0 during this process, the views of all of the joint chiefs of staff, all of us, the centcom commander, general mckenzie, general miller, and myself were all given serious consideration by the administration. we provided a broad range of options and our assessment of their potential outcomes. we couched that in cost, benefit, risk-to-force, risk-to-mission. all of that was evaluated against the national security objectives of the united states. on 14 april, the president of the united states, president biden, announced his decision, and the u.s. military received a change of mission, to retrograde all u.s. military forces, maintain a small contingency force of 6 to 700 to protect the embassy in kabul, until the department of state could coordinate contractor security support, and also to assist turkey to maintain the hamid karzai international airport and to transition the u.s. mission to over the horizon counterterrorism sport and security force systems. it is clear, it is obvious to
and they were very nice people, but they were promised that these were people that helped america in afghanistan. we don t know for sure all those folks are right now. so, what do you know about that? when are we going to start this process where we know these are the people that are on the battlefield with our troops and their families? first of all there is some processing going on every one of these individuals, in fact, in the first wave, there was a report that 44 people out of the first wave of several thousand were immediately sent back out of the country because we had intelligence that these were not good actors and had no involvement with u.s. military forces. we have got a pretty good handle on who did help the united states. some of them went through the siv process but others have people who are willing to stand up and say this person was helpful to our unit in the following manner. so we have got to put an emphasis on that. we have got treat every one of these people th
afghanistan, really trying to highlight that despite the fact that the end days were very messy in that country the bigger picture is that the country is now on a path where we are not engrained in war in that country. kylie, once again secretary blinken was unable to give specific numbers when it comes to the special immigrant visa applications. isn t that a tangible number? why don t they know exactly how many sivs there are that still need and want to come here? yeah, i mean the secretary was clear in saying the state department is working on it but fundamentally, no, they didn t give an answer in terms of how many of those afghans that have come to the united states were already in the siv process, how many of those special immigrant visa applicants, those are afghans that worked alongside the u.s. over the last 20 years, are still in afghanistan and trying to get out. he didn t have those answers on hand because, frankly, those numbers are in the thousands and the department i
refugee that you have received so far, only 1,000 at that point, do we know they have some form of i.d. we didn t. we re hearing all these assurances that we are getting biometricly screened. a 14-step plan. i asked the head of northern command at fort mccoy. describe the steps to me. what do we screen them against? our isis and al qaeda terrorists, have we biometricly screened them in the past that we can compare them to a database? what is the 14-step process and detail. not just 14 steps. tell me, describe to us in detail how are we keeping this nation safe from such a chaotic situation? so senator the 14-step process refers to specifically to the special immigrant visa applicants. how about for the other
we don t have those numbers yet. as we moved to evacuate people a number of them are at transit points around the world. tens of thousands? realistically two things. one, we talked about this a little bit earlier but of the applicants in the program, and as i said we inherited about 18,000. about half of those. this remains the case now, are at a point where it is before the chief of mission has given his or her approval they are in fact eligible for the program. we focused on the i was looking for a number given the fact the siv process was so slow and not undertaken during the trump years in is significant way you sped it up. that s great. you knew no way you would get all these people out in time. given the rapid collapse of the afghan security forces and you