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 recognize we needed to withdrawal and the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we talked about it, but i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. one of those reasons was 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 never fin

finished afghanistan. a mistake by the bush administration. it doesn't negate the information that was made available to you about the strength of the afghan security forces and the ghani administration's will to stick with it in afghanistan. i think many of us are interested in knowing how intelligence got that so wrong. 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. considering the hand 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 die luged. can you share with us the process that you are using in order to filter information about americans that are still in afghanistan who wanted 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 we can try and get these people out of afghanistan? >> thank you, senator. as i noted, we have established a task force focused entirely on

relocation to help those that wish to leave afghanistan whether they are any remaining american citizens or siv applicants, or nationals of other countries that want to get out, and that involves case management teams, 500 individuals whose task is to be in constant contact with any remaining americans that wish to leave, and that's what they are doing. and the legislative affairs office is in constant contact with you as well as outside groups who have identified and are trying to help people that seek to leave. this 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

the efforts and this information. it insures when you send us this information, we put it into our database, if it's not already there, and we make sure we are able to track it and make sure we are able to coordinate with you, and i recognize that especially in the early going during the evacuation itself, some of the feedback was lacking. we were trying to do all of this in real time making sure we took in the information you were providing and acting on, and in some cases we did not get back to people to say this is what we have done, and we are working to get back to everybody, and we have 26,000 inqueries in congress -- >> we still have the categories of reporters that work for us still in afghanistan, and we have women, officials that were officials in afghanistan that are at risk, and we have ngos

that worked with us in afghanistan, and they are employees that are at risk. you are saying we still have an opportunity to work with you to get that information to the sources that you are using to try and arrange for their exit from afghanistan? >> absolutely. we very much invite that and we want to make sure we have best as possible a unified coordinated list so that we know what everyone is working on and we can track and we can help or take on depending on the -- >> can i get your best guess on the numbers? at one point when we first started we thought there would be somewhere around a little under $100,000 that wanted to leave, and obviously that number was low, and we evacuated over 124,000. do we know how much u.s. citizens that want to exit today, how many are in siv

status and how many afghans are at risk that we want to help? >> the number is about 100 of u.s. citizens that want to leave. it's hard to give a real time number at any given moment because it's very fluid, by which i mean this. some people -- we're in direct contact with this group. some for very understandable reasons want to change their mind 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, somebody who would not identify themselves before. as you all 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. >> do you have the numbers for

the siv? >> the siv numbers, that's what we are tabulating right now, because we want to account for everybody, and some are in other countries and some are in the united states and we are putting those numbers together to determine -- the overwhelming majority of afghans thanks to our evacuation efforts, they were afghans at risk, and some will be in other categories, and we are breaking down all of those numbers and should have a breakdown in the next couple of weeks. >> thank you, and look forward to seeing that. senator rubio? >> thank you. secretary, even the most pessimistic assessment, i back that out by saying you cite general milley that said there

was no indication there would be a collapse of afghan army and government. i am now the vice chair of intelligence and i have been tracking this very closely. just going back to the beginning of this year, i can just obviously can't quote the titles of the pieces, but there are numerous pieces that would be categorized as it's going to hit the fan. let's put that aside. any analysis of those pieces would lead anybody to that conclusion, and we had every reason to believe and plan for the rapid collapse of the afghan military and government. by all admissions, we had a bad status quo in afghanistan, and we had a small footprint and a strong commitment to air support, and that sustained the afghan's security forces to resist the afghanistan, and they were suffering 10,000 casualties a year, and the taliban was

suffering casualties, too, but they enjoyed a safe haven in pakistan. they were able to go there to rest, train, recruit. so summer, even before the withdrawal we had a terrible status quo. the security forces, a small number of u.s. forces continued to die. we had u.s. losses as well. i want to mention that. the afghan government was still corrupt and the taliban had an unchallenged safe haven in pakistan, and if after 20 years and hundreds of billions of support and equipment and training there was not enough for the afghan government or security forces to become more resilient or self sustaining, and what did we think was going to happen when that terrible status quo was changed? it didn't take piece of

analysis, by removing air support, the status quo was going to collapse in favor of the taliban. this is not an argument in favor of staying, and we are not debating with withdrawal, but we had a terrible status quo, and the afghan government even after $20 billion, we should know as we begin the drawdown support we were going to see the potential for a collapse. that's what all the pieces pointed to as well. it's concerning nobody saw all of this and concluded 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 air strikes, the taliban began to maneuver going from intimidating the small afghan

