a rogue element. and then -- >> brennan: a rogue soldier? >> yes. i understood that this is the end, that even the airport is no longer secure for the afghan president or anyone else around, and the fight is now going to be inside the city. and that was the only thing left that the president could do to save lives and to ensure that there was still american troops left to be able to secure -- because they were in the negotiations. it wasn't the afghans that were negotiating anymore. >> brennan: at 2:30, you walk up to president ghani and you say what? >> i tell him it is time to leave, sir. >> brennan: why?

>> because there was no other decision left for him to do. >> brennan: what do you think would have happened if you stayed? >> well, fighting would have ensued. we had two weeks. we could have continued fighting inside kabul, destroy most of the city -- >> brennan: who would have been fighting? you're describing forces melting away. >> the forces that were left. we had to make a decision that was right for afghanistan. >> brennan: what did you take with you on that plane? you know there are allegations of corruption and that money was taken. >> look, those are allegations that people know that no person in their right mind would believe. the decision to leave was a very last-minute decision -- >> brennan: you did not take cash with you? >> absolutely not. >> brennan: what did you take with you? >> we just took ourselves. most of the people on that flight didn't even have a change of clothes.

in pakistan and the emirates -- even for the president we had to buy him clothes. >> brennan: there are reports that you had to fly at low altitude because you were trying to avoid the americans knowing you were fleeing? >> absolutely. >> brennan: why? >> the trust was gone. there was no trust. >> brennan: what did you think the americans were going to do? >> i had asked the americans for something simple the day before. and it was a test to say if this deal doesn't work out, a deal that would have a transfer of possible to the taliban, and if this didn't work, would we be rescued? and the response was non-committal. >> brennan: you asked the united states to help you evacuate -- >> if the deal didn't work, would that be the case? there were intelligence from both afghan sources, the americans, and independent that the plan fo for --

not by the taliban, but they wanted ghani's head. it was embarrassing enough to have lost our country, but we're not going to lose noanother president and be embarrassed and be killed. we tried to see if there was anywhere that the president could go and resist and continue to be in afghanistan, but that was no longer possible. >> brennan: there was no safe place in afghanistan for the president to be? >> absolutely. unless we wanted to see a civil war return. what was being discussed in doha was nothing less than a surrender. why risk the lives of millions of afghans and do exactly the same thing anyway? >> brennan: the argument is had you had a peaceful transfer of power, instead of the taliban taking it by force, we wouldn't have children starving to death in afghanistan because money

would have poured into this new government, even though the taliban was part of it, that international aid organizations would have been able to provide food, oxygen, and hospitals -- >> what is stopping that from hopping now? >> brennan: the united states and the world having sanctions on the taliban. >> well, why? the question is: if we were to give the taliban exactly what they wanted, then, you know, the legitimacy given by the president but for a surrender -- this is not an argument. this doesn't make sense to me. >> brennan: this is what the biden administration would argue, and many afghans, there was a very narrow sort of window of opportunity where in those final weeks president ghani could have negotiated an exit that could have avoided the situation and the chaos that ensued. was there a deal on the table? >> there was no deal on the table. this is an excuse -- >> brennan: this is what secretary blinken said, that it was there, he spoke to

president ghani and he thought he had a deal and the next day the president fled. >> i was on the phone on saturday night, pressing hem to make sure he was ready to agree with the plan, a transfer of power to a new government that would have been led by the taliban, and it include all aspects of afghan society, and he told me on the phone he was prepared to do that. but if the taliban wouldn't go along, he was willing to fight to the death and the very next day he fled. >> i was closely involved in that negotiation. i worked on that peaceful transfer of power. it was not going to happen on august 15th. it was going to happen when we still had multiple provinces under afghan control and we still had a consolidated force. the taliban that day were all over the city. and we didn't have, like i said, a consolidated force to keep the order, but that

