It has a long history of evacuating people from danger areas
The CIA secretly evacuated most of its spies from Afghanistan
The spies who are feared to be in danger have been evacuated
The Agency used special military bases for evacuation.
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The CIA managed to get most of its Afghan informants and spies out of the country before the United States finally pulled out, according to two sources familiar with the agency's operations.
"We've got everyone out, in one way or another," a congressional official told Foreign Policy, who asked not to be named. "It's about thousands of people, including family members of the spies.
These are the people (the Taliban) could have recognized.”
Special Activities Center
Another source familiar with the evacuation efforts told the CIA that the agency's Special Activities Center, which includes elite paramilitary forces and runs covert operations, was involved in the evacuation.
The source said the operations took place all over the country, not just in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where several thousand desperate people fleeing the country gathered in the vicinity of the airport.
"My understanding is that they took out all of their personnel," said the source, who asked not to be identified.
A CIA spokesman declined to provide details, saying only that the agency "worked closely with other US government agencies to help evacuate a range of people including thousands of US citizens, local embassy staff, and vulnerable Afghans."
expedite evacuation
The military deployment of the Taliban movement throughout Afghanistan accelerated the hasty departure of the United States late last month, which included chaotic scenes at Kabul airport and a suicide attack by ISIS, which killed 13 American soldiers and more than 100 Afghans.
In contrast, State Department officials said last week that "the majority" of Afghans who applied for special immigrant visas or entry permits for those who helped the United States in the war remained in Afghanistan.
Many Afghans fear for their lives if the Taliban target and kill those they believe helped the United States.
The agency's relative success in evacuating Afghan spies raises questions about the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, including: What did the CIA do right?
Why have other US agencies not been able to achieve similar results?
It also highlights an aspect of the CIA's work that has drawn praise and criticism, which is its ability to evacuate people around the world without drawing attention.
"Something like that makes perfect sense to me," said Andy Keizer, who served as a senior advisor to former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers from 2013 to 2015.
But why can the CIA do this better than other agencies in the government?”
The events in Tehran in 1979 are considered one of the most famous evacuations carried out by the "CIA", after a group of young men stormed the American embassy and took dozens of employees hostage.
The agency successfully rescued six US officials who were hiding in the homes of Canadian diplomats through an innovative method, and the agency's agents pretended to be members of a Canadian film crew.
interrogation program
Other evacuations were less well known.
The agency's interrogation program, after 9/11, relied mainly on "handovers", which are secret hijackings to transport suspected terrorists to locations in other countries, to counter the agency's so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."
“Every day, the CIA works all over the world, including underprivileged areas, where they have to participate in covert operations to include infiltrations,” said the source familiar with the CIA’s evacuation efforts. They've been doing it for a very long time, and it's nothing new or unique to Afghanistan."
The agency has also conducted thousands of covert missions, including targeted killings, in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001. Another team within the CIA, the so-called National Resettlement Operations Center, is tasked with transporting defectors to the states. United.
But it is unclear whether the center, which is known to bring back prominent defectors from countries such as Russia, contributed to the resettlement of former Afghan spies.
It is unclear whether any of the CIA's Afghan allies will be relocated to the United States, and whether they will continue to gather intelligence, especially now that the agency's ability to gather information on the ground in Afghanistan has become limited, according to a congressional official, who asked not to reveal his identity.
The official said that the small number of Afghan informants who remained in the country were only occasionally involved in gathering intelligence for the United States, so it should be difficult for the Taliban to identify them.
The source declined to give more details about specific numbers or how other spies got out of the country.
In July, Foreign Policy reported that many Afghan spies faced challenges in obtaining special immigrant visas, which required proof of a working relationship with the United States;
It was something that those working covertly with the CIA were unlikely to have.
A US official told the magazine at the time that the agency had made the evacuation of its allies a "high priority."
Politico reported last week that a secret CIA base outside Kabul was being used to help evacuate American and Afghan citizens at risk, with the threat of violence growing outside the airport. Since then, US forces have destroyed parts of the highly secured complex, known as "Eagle Base," which also included an area where the agency once tortured terrorism suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Some Afghans who worked with the agency may also have escaped through unofficial rescue operations. One such operation, called "Pineapple Express," was run by US veterans, former intelligence officers, and others with ties to Afghanistan. The operation helped evacuate more than 600 Afghans.
US President Joe Biden has faced criticism for his handling of the withdrawal, which turned into chaos after the Taliban quickly seized control of Kabul last month.
More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the country in just weeks.
• Politico magazine reported, last week, that a secret CIA base outside Kabul was used to help evacuate American and Afghan citizens at risk, with the increased risk of violence outside the airport.
• "Foreign Policy" magazine reported that many Afghan spies faced challenges in obtaining special immigrant visas, which required proof of a working relationship with the United States, something that those working covertly with the CIA were unlikely to have.
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