out posts to getting them into quitting. we were seeing afghan out posts beginning to quit. they went from surrounding the small -- this is not the same time on july 8th when president biden was giving the nigh kwraef predictions. you could see they were splintering the remains of any sort of resistance. weeks before the fall of kabul, you could see the taliban was on the verge and headed towards something they had not done before, isolate kabul from the north and cutting off all supply routes. we knew weeks before that we were headed for a taliban-control of the north, and all of the traditional routes of taliban encroachment on kabul were sealed from the south and east, and kabul faced

the prospect of no fuel and the afghan government faced the prospect of no viable defense. what did we think was going to happen? all of those things were in place at the time. the most concerning part of it is if we did not have an analysis that looks at all this this was not a failure of intelligence but a failure of policy and planning. we have the long people planning and analyzing this. either somebody didn't see it or want to see it, and we established we could be out by september 11th, so we could have a ceremony showing that we pulled out of afghanistan on 9/11, and from a geopolitical perspective, this is not a good place. china, russia, iran, they look at the botched withdrawal, and it's incompetent they see and i

think our allies, they are now number one, have to be wondering about our reliability, the credibility of our defense agreements with them, and they also have to be really, really upset at the prospect of a massive refugee crisis landing right on their borders here soon. india, and i know there was an announcement today there will be a meeting of the quad, and if you are india, you are looking at this and saying if the united states allowed pakistan to unravel their standing, because the pakistani role in all of this, and multiple administrations are guilty of ignoring it, and this is a victory for the taliban hardliners and they have to be looking at this and saying if the united states could have a third-rate power like pakistan unravel it's aims, what chance to do have of confronting china. i think this leaves us in a terrible situation.

i don't know how it's possible. if, in fact, the people in charge of our foreign policy did not see the factors, and conclude there was a possibility of a rapid collapse, then we have the wrong people making military and diplomacy decisions in our government. >> senator, i am 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 afghan security forces and of the afghan government and different scenarios established from worse case to best case and everything in between. ultimately the preponderance of the intelligence and assessments land someplace, and they are always going to be voices and

it's critically important that we listen to all of them who may be talking about exclusively the worst case, some the best case, and some in between. here's what i can say in this setting. we can take this up as well in other settings. back in february, the assessment of the overall assessment 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. 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 are exactly right, that the situation was deteriorating as the taliban continued to make progress on the ground throughout the summer. in july, the ic indicated 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 the country-wide collapse of all meaningful resistance would be likely to occur in a number of days, and you referenced jenle milley earlier, nothing that i saw or that we saw suggested that this government or security force would collapse in a matter of 11 days. you are right, and i think we need to look back at all of this, because to your point we collectively over 20 years invested extraordinary amounts in 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 realtime, 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 this. >> time has expired. >> thank you. >> senator sidney. >> thank you, mr. chairman and secretary blinken for appearing before the committee today. i appreciate and share the frustration of my colleagues over the challenges of the evacuation, and over the situation of special immigrant visa applicants and the taliban's treatment of women and girls and other minorities, and i also agree with your assessment and that has been given by several others of that where we were when we got to the evacuation, was because of the failed republican and democratic administrations. starting with senator mccain, i and others 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. 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. 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's 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 that 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 that remain in the country and those

minorities. mr. secretary, that's where i am 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 is to blame. there are a lot of people to blame, and we all share in it. now, mr. secretary, as you know, i was one of those who was opposed to our withdrawing from afghanistan, and i will not revisit that and a lot of my concerns were around the rights of women and girls if afghanistan fell into the hands of the taliban. i want to ask you now, and you have 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 are trying to rally the

international community behind the effort? >> yes, and thank you, senator. let me just start by thanking you personally for your leadership for a long time now on these issues, both on the sivs, and the work that we have actually been able to do to try and improve the program, but more work needs to be done as well as, of course, on women and girls. from, you know, advancing women's peace and security, that agenda, to ensuring there's an equal playing field for women and girl, you made a huge difference. i have to say over the last 20 years, we have made a big difference collectively in afghanistan, and possibly the biggest difference we made was for women and girls. access to education, and access to health care, and 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 supported, including with very, very significant assistance. this is -- this is hard. i was in kabul after the president announced his decision. i met with women leaders from the then parliament, ngos and lawyers and human rights defenders and listened to them about their concern for the future, and in the past week i was in doha, i talked to young women that needed evacuated, and heard from them their gratitude for being evacuated and their deep concerns about the future for the women and girls who remain in afghanistan. so with that in mind, we have

