The American flag at the US embassy in Kabul was taken down Sunday, marking a final step in the evacuation of the diplomatic compound, days earlier than US officials initially projected, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The US scrambled to evacuate staff and top officials from its embassy in Afghanistan Sunday as Taliban fighters entered the city, Afghan government officials fled the country and gunfire was heard at Kabul airport, multiple sources told CNN.
Early Sunday, two sources familiar with the situation told CNN that the plan was to pull all US personnel from the embassy in Kabul over the next 72 hours. Hours later, most US embassy staff had been moved to Kabul airport for flights out of the country.
The rush to the exits marked an unsettling, tragic end to the US presence in Afghanistan as the Taliban retook control nearly 20 years after the US invaded to avenge the terror attacks of September 2001. After an investment of around $2 trillion, some 2,400 American lives lost and thousands more wounded, a nation-building project that spanned Republican and Democratic administrations devolved in just a few days into a complicated and nerve-wracking rescue mission.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House lawmakers Sunday that the evacuation was a "highly dynamic and very risky operation," even as he and other senior US officials worked to project a sense of control.
"This is not Saigon," Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union," when asked about President Joe Biden's July assertion that under no circumstances would US personnel be airlifted out of Kabul in a replay of the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975.
'Deliberate, orderly'
Blinken said on ABC that instructions to diplomats to destroy documents, US flags or other items that could be used in Taliban propaganda are "standard operating procedure." Echoing Austin's talking points, Blinken added that the evacuation "is being done in a very deliberate way, orderly way. It's being done with American forces there to do it in a safe way."
At the same time, the US military is considering the possibility of sending additional US forces to Afghanistan, according to a defense official and US official familiar with the ongoing discussions. Both officials caution no decision has been made.
The defense official said the "current plan" is that as long as any US diplomats maintain a presence at the airport, there will be a contingent of US forces there to protect them. But the official acknowledged that if the Taliban are essentially in charge, the "reality" of keeping diplomats and troops at the airport may not hold.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, arrived in the Persian Gulf region Sunday to directly oversee the situation in Afghanistan, according to the defense official. The official declined to publicly name McKenzie's location, but said the general is not in Afghanistan.
A military team was expected to arrive and set up its own air traffic control system at the airport in Kabul in order to increase the number of evacuation flights out of the airfield. This type of capability is routinely maintained by the Air Force so it can operate at airfields in remote or war zone environments.
"We are going to ramp up flights," the defense official said.
This official added that "the current situation is going south pretty fast" and that from the outset, in the view of some, "there was no assessment pessimistic enough."
With Biden at Camp David, the administration's most senior national security officials -- including Blinken, Austin, CIA Director Bill Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines -- shared their most recent assessments of the situation with the President by secure video teleconference.
Austin, Blinken and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley also spoke to House and Senate lawmakers, with Milley warning that the situation could create a greater counterterrorism threa...