learning according to defense officials that there were cases where the taliban were not only allowing americans through their checkpoints that were surrounding kabul airport, but they were actually, in effect, processing americans as they were coming through. they had copies of passes that americans would bring to these checkpoints, that the u.s. state department had provided to the taliban, and they had names of people that were coming through. once the americans would get to the checkpoint, the taliban would check them against the list and then in some cases they would clear the road. they would actually provide them safe passage from the checkpoint to the gate. that was an issue for many days when there were large crowds around some of those gates, making it potentially unsafe for people to pass through. in some cases defense officials told us, they even carried the americans' bags to the airport. in addition to that, we heard during one of the briefings from general frank mckenzie that there were cases where the taliban had actually thwarted