there. as you see, a live picture there of the airport, i can sort of bring you up to speed on the state of play of evacuations. this explosion has happened as the window of evacuations is closing rapidly. the pentagon had already acknowledged that as we reached this august 31st deadline, space available space will be reserved for troops to make sure they are safely out of country by august 31st. we heard from the state department yesterday there are roughly 1,500 americans believed to be remaining in afghanistan. we heard secretary blinken say that the state department has contacts for about 500 of those americans, that they are actively reaching out to them, trying to bring them safely to the airport. there are believed to be roughly 1,000 americans for whom the administration is frantically trying to contact. there are outside estimates that there are some 250,000 afghans who have worked alongside the u.s. mission over the last 20 years who would be eligible for the expedited visa
geoff, from the white house perspective here, obviously, we talked earlier about the enormous success of this air lift over the last couple of days, but also the president and some of his democratic allies have talked about the fact that they knew this was going to be messy. there s no good way to end a war and to get everyone out. he has taken a ton of flack in the press, from republicans, from some democrats, for the nature of this. how does the white house they put the president out there a little bit. one short news conference. he has done one full-length interview about afghanistan. how do they feel they are shaping the way that americans think about this withdrawal and the possibility that this could get ugly, that it could remain it s a war. like a real flesh and blood war until the bitter end. and there are a range of unintended consequences when you try to wind down a 20-year war. it s a great question that you ask. the white house would make the
of the taliban. it is entirely in their interest to disrupt this as much as they can. they know there s a deadline. the taliban wants them out. the u.s. and president has said they will stay longer if there are interruptions. this is clearly an interruption in evacuations. and because of the security threat, he may end up deciding that they cannot extend, and that would be something that they might find completely credible. of course, this would deny the administration its process and hope to get those remaining 1,000 americans out that they ve been trying to track down. there s 1,500, but 500 they ve identified and been in touch with. there are 1,000 others that secretary blinken said they want to get out. after that, the expanded group of afghans who are at risk. only yesterday secretary blinken told us at a news conference
case that they have tried to manage the expectations of americans, both from national security council, you had jake sullivan making clear to the american people that there exists this grave threat, this real risk, this real, palpable risk for americans, afghan allies and certainly u.s. troops and coalition forces. and so one of the things that i got a text from a white house official saying that the president has been consistent all along in saying that when you try to draw down a war and get troops out, certainly in this case americans and afghan allies out, that speed is security. that s one of the reasons that leading up to today, this past week, where the white house would say every day the number was exponen tichlt ally higher than it was the before when talking about the number of folks who have been air lifted out. they touted the turnaround from what had been a chaotic start and now you have 100,000 people
americans and afghans out of the country. we re going to pivot to that part of the story and bring in gabe gutierrez. he is at the dulles center where thousands of evacuees have been sheltering. how concerned are they about the possibility of this air lift continuing and what else are they telling you? garrett, they re extremely concerned and worried within the past few minutes. we spoke with a man, ahmad, who we have been speaking with. he found an organization called rising peace. he has been trying to desperately help evacuate, giving guidance, directions, trying to help get people out of afghanistan. he says he has been able to get out 68 people including 17 immediate family members. we just texted with him a few