done a few things and this is what we want to work closely with you and with every member. one, we have worked to rally 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. that's visible in the statement that more than 100 countries have signed on our initiative, and it's a security counsel resolution that we initiated and got passed. i know people say a security counsel resolution doesn't matter, well, to cite one example, there are significant sanctions from the united nations on the taliban, and 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, i think that's pretty clear that won't happen. that's just one point of leverage. we have been working to make sure the international community speaks with one voice and acts together including on this, and that's one. second, we want to make sure that assistance continues to flow. humanitarian assistance, including assistance to the special needs of women and girls, and we are able to do that by working through ngos and the u.n. agencies. i don't want to sugar coat this, because we know that while the taliban seeks and will probably support and protect basic humanitarian assistance through the agencies like for food and medicine, it may be a different story when it comes to things that are directed specifically to women and girls so we will be

very focused on that and make sure that assistance can go through and that it's monitored effectively, including by the agencies doing it. i spent sometime talking to the head of the united nations's effort on this, in terms of having a clear monitoring mechanism on this and to carry that forward. next, we will soon appoint at my direction a senior official responsible for focussing and marshaling our efforts on support for women, girls and minorities in afghanistan. it's important that we have a focal point in the u.s. government at the state department whose responsibility is to carry forward this agenda in the weeks and months ahead. >> thank you very much. i am out of time, but can you share with us who that official is as soon as they are appointed? >> yes. >> thank you. >> senator johnson. >> 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 was a complete debacle. i think what concerns me the most among many things is that detachment from reality, and it's the same amount of reality, for example, on the border, a self-inflicted wound, a crisis made by president biden's policies that have completely thrown over our borders and the administration denies we have a problem at the border. i have got a number of questions. first of all, approximately what is the dollar value of the equipment that has been left behind that now the taliban controls? what is the dollar amount of that? >> senator, i believe the equipment provided over the last 20 -- well, 15 years was about $80 billion. of that equipment that remains, as you know, it was given to the

afghan security forces and some of that is in the hands of the taliban. >> i was also struck by your comment in your testimony that even the most pessimistic assessment didn't predict the government would collapse as quick as it did, but you just in your testimony said the list of predictions before the complete withdrawal said it was going to collapse by the end of this year. the administration continued with their plans of withdrawal, of evacuation of surrender, knowing that the taliban would be in control of $80 billion worth of sophisticated equipment at the end of that, correct? 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? >> that assessment came in july. much of the equipment -- again, i will defer to my colleagues at

the pentagon who are more expert in this than i am, and much of the equipment was made inoperable, and many of the pieces will become inoperable, because there's no ability on the part of the taliban to maintain it, and what we are looking at -- >> okay, okay, so we would like a response on that. let's talk about the decision to close down bagram. the president said this was unanimously decided by the military, but isn't it true that the president decided what the troop level would be, a minimal troop level, and the president decided we would keep the embassy open and he forced the military's ends, right? in the end it was his decision and not the military's decision to close bagram? >> it's the president's

decision, and those were decisions made by military commanders and he sought their best advice and that's what was carried out. >> another troubling piece of your testimony, you said when the president announced the withdrawal nato immediately unanimously embraced it. joseph borel, the foreign affairs chief of the european union, his statement on the surrender is that it's, quote, a catastrophe for the afghan people for western values and the credibility and developing of international relations. "the wall street journal" says how biden broke nato, and the chaotic afghan withdrawal shocked and angers u.s. allies. that's detachment from reality that our nato allies are onboard with this thing, because they are not, and that's not what

we're hearing. >> i went to nato and spent the day with all of our nato allies listening to them, their views, their prescriptions and ideas for what we should do moving forward in afghanistan. i shared some of our initial thinking at that point and we factored in everything we heard from our allies into the -- >> just like you plan for every contingency, i got it. >> if i could continue? >> it's bureaucratic speech. i have some questions. my concern is the detachment from reality, so as we are surrendering and evacuating and bugging out, we're hearing all these soothing comments from the administration, this is almost like a well-oiled machine here, we have flights just leaving and 124,000 people being evacuated, and we hearing is completely different. tell me what is wrong with what

