Regarding the screening of Afghans to be evacuated, Biden's White House seized control of that process from the State Department, but the White House never came up with a plan. They just left everybody hanging.
At-Risk Afghans
In his testimony before the committee, D-MR McKeon explained that, although he was responsible for the State Department’s SIV program, decisions pertaining to who was eligible for evacuation were ceded to President Biden’s NSC.
Nevertheless, Ambassador Dan Smith confirmed that no one “had answered the question of, what is the universe of people, in extremis, in a worst case -scenario, for whom we are going to be responsible in that environment? How many people are we going to take out?”
Outside of Americans, LPRs, and SIV holders, the category of “at-risk Afghans” was never defined by the time NEO operations began. Embassy Kabul staff never received an official definition of “Afghans at risk,” “vulnerable Afghans,” or the criteria for determining Afghans’ eligibility for evacuation. Tom |
