Biden is set to speak on the end of the war in Afghanistan as the Taliban gains ground.
Daily Political Briefing
July 8, 2021, 8:45 a.m. ET
July 8, 2021, 8:45 a.m. ET
President Biden will deliver remarks Thursday afternoon about the future of Afghanistan, his first formal address on the country since American troops pulled out of the last remaining U.S. military base there last week, effectively ending U.S. military operations after two decades of war.
The departure of American troops has been accompanied by reports of increasingly dire situations on the ground as local government forces crumble before the Taliban, which is gaining territory as it nears Kabul, the capital. In the span of just over two months, the Taliban have managed to seize at least 150 of Afghanistan’s 421 districts.
Questioned on Friday about the risks of the accelerated pullout to the stability of the Afghan government, Mr. Biden said: “Look, we were in that war for 20 years. Twenty years.” He added, “The Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the air force they have.”
But pressed to elaborate, the president cut the reporter off, saying, “I want to talk about happy things.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks on Thursday will follow a morning meeting where his national security team will update him on the progress of the withdrawal. Vice President Kamala Harris is also expected to attend.
In an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said that the Biden administration continued to “push for a negotiated peaceful, political settlement,” while adding that the Pentagon still had the ability to support Afghan forces even without a formal presence in the country.
“We are all concerned about the security situation the ground,” Mr. Kirby said. “There’s no question about that.”
Mr. Biden announced in April that the military would complete its withdrawal of the 3,500 troops left in Afghanistan by Sept. 11. The pullout went faster than many had expected. On Friday, the U.S. exit from Bagram Air Base, a central hub, effectively ended major military operations, but the White House authorized the Pentagon to slow the final stages of the withdrawal.
Only 650 troops are expected to remain in the country to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and Kabul International Airport. But officials have said that the Pentagon would be authorized, at least through September, to move 300 additional troops into Afghanistan if needed for security or emergencies, like the possible evacuation of the American Embassy, a growing concern amid the deteriorating security in the country.
Air support for the Afghan forces and overhead surveillance can also be flown in from American bases in Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, or from an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. But it is unclear how long the United States will maintain that type of support.
As the Taliban consolidates power in Afghanistan, the threat to American allies who remain in the country grows. Senior officials have said that the Biden administration is preparing to relocate thousands of Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who worked with American forces to other countries in an effort to keep them safe while they apply for entry to the United States.
In his speech, Mr. Biden is expected to touch on plans for humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, an issue that came up last week when Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, visited the White House. The Biden administration has committed $266 million in humanitarian aid and $3.3 billion in security assistance. It has also pledged three million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and oxygen supplies, as efforts to address the latest wave of the coronavirus have been hampered by fighting in the area.
The nation’s intelligence agencies are looking for ways to increase their expertise in a range of scientific disciplines as they struggle to answer unexplained questions — about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, unidentified phenomenon observed by Navy pilots, and mysterious health ailments affecting spies and diplomats around the world.
Traditional spycraft has failed to make significant progress on those high-profile inquiries, and many officials have grown convinced that they require a better marriage of intelligence gathering and scientific examination.
The White House has given the intelligence community until later this summer to report the results of a deep dive into the origins of the coronavirus. It has pledged to make progress on determining the cause of ailments known as Havana syndrome. And a preliminary inquiry into unidentified flying objects failed to explain almost any of the encounters, prompting intelligence officials to promise a follow-up in the next three months.
To bolster the role of scientific expertise, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence brought an experienced epidemiologist from the State Department’s intelligence and research division to serve on the National Intelligence Council, according to intelligence and other government officials. The office has also created two national intelligence manager posts, one to look at climate change and the other to examine disruptive technology.
The National Security Council, working with the C.I.A. and the director of national intelligence, has established a pair of outside panels to study Havana syndrome, whose symptoms include dizziness, fatigue and sudden memory loss. Outside scientists with security clearances will be able to view classified intelligence.
The work reflects “a broader priority on science and technology,” a White House official said.
Six months after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in a deadly riot, the security fence constructed to fortify the complex in its aftermath is coming down.
William J. Walker, the House Sergeant at Arms, told members of Congress on Wednesday that the Capitol Police Board had endorsed police leaders’ recommendation to remove the fence, which became a potent symbol of the violence of the Jan. 6 assault, and workers would begin doing so as early as Friday.
