JON FINER: Judy, as I think you know, we have been in diplomatic conversations with the Taliban for quite some time. Those conversations at high levels took place in Doha, Qatar. We have now also established a channel to the Taliban on the ground in Kabul, so that exactly those sorts of operational considerations, including safe passage to the airport, can be arranged based on the work of our commanders in the field, who have the closest, clearest sense of the details on the ground and what exactly we need to be able to accomplish that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Jon Finer, I know you are aware of this, but there are not only Republican, but many Democratic members of Congress and so many others who are criticizing the administration right now for not doing more earlier to move, not just Americans, but especially those Afghan allies who worked for the U.S. over the years, to get them safely out of the country. We have members of Congress, including those who appearing on this program, who were saying they pleaded with the Biden administration to move on this earlier. And they were met -- their pleas were met with deaf ears.
JON FINER: So, Judy, I think you heard, as I did, the directors of national intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency say yesterday that all of this transpired much faster than anyone internally and really most people externally predicted it would. What you had was a country that effectively lost its governing authority and its armed forces within a matter of days. When that happened, there was guaranteed to be a degree of turbulence, especially in a place as politically complex as Afghanistan. But because we did take these reports as seriously as we did, we had forces prepositioned in the region that we were able to flow into the country very quickly. We were able to gain security control of the airport within a matter of days. We were able to close down our embassy and evacuate our diplomats, again, without a major security incident involved in doing that, which would have been a real worst-case scenario. And we have now been able to start executing these flights to get people out of the country on an urgent basis.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You were saying that this happened much faster than anyone expected. And the president himself has said that. But we have top CIA, former CIA officials, the head of counterterrorism for Southwest and South Asia, who was saying that he advised your team that they -- he said he knows for a fact that the ultimate assessment from the intelligence community to the Biden team was that Afghan forces might capitulate within days, that this was -- in other words, that this was something the administration should have foreseen.
JON FINER: All I can say about that, Judy, is, I and my colleagues have read every piece of intelligence that is relevant, every assessment that has come from our intelligence community on Afghanistan going back since the very beginning of this administration. We take these assessments incredibly seriously. And I would point you again to the comments yesterday by the directors of national intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, who said basically exactly what I just told you, which is that this all transpired much more quickly than was anticipated by them or anyone else.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And we heard General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, say that it was known that there could be a full collapse of the Afghan government. Is that what the administration expected?
JON FINER: Intelligence is about a range of possibilities. That was one of the possibilities. And exactly because of that possibility, Judy -- and this is important to underscore -- the president order that forces be prepositioned in the region so that we could flow them into Afghanistan very quickly on a hair trigger if the security environment began to deteriorate. And that's exactly what we did. And because of that, again, we were able to draw our embassy down and begin these flights, these evacuations out of Afghanistan much more quickly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: One last question about that. Should the United States have negotiated an exit that involved a larger footprint here at the end for the United States, so that the United States is not encircled in its efforts to get people out of the country at one airport in the -- just outside Kabul?
JON FINER: The United States has a very significant security footprint in Kabul, in Afghanistan. Our military commanders have told the president they have what they need to keep that facility safe and secure. If that changes, I guarantee you the president will provide exactly what is required. But, for now, we believe we have got what we need.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Jon Finer is the deputy national security adviser. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.
JON FINER: Thank you, Judy.