now, what s happened in the interim two weeks? besides, you know, afghanistan falling in its entirety to the taliban. back home in rhode island, major thomas schueman has been in repeated contact with zak in afghanistan, trying to do for zak what zak was asking of president biden. take him out of this crisis, somehow help him flee the country. major schueman had helped zak with his visa applications. he made phone calls, he wrote letters on his behalf. he sent zak money so zak could try to get his family from where they were living and where they were then in hiding to kabul. you have to bribe your way through checkpoints in afghanistan, sometimes with a surprisingly large amount of money. it is just a fact of life. ask any journalist who has ever spent time there. you have to bribe your way through check points. it s just the way things work. knowing this, major schueman sent money to zak to try to help facilitate him and his family getting across the country,
effort by a few individuals they won t be executed by the taliban. that s all that matters right now. he is with the marines. that post was from marine officer thomas schueman sharing the good news today that his former afghan interpreter, zak, had made it to kabul airport. a few hours later we got this picture with the caption wheels up. it was not easy. zak waited six years for this moment since he first applied for a visa to get out. from rhode island from a world away from afghanistan, officer schueman made it his mission to help him out. joining us now is thomas schueman. major, thank you for being with us tonight. i really appreciate this on what is kind of a huge day. thank you, ma am. thanks for having me. first let me ask if i screwed anything up in trying to describe the story and what you ve been through thus far, and also if you can bring us more up to date if you know of anything further about what s happened to zak and his family now? sure.
identify the exact ramp number in kabul from your kitchen table in rhode island. this is how veterans back home are trying to get their interpreters out. this is not how this was supposed to go, right? this is not the might of the u.s. government. this is not the promise we made to the people like zak. it is not how we were supposed to be bringing him home. getting this wrong doesn t mean, oh, they ll hop the next flight out. the window is closing. getting this wrong means these people will get killed. and so you just keep doing whatever you can. and so today back at it. major schueman started this text chain with zak and with an air force major at the airport. a u.s. air force major. major schueman again trying to play the middle man and remotely put these two together from the other side of the world. it s incredible to see these screen shots. you see the air force captain trying to get zak to spot him in the chaos. this is the u.s. air force guy explaining what zak should be looking
there are so many close calls and so many moments where we thought maybe we d contacted the right person, maybe we had the right solution to this, and it was a series of tragic events that just continued to unfold. so many close calls. it was a very harrowing experience over the last month or two. obviously the system that was set up within the u.s. government, the special immigrant visa specifically for men like zak, people who had provided this service to our country, had been promised that they would be given safe passage to be here in this country for us to pay them back for what they did, that system was literally set up for somebody like him, and yet for all intents and purposes, it did not work for him until this series of hail marys as you describe it at the very end.
citizens. now it is your time, our american friends, our american partners time, to help us and get us out of this crisis because the enemy are looking for the people who worked with american and who worked for the american mission, and to find them and kill them and kill their family. we cannot stay. yesterday one of our former interpreters in herat province, the taliban attacked, killed him. also in the future, maybe they target us and kill us. now please, president, it s your time to help us and take us out of this crisis. zak, working as an afghan interpreter for u.s. forces in afghanistan, his friend, major thomas schueman, both of them here on this show together two weeks ago today.