In an email, Mr. Walker said the step was possible because of improved security conditions on Capitol Hill, which were the result of “enhanced coordination” between the Capitol Police, District of Columbia authorities and “neighboring state and federal law enforcement partners.”
The process is expected to take no more than three days, Mr. Walker wrote. It will do away with a structure that became a physical manifestation of the consequences of the Capitol riot, which sowed chaos and fear in Washington, a city that prides itself on providing open access to the buildings that house the country’s democratic institutions.
In the immediate wake of the attack, Capitol Hill resembled a war zone, with a wide perimeter of razor wire-topped fencing patrolled by National Guard troops dressed in camouflage fatigues.
In the weeks afterward, lawmakers in both parties began agitating to scale back the security measures, complaining about the financial costs, the lack of public access to the building and the optics of closing off the Capitol. The National Guard left the complex in May.
The House approved a $1.9 billion emergency security spending bill in May that included $520 million to reimburse the National Guard, but that legislation has stalled in the Senate.
Mr. Walker said Capitol Police would continue to monitor threats and added that the Architect of the Capitol, the agency in charge of maintaining the structure, would “expeditiously reinstall the temporary fencing should conditions warrant.”
Other building restrictions, such as bans on tours for members of the public, will remain in place, Mr. Walker said.
If a British court permits the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face criminal charges in the United States, the Biden administration has pledged that it will not hold him under the most austere conditions reserved for high-security prisoners and that, if he is convicted, it will let him serve his sentence in his native Australia.
Those assurances were disclosed on Wednesday as part of a British High Court ruling in London. The court accepted the United States government’s appeal of a ruling that had denied its extradition request for Mr. Assange — who was indicted during the Trump administration — on the grounds that American prison conditions for the highest-security inmates were inhumane.
The new ruling was not made public in its entirety. But in an email, the Crown Prosecution Service press office provided a summary showing that the High Court had accepted three of five grounds for appeal submitted by the United States and disclosing the promises the Biden administration had made.
A lower-court judge, Vanessa Baraitser of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, had held in January that “the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States” given American prison conditions. The summary of the decision to accept the appeal said that the United States had “provided the United Kingdom with a package of assurances which are responsive to the district judge’s specific findings in this case.”
Specifically, it said, Mr. Assange would not be subjected to measures that curtail a prisoner’s contact with the outside world and can amount to solitary confinement, and would not be imprisoned at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., unless he later did something “that meets the test” for imposing such harsh steps.
“The United States has also provided an assurance that the United States will consent to Mr. Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any custodial sentence imposed on him,” the summary said.
No hearing date has been set. The Crown Prosecution Service and the United States Justice Department declined to comment.
In a statement, Stella Moris, Mr. Assange’s fiancée, urged the Biden administration to instead drop the extradition request and abandon the charges, which she portrayed as a threat to First Amendment press freedoms.
“I am appealing directly to the Biden government to do the right thing, even at this late stage,” she said. “This case should not be dragged out for a moment longer. End this prosecution, protect free speech and let Julian come home to his family.”
The case against Mr. Assange is complex and developed over the course of three indictments secured by prosecutors during the Trump administration. It centers on his 2010 publication of diplomatic and military files leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst — not on his publication during the 2016 election of Democratic emails stolen by Russia.
Prosecutors have made two sets of accusations. One is that Mr. Assange participated in a criminal hacking conspiracy, both by offering to help Ms. Manning mask her tracks on a secure computer network and by engaging in a broader effort to encourage hackers to obtain secret material and send it to WikiLeaks. The other is that his soliciting and publishing information the government had deemed secret violated the Espionage Act.
While hacking is not a journalistic act, the second set of charges has alarmed press-freedom advocates because it could establish a precedent that such journalistic-style activities may be treated as a crime in the United States — a separate question from whether Mr. Assange himself counts as a journalist.
In January, Judge Baraitser rejected the Trump administration’s extradition request on the grounds that Mr. Assange might be driven to suicide by American prison conditions. On Jan. 19, in one of its last acts, the Trump administration filed an appeal of that ruling. Soon after taking office, the Biden administration pressed forward.
Elian Peltier contributed reporting from London.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/08/us/joe-biden-news/
