4,000 american passport holders and their families have been evacuated from the country. but it s hard to put that number in context. one of the biggest headlines is that it is our expectation that those who have fought alongside the u.s. are still able to get to the airport. we shall see. we ll have more with the lead with jake tapper right now. welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. and we start with breaking news in our world lead. any minute we expect president biden to speak at the white house. he will talk about his decision to stick with the august 31st deadline to withdraw all u.s. troops from afghanistan. that means exactly one week from today there could be no u.s. forces in afghanistan for the first time in 20 years. moments ago cnn learned that the first u.s. troops have already started leaving the country. but there are caveats to this pledge. white house press secretary jen psaki just said that president
Nationals, including the special immigrant visa applicants. they re worried about a mass exodus of afghans with skills and education. they ve even blocked the roads to the airport to afghans. how risky is it for these afghans for merely just trying to get to the airport? it s incredibly risky, jake. i ve been in contact with several of them myself. and right now several of them are waiting at the airport gates, waiting for them to be opened. they need to know which specific gates to go to. there is no information that s forthcoming. it s a really bad situation for them. while inside the airport, everything is running fairly efficiently, outside the airport for these people, the situation is still chaotic. susan, as a political matter, i don t know if you ve noticed, but the twitter feed of the white house chief of staff ron klain is full of retweets from liberal activists and liberal journalists attacking the news
Into the city of kabul and providing safe corridors so people can travel to the airport more easily or the decision to leave august 31st. so many of these decisions are driven by the desire to not have one more service member be killed in afghanistan. they are very worried about a terrorist threat there, as somebody on the ground there, how real and credible does a terrorist attack seem as a possibility? reporter: well, judging by the attitudes struck by military personnel here, they re taking it extremely seriously. they don t feel particularly safe. they are anxious that as the numbers draw down that they become a better target of opportunity as it were. there have been inevitably secret pinprick missions out to go and rescue people who are stuck in tricky locations. but the idea of sending large
Constant communication with taliban officials in kabul and around kabul to try and ease the pathway for individuals, both mesh americans and afghans with special immigrant visas to get to the airport. there is every reason to believe that that coordination would cease to exist post-august 31st. there is also the terror threat. a very real, very acute threat, they believe, will come to pass if they stay longer from groups like isis-k who they believe are a very real threat at the moment and a very real threat for u.s. personnel. phil mattingly at the white house, thanks so much. today the pentagon reported a massive increase in pace of evacuations in kabul. evacuating 21,600 people in the last 24 hours. since august 14th, more than 58,000 individuals have been evacuated by the u.s., by u.s. allies, and by private citizens. moments ago the biden administration confirmed that that number includes more than
4,000 american passport holders and their families. those numbers are obviously a testament to the hardworking men and women of the u.s. military and our allies. cnn s sam kiley reports from inside the kabul airport about those lucky enough to get out and about those still desperately hoping they can. reporter: afghans have been banned from fleeing their country on evacuation flights. a taliban spokesman said, the road that ends at the kabul airport has been blocked. foreigners can go through it but afghans are not allowed to take the road. this sudden announcement means that thousands of people who ve worked for the international coalition and others who fear persecution under the extremist movement are now trapped. and these evacuees may be among the last flown to safety. the taliban insists that there s no need to fear them. the spokesman went on, afghans are not allowed because the crowd in there would grow even bigger and it increases the risk of afghans losing their lives in