Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) questioned U.S. Department of Defense Under Secretary for Defense Policy Colin Kahl on allegations that the Biden administration failed to properly vet hundreds of thousands of Afghan evacuees during the fall of Kabul. Reading from an email shared with him by an American official present during the evacuation, Senator Hawley questioned Under Secretary Kahl on Biden administration directives to prioritize filling planes over vetting evacuees and to “err on the side of excess.”
“What I’m driving at is, we know that we’ve got major problems of vetting of the people who were brought to this country, who were evacuated and brought to this country,” said Senator Hawley. “So, you testified in September that those evacuated, about 6,000 American citizens, you testified in September that the SIVs were about 1,200 to 1,300, that leaves about 116,700 people, based on the 124,000 neo-number that you’ve been offering, 116,700 who were not citizens, who were not SIVs, and we just don’t know much about who were those people?”
NEWS: This email was shared w/ me by an American official present jn Afghanistan during the evacuation who was shocked by Administration’s failure to vet Afghans before they were evacuated. Email details orders from Joe Biden to fill up the planes – even without vetting pic.twitter.com/LJq0dHlcm0
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 26, 2021