basically means a surrender is to the taliban. >> brennan: it has been reported you received a text message from one of the taliban leaders that day on august 15th. what did he propose? >> surrender. he said, you issue a statement of surrender, and then we negotiate. i told him that's not how it works. >> brennan: you know, the biden and trump administration's envoy to the taliban, who was on this show recently, said the u.s. should have pressed harder to make sure through a peaceful transfer of power. he told my colleague that ghani insisted until the very end he would not leave until a successor was selected. what he is describing is delusion. did you ever say to him, mr. president, the taliban is coming to possible whether we like it or not, we have to take a negotiated deal? >> yes. he wanted elections because

he felt that would be the way he hands over power. but he is not wrong to think that. he was being assured in every meeting in every statement that the international community wants to see a democratic afghanistan, a sovereign afghanistan, an of afghanistan that is at peace with itself and its neighbors. so we had four things to look forward to -- >> brennan: the united states says president ghani just wanted to stay in power -- >> this was never clear. there wasn't a u.s. secretary of state, or a national security adviser, that has come to afghanistan and spent a day or two. this is a mission in which we have both shed blood together and made tremendoussaes wo. ndr two, talk with the president and key leaders in afghanistan to say, here is what the

americans want to do. but you are right, we didn't read the writing on the wall. the writing on the wall is that a withdrawal will take place no matter what. we thought that the preservation of the last 20 years, the last two decades, mattered, and that is where we misunderstood. >> brennan: president ghani himself has been sort of described as living in a bubble, reading books on the grounds of the palace while the country is disintegrating. >> i would never believe that just because president ghani read books led to the collapse of the state. that is a lame excuse -- br >> brennan: but the criticism is that he was out of touch with reality, that he was living in a bubble, that there was corruption in the government. you're the national security adviser. did you ever give him the hard news, mr. president, we have to agree to negotiate our exit because the

americans are gone, they're leaving us? >> president ghani received hard news every second of the day. afghanistan was at war. every minute with lost an afghan across the country -- >> brennan: right now, as we talked about, there is no money flowing into afghanistan because the taliban are now running the government. do you think if you had stayed, that it would have made a difference? >> no. if the condition was that a taliban government be in place, there would have been a taliban government in place just two weeks later. >> brennan: so you don't feel a sense of responsibility when you hear about what the u.n. is saying, that this is going to be a bleak winter of starvation? >> absolutely, of course i feel responsible. i feel responsible now, and i felt responsible then. i think what the outcome is unfair to the afghan people. a decision was made to

include and be able to see the taliban in government, right -- br >> brennan: the biden administration agreed to what the trump administration agreed to, which is the taliban coming back into power -- >> when that decision was made, i think it is important to make assumptions about how there would be collaboration with that government in place, and how we're going to deliver aid to people that are in need. >> brennan: what do you think your biggest mistake was? >> we should have understood that the united states has made its decision and would withdraw under any circumstances. and i think that probably is one of the reasons we weren't able to secure another outcome. >> brennan: you felt that you were going to have the united states change its mind based on conditions on the ground? >> no. i felt that our partners,

the united states included, believed in a democratic afghanistan, a place where we were going to preserve the gains of the last 20 years. i thought those gains meant something. >> brennan: you can watch the full interview on "face facethenation.com. we'll be back in a moment.

>> brennan >> brennan: that's it for us today. thank you for watching. and we want to wish those who celebrate it a very merry christmas. until next week, for "face the nation," i'm margaret brennan. joints can be 3-d printed. and there isn't one definition of what well feels like. there are millions. we're using our world to make your world a world of well. ♪♪ it starts with a mother's determination to treat her baby's eczema. and grows into a family business that helps thousands more.

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this is the "cbs overnight news." good evening, and thank you for joining us. tonight, top government officials are warning that the united states is likely to see record numbers of new covid cases and hospitalizations as the highly contagious omicron variant rips across the country. the delta variant still accounts for most new infections, but omicron is now in at least 46 states, plus the district of columbia. fueling the spread, some 38% of americans who still are not fully vaccinated. marcy gonzales leads us off tonight from los angeles international airport where there is a crush o