i heard. prior to the taliban taking over security, there was no security, and tens of thousands of afghans pour into the airport, right? we did not know who these people were? it was not people invited in and special visa holders -- >> we controlled the airport. >> we had tens of thousands of people in kabul airport. the reports we were getting on the ground were many did not have a form of id whatsoever. when i went to fort mccoy, i asked the commanding general, when did you first find out your mission would be an intake facility for the afghan refugees, and he said ten days ago. i asked, do we know every

refugee we received so far, do we know they have some form of i.d., and we didn't. we heard all of these assurances that we are getting biometrically screened, a 14-step plan. i asked for them to describe the steps? what do we screen them against? isis terrorists, al qaeda terrors, what is that process, not just the steps, but describe to us in detail how are we keeping this nation safe from such a chaotic situation? >> senator, the 14-step process refers to specifically to the special immigrant visa applicants, and there's a lengthy -- >> what about for the other 124,000 people? >> senator, a couple things, we

arranged, as you know, transit countries, so that any afghan coming out of afghanistan would initially go to a transit country where we could initiate the screening, the vetting, the background checks. biometric, biographic and other information that we have. then, as people were cleared in the transit points, they come to the united states, and they are not being resettled immediately, and once they land at dulles or in philadelphia, they are then being sent to military bases where the checks continue and are completed. >> but what checks? we need specifically what kind of checks -- >> the senator's time has expired, and i am sure you can follow-up with the rest of your

questions. senator mendez? >> we have lots of opportunities to look backwards at the 20 years of our engagement in afghanistan and the decisions, but i hoped this committee would rise above the temptations of partisan politics and use this hearing to consider the urging questions before us, and i hope we will get a few minutes to focus on this, mr. secretary. how do we get the remaining american citizens and afghans that served alongside us that worked with us 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 deal with the taliban and what leverage do we have in doing so and making sure humanitarian aid gets into afghanistan? most urgently, how do we support and resettle those afghans to third countries and the smaller population that reached the

united states? i want to start with my thanks to the state department, to the employees in kabul and qatar, and to the many delawarens and americans who i have heard from, former military, folks who served in afghanistan, former diplomats and development professionals eager to help. i look forward to continuing to coordinate with you and agencies of our government, advocacy groups and other partners on resettlement efforts, and i am glad the former governor of delaware stepped up, and i am happy to see the bipartisan national organization cochaired by three former presidents, bush, obama and clinton and dozens and dozens of faith groups and non-profits to welcome afghans to the united states. 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 am interested in how you are 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 were not direct employees. i want to start, if i could, mr. secretary, by asking yes or no questions about three groups other senators mentioned. >> sure. >> there's about 550 employees and family members from voice of america, radio free europe who were not evacuated. is the department prioritizing their evacuation? >> yes. >> and then are partners from the american university of afghanistan being prioritized? >> yes. >> if you would take the four minutes we have left and explore

with me how do we ensure safe passage across land borders, whether into pakistan, safe and regular flights out of afghanistan, and how do we get documents into the hands of those that don't have identity documents, because they destroyed them themselves because of the fear of the taliban, and how do we have the financial support needed for the whole group of refugees after thorough vetting reach the united states? >> those are all very important questions and let me respond briefly and then we can take on the details after this session if need be. first, we need and we have established a clear expectation from the taliban about allowing people to continue to leave the country, to include american

citizens, green card holders, afghans who have -- who are properly documented with a visa, including specifically those that worked in some capacity for the united states. not only do we have that understanding in public statements by the taliban, of course, it's built in to everything we have done with a large coalition of countries in terms of setting an expectation and making very clear that the failure to fulfill that expectation will have significant consequences, which we can get into. secondly, making sure there are 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 do this, what was necessary to make sure that the airport in kabul could continue to function, and ultimately not to have charter flights but then have commercial

flights go in after national efforts, and we handed off a detailed plan that is now being implemented. third, the land crossings. we have worked with pakistan and others to make sure we moved people out of afghanistan, they would facilitate crossing into their countries, and then we have authorities in the necessary places to handle people coming out in that fashion. now to your very important point about documentation, and this is something we could take off-line, we are working on a mechanism and a means by which -- and there are multiple ways of doing this, to make sure people that don't have the necessary documents, for example, a visa, a physical visa to get that to them, and i prefer to go into more detail on that in another setting.

