security peiter zatko, alleging the social media giant s leadership misled its own board, and government regulators about security vulnerabilities that could potentially open the door for foreign spying, hacking and disinformation campaigns. those are stunning, serious claims sent to congress and several federal agencies last month. our very own cnn correspondent donie o sullivan sat down with him to talk about this. here s the story. reporter: ready? yes. reporter: why are you coming forward? all my life i ve been about finding places where i can go, and make a difference. reporter: this is peiter zatko, until january of this year he was head of security at twitter, but now he s a whistle-blower, and he says twitter security problems are so grave, they are a risk to national security and democracy. twitter is a critical resource to the entire world. i think it is an extremely important platform. reporter: he handed over information about the company to various
we got a lot of people out, but it was the vast majority of the people that we made that promise to about the special immigrant visa, they are still left behind, still there, and it is becoming only increasingly challenging to get them out, and frankly it is only getting more dangerous for them. now it is not just the taliban that is searching for them, it is nature that is coming after them. there is a famine. they are going into incredibly harsh conditions and if the u.s. continues at the rate of processing special immigrant visa applications, it is going to take 18 years to get through that backlog. that s just not going to be acceptable. and that s why we re calling on the biden administration and congress to take two actions, each of them independently, to help solve this. congress needs to pass the afghan adjustment act and president biden can take action similar to what we re doing with ukrainian refugees to bring afghans to this country, give them parole, and get them on a path
junior person, to the most senior person, we were telling these people we have your back. we will stand beside you when your service is done, and it is time for you to take yourself and your family to the united states. we will be there for you, and it turns out that was a complete and total lie and that s getting at the root of the damage, of the moral injury that so many veterans are facing today. i m sure this is another number that has been striking to me from your survey, your group estimates that 96% of the special immigrant visa applicants, afghans who served alongside u.s. forces there in iraq, have been left behind. of 81,000 visa applications pending as of a year ago, 78,000 remain in that country. has the biden administration, has congress, has the military failed those afghans? absolutely. there is no other way to look at it. we can talk about the number of people that the u.s. did get out during the evacuation, but the stat you showed is getting at the root of it.
that s once they get here, though. what needs to be done now to address this 96%? this vast majority, by the way, i ve been working to get a family out myself and running into the various brick walls one does, how can that be changed? the fastest way is for the president it take action. he can do this. there is something called the uniting for ukraine program that the president stood up, that the government is executing, that has gotten out 100,000 ukrainians from a war zone, we can do the same thing for afghanistan. we can get them out, and also take concrete steps to change the way we re processing afghans. we need more opportunities for afghans to connect with u.s. consular services so their applications can be processed. we need more lilly pads so we can get afghans out of the country, so they can be processed somewhere safely and need to keep talking about this and raising awareness about all the programs that exist for americans to support all of this at the same time. they nee
there are lessons here that we have to learn and we will learn even as our work continues to have ways to make the program run more efficiency and effectively, and one more note on the sivs. i want to thank the many veterans of the fwhar afghanistan who are working individually or through the veteran service organizations to help the afghans who helped them. the state department officials conferred with the veteran groups throughout the evacuation operation. i spoke with several of them along with denis mcdonough the secretary of veterans affairs who are using their voices we have been listening to secretary of state tony blinken of processing afghans and let s bring in honor recipient jack