president obama gets ready to make a huge announcement about afghanistan. the cia s top agent there is no longer under cover. the kabul station chief s name appeared on this list of people who briefed president obama during a surprise trip over the weekend to meet with those troops. it was a washington post reporter who was a student, that caught the error, but not before the white house blasted the list to more than 6,000 media. former cia officer worked as a station chief in africa and the middle east and joins me now. gary, welcome. pleasure to be with you. you not only worked for the cia, you spent a significant amount of time working in afghanistan. we don t know this individual who has been yanked out of kabul. you know, put in hiding presumably perhaps. the white house is declining comment. what would you think is probably happening with this individual right now? well, let me just say first off, it was a mistake, it wasn t malicious. right. unfortunately, these type
these comments about celibacy came on the other end of that attempt to wrap things up. his reservoir of energy is remarkable. he s the energizer bunny of popes. i m going to quote you on that, john allen. reporter: please do. but to come to this point about celibacy, look, brooke, we should say this is absolutely nothing new. anybody who has commented in officialdom on the rule of priests and celibacy will tell you, this is a discipline, not a dogma. that is, it s a tradition, but it s not something that comes from the law of god. in fact, the catholic church already has married priests. there are 22 eastern churches, that is the great catholic church in the ukraine, for example, or the church in egypt, that has married clergy. they re also in the united states, a few hundred priests who came into the catholic church either from the episcopal yan church or lutheran church
president about to walk into the rose garden. reporter: that s right, wolf. we ll hear the president a few moments from now. he is expected to be on time. expected to lay out what will be the final chapter in the war in afghanistan. you laid out the four-structure schedule for the next several years, 9,800 troops, next year half of that, by the end of next year. embassy personnel by the end of 2016. wolf, that is bringing a full stop to the war in afghanistan. and we just heard over my shoulder a few moments ago, a two-minute warning to the president. a couple of things important to point out. officials just wrapped up a conference call with reporters in the last several minutes. and during that conference call, a senior administration official made it very clear that afghan security forces, wolf, will be responsible for the security needs of the afghan people starting next year. that the u.s., as you just said, wolf, will be there for training purposes, and specific counterterrorism
coming to an end at the end of this year. and of course, all of this depends on the next president of afghanistan, hamid karzai the current president said he s not signing that bilateral security agreement. the next president, and there s going to be a run after next month between two men, who indicated they will sign that agreement. but during the conference call, senior administration officials said absent that bsa, that bilateral security agreement, there will be no u.s. forces in afghanistan at the end of this year. so the president going to lay that all out on the table before he goes up to west point tomorrow to put this announcement for afghanistan in a larger foreign policy picture. that speech at the commencement at west point tomorrow morning, wolf. the president will simply make a statement now, jim, he s not going to answer reporters questions, right? reporter: that s right. but i think you can expect several of us to try to ask him some questions before he leaves here
jim acosta in the rose garden. let s check in with nick payton walsh, our senior international correspondent. he s joining us from ukraine right now. but he spent a lot of time in afghanistan. you heard the president, nick. what do you think? reporter: very carefully core yo graphed messaging here, repeating similar comments the other day. this message both says they ll keep 9,800 troops, sense of support for the afghan government, and bringing them out very fast indeed. you have to bear in mind, they have 32,000 troops there right now. just getting them home, dismantling the bases, bringing them back to kabul and bagram, months, possibly year-plus-long process, dwindling down that decade-long war. this is in fact many must say the zero option many talked