>> understood. if i might just as a closing question, you were asked at the outset, what are the factors deciding the future of the relationship with the taliban, and we're in this difficult situation, and many of us recognize the taliban is a terrorists organization that has done horrific things in the past, and we need to have some working relationship with them to secure the safe passage out of thousands of people that we care deeply about, and dozens of americans did not 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 would be the turning point in which we would make decisions with our allies to take sharper

measures with the taliban? >> simply put, the nature of the relationship the taliban would have with us or most other countries around the world will depend entirely on its conduct and action specifically with regard to freedom and making good of the counterterrorism commitments, and these are things that not only we but countries around the world are looking at, and there's significant leverage that we and other countries go when it comes to things the taliban says it wants but won't get if it does not act in a way that meets these expectations. for example, we talked a little bit about the existing u.n. sanctions on the taliban, and these are significant as well as travel restrictions, and there's now a new security council resolution that we initiated

setting out the expectations the taliban has to do, and travel restrictions and additional sanctions to be imposed. similarly, the foreign reserves of afghanistan are almost you can exclusively frozen here in the united states. over the last 20 years or so the international community provided about 75% of the afghan government's annual operating budget, and that, too, has been frozen. among many things that the taliban says it seeks, both basic legitimacy and basic support, the united states, the international community has a hand on a lot of that, much of

that, most of that. we will have to see going forward what conclusions the taliban draws from that and what it's conduct will be matching these basic expectations we set. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman and mr. secretary for taking time to answering our questions today. i would like to center my comments with mr. rubio and it seemed as the taliban was running the table throughout afghanistan that the prospect of them continuing to run the table by come into kabul was a significant probability that should have been planned for. in your view, mr. secretary, as the taliban abandoned their sympathy and collaboration with groups like al qaeda and the haqqani network? do they continue to have the

same aim? are they of like spirit or has that -- has that relationship been severed? >> the relationship has not been severed and it's a very open question as to whether their views and the relationship has changed in any kind of definitive way. i think it's fair to say two things. one, whatever the taliban's views on al qaeda are, they know the last time they harbored al qaeda, and there was an attack on our land, there was a strong -- isis-k, the other main group, that's a different thing, as you know, because the taliban

and isis-k are sworn enemies. over the last five or six years since the emergence of tpaoeusice k, the fight has been between the taliban and isis-k with the taliban taking most of the territory isis-k sought. >> given that response, i know that briefly the position of the administration and the state department was that the 2001 aumf no longer played a role of significance, but given the developments in afghanistan and the taliban's ongoing collaboration and sympathy with al qaeda and the haqqani network and like-minded groups, is it not appropriate for the state department to revisit your recommendation that we abandon the 2001 aumf? >> i think, senator, we need to look and make sure that we have all the authorities we would

need for any potential contingency including the re-emergence the threat of al qaeda or isis-k, and if we don't have those authorities we should get them, whether that means relooking at the authorizations or writing new ones, which i think would be the most appropriate thing to do if necessary, we need to look at that. >> i appreciate your willingness to change your point of view. nothing wrong with conditions leading to a change of perspective. i thought we should withdrawal from afghanistan some years ago, and the conditions i saw in the ensuing years convinced me i was wrong, and i was one of those that felt that trump was wrong to enter into an agreement to withdrawal, and i thought president biden was wrong to continue with that agreement to withdrawal, and of course, i was

appalled by the disastrous withdrawal process itself. for us, today, however, i would like to focus more on the moral stain of leaving people behind and understand what we can do to make sure that we are not leaving people behind. i understand we are down to a small number of americans, and 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 to return to the united states relative to a citizen? >> senator, our number one priority is american citizens and that long as been the case. in this situation in afghanistan, in this emergency evacuation in afghanistan, we did everything we could, as well, to make sure that legal permanent residence, green card holders, and we don't know at

any given time there are at any -- >> can you make available resources to help them? >> our number one priority is -- >> is there a secondary level of priority for a legal permanent residents -- >> we don't have an exact number -- >> a round number? >> in the thousands. >> pardon? >> in the thousands. >> in the terms of siv applicants, the people that worked with us, how many of them are approximately still in afghanistan that want to come to the united states? >> this is what we are doing an accounting of right now based on two things, based on the pipeline of applicants as it existed before the evacuation, and then looking at those who we were able to evacuate. we don't have those numbers yet because as we moved to evacuate

people a number of them are still at transit points around the world -- >> but it would be tens of thousands? >> realistically, two things, one, we talked about this a little earlier, but of the applicants in the program, the -- as i said, we inherited about 18,000. about half of those -- this remains more or less the case now, are at a point where it's before the chief admission has given his or her approval that they are in fact, eligible for the program. >> i am looking for a number, and i guess the question i was leading to, is given the fact that the siv process was so slow and not undertaken during the trump years in the specific way, you sped it up and that's great although you knew that there was no way you were going to get all these people out in time given the rapid collapse of the afghan security forces, and you said yesterday that you inherited a

