applicants. there had not been a single si virks interview since march of 2020. on february 4th, one of the first executive orders issued by president biden directed us to immediately review the siv program to identify causes of undo delay and find ways to process siv applications more quickly. this spring, i directed significant additional resources to the program. expanding the team of people in washington processing applications from ten to 50. doubling the number of siv adjudicators. even as many embassy personnel began to return, we sent more consular officers to kabul to process siv applications. as a result of these and other steps including working with congress, especially this
about visa status. senator sullivan and i wrote a letter in mid-august urging expanded eligibility for the siv program. i m interested in how you re working to expand eligiblibility under the existing visa programs to include family members and to support those the u.s. government supported and worked alongside but who we were not direct employees. i want to start if i could mr. secretary by asking question yes or no answers. there was voice of america, radio for liberty who were not evacuated. if the department prioritizing they re evacuation. ? yes. and the department committed to evacuating our parters from ndi. are those also be prioritized. yes, they are. and from our partners from the university of afghanistan as well. yes. so if you could take the four minutes we have left and explore
hearings, i m convinced now more than ever is that we need a 9/11 still commission. there s too much to investigate. if you think about the numbers in congress, it s ten. five in each chamber. the armed services committees, foreign affair, foreign relations pertaining to which ever chamber you re talking about. the homeland security committees. the intelligence committees and the believe it or not, judiciary committees, which have jurisdiction over matters of immigration. this is going to get too unwieldly too quickly. what we need to do now is responsibly investigate everything that went wrong. from the failure of the siv program, which goes back multiple administrations to why did the afghanistan government collapse as quickly as it did given 20 years of training of which i was a part of.
question about visa status. senator sullivan and i wrote a bipartisan letter in mid august urging expanded eligibility for the siv program. i am interested in how you are working to expand eligibility under the existing visa programs to include family members and to support those the u.s. government supported and worked alongside but were not direct employees. i want to start, if i could, mr. secretary, by asking yes or no questions about three groups other senators mentioned. sure. there s about 550 employees and family members from voice of america, radio free europe who were not evacuated. is the department prioritizing their evacuation? yes. and then are partners from the american university of afghanistan being prioritized? yes. if you would take the four minutes we have left and explore
0 for the unity of our country. i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made. as you pointed out, the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan. we all recognize we needed to withdraw, the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we ve talked about it. i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. one of those reasons was we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had a chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country. instead we went into iraq which was not engaged in the 9/11 activities and we never finished afghanistan. a mistake made by the bush administration. we ve already talked about the trump administration and setting a deadline and releasing prisoners and moving forward with the reduction of troops when there was