date, but, in fact, you didn't inherit the date. the date was may 1st, and you pushed it to august 31st. why didn't you push it to much later so we could process the siv applicants as well as those who had worked for us and not yet applied? i am not sure why a date was 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 worked with us over the years? >> two things, if i may. first, we took some risks in terms of what the taliban would do or not do after may 1st in pushing beyond may 1st. >> it's a risk with other people we took. the risk was on people we care for. >> just to be clear, if i could, the military told us that in

order to do its retrograde, it's drawdown from afghanistan in a safe and ordinarily way, it needed three to four months. that's why we pushed to move beyond may 1st and to get to the end of august, early september. second, august. second, to your point, a good one, our expectation was that beyond august 31st, beyond the military drawdown, the government, the security forces, were going to remain in control of kabul, major cities. our embassy was fully planned to remain up and running. we were leaving about 600 military behind to make sure that we could secure the embassy. so that it could continue to operate. we have robust programming planned to include continuing to bring out anyone who wished the leave. 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. 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 hubrous, believing that we can control things and influence events on the other side of the world. 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 an 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 remark, 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 inside your control and what was outside your control, then to look at the events of the last 30, 40 days with the same lens. what was inside your control, what was outside your control. i think these are yes or no answers. some you covered in your testimony but it's important to get it on the record. if president biden had chosen to breach the agreement that president trump signed with the taliban, would they have restarted attacks? >> yes. >> as you said in your opening testimony, but 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, would they have begun offenses

on these urban centers? >> yes. >> so if the taliban resumed attacks, 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 gotten? >> i think it was the assessment of our leaders not to put a number on it, but significant additional u.s. forces would have been required both to protect ourselves and to prevent the onslaught from the taliban. >> was it 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 plans. >> correct. >> let's talk about the last month. so once the afghan government and military disintegrate all at once, it seems to be there would

be panic amongst the afghan people. could it be expected that troops and diplomats on the ground would have been able to prevent this panic? >> no. >> were 2500 or 5,000 troops to stop the afghan people from rushing to the airport and created this security nightmare, 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 control the airport as we did. they could establish a basic immediate perimeter around the airport as we did, but they couldn't control what happened beyond that perimeter. >> let's talk about that perimeter. others say we should have controlled a bigger perimeter. we should have taken back over parts of kabul to secure the passage of americans and afghans to the airport. let's say you had quadrupled the number of troops there. say you had 10,000 troops there.

without the afghan military or a functioning government, would that have been enough to retake kabul to secure the passage of everyone to the airport? >> i really defer to my colleagues at the pentagon, but i can safely say it would have taken a substantial number of forces to try to retake the city or establish a much broader 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 collapsed as 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. >> 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. 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 the malady that we suffered for the last 20 years, this idea that it was just a bad plan. right? it was just a failure of execution as to why we couldn't succeed in iraq and afghanistan. it's plaguing us again today. right now, we're having a conversation as if we just had a better plan, 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 better execution, we could have avoided this panic and confusion, i think we're just inviting another hack, another afghanistan in the future. finally, mr. secretary, just quickly expand on your point about the message this sends to china. this idea that the chinese would love it if we stayed another ten 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 resources towards fights that we can actually win. >> i think you put it very well. in my assessment, in the assessment of many other, as i said, there's nothing strategic competitors like china, like russia, or adversaries like iran and north korea would like better than for us to have

reupped the war, doubled down on it and remained bogged down in afghanistan for another year, five year, ten years, 20 years, with all of that dedication of resources, all of that energy and focus on that as opposed to the challenges that we have to face today and i might add this committee has done i think a very good job on trying to refocus this on. notably the competition from china. so i think that would have been doubling down on this war after 20 years. after nearly $2 trillion. after 2,461 american lives lost. 20,000 injuries. and not to preserve the status quo that existed before may 1st. that would have been one one thing. but to be in the situation where the war with was restarted, the

taliban attacking our force, attacking our partners and allies, going on an offensive to retake the city, that would have required a doubling down on the war. and the bottom line was 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 reemergence 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 i'm going to change what i was going to talk about based on the last interaction. thank you for being here. i wish general austin were here

because he could answer many of the questions that have just been posed. i have 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 and 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. i hope the lesson we learned here is that this was the right way to leave. i hope the lesson was there was