Marine Vet: Biden’s Botched Afghanistan Exit Made Me Run for Congress

A retired military intelligence officer with 28 years in uniform, both on active and reserve duty, told RedState he decided to run for the GOP nomination in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District—looking to eventually defeat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) amid President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s retreat from Afghanistan two years ago.

“The actual moment was when Jen Psaki went on TV in August of 2021 and rolled her eyes and said: ‘There are no Americans stranded in Afghanistan,’” said Jon Myers, who at that time was working with his back-channel network to get Americans out of Kabul.

“I had that list of American citizens—128 American citizens and dual-nationality Afghan-Americans. They were in hiding and messaging me: ‘Please get us out,’” Myers said.

“It was that moment—I was like: ‘This is ridiculous that we have people like this running our government, and our representative in the area where I live was just going along,’” the 14th-generation Virginian said.

“Americans know more today about UFOs from our government than they do about what happened during and after the fall of Kabul,” Myers said.

Two years since the Afghanistan withdrawal, since my team of former Marines got out hundreds of American citizens and verified allies. And to this day the government has released more info about UFO’s than they have about this foreign policy disaster.

— Jon Myers (@JonMyersforVA) August 13, 2023

Among the unanswered questions he has is why State Department personnel and its puppets working for non-governmental agencies, or NGOs, worked overtime to obstruct the escape from Afghanistan of Americans holding blue U.S. passports and the Afghans who supported our project there.

An Interpreter Myers assisted was at Aug. 26, 2021, Abbey Gate blast

Biden extolled his successful handling of the withdrawal of the United States mission to Afghanistan July 8, 2021, from the East Room of the White House.

Thanks to the way in which we have managed our withdrawal, no one — no one U.S. forces or any forces have — have been lost. Conducting our drawdown differently would have certainly come with an increased risk of safety to our personnel.

However, five days before Biden decreed the last day in theater, a bomb went off at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, killing 13 American military personnel, wounding 60, and killing and injuring dozens of local nationals.

When the blast went off at HKIA, pronounced H-Kai-ah, Aug. 26, 2021, Myers said he was working his back channels with Marines at the airport and coordinating with a family to get them through the two rings of security.

Although American personnel controlled the airport gates, after the Aug. 15, 2021, fall of the U.S.-backed national government, the Taliban formed its own perimeter surrounding the Americans and the airport.

Myers said he would direct people to different parts of the gates or even points along the airport walls, where they could get pulled over the top by Marines from the inside.

After Kabul fell, the former government’s guards abandoned their posts at HKIA, and in the hours it took the American mission to secure the airport again, hill people, gangsters, and passersby rushed the gates. These were the people swarming the aircraft and clinging to the wheels of planes taking off.

With the airport packed with more than 50,000 unvetted people, the American mission could not proceed with the orderly processing of allied personnel to America or Qatar’s Camp As Sayliyah. These unvetted gatecrashers were the vast majority of passengers on the Biden-ordered airlift.

Meanwhile, American allied personnel who supported the NATO mission against the Taliban went into hiding, while individuals like Myers worked to sneak them into HKIA for a flight out.

“I would tell them: ‘There’ll be a white cloth hanging from a pole. Have your people stand there,’” he said.

“I would send families and people, and they would stand there, and they would see no one, and they would not be sure it was the right place,” he said.

“Then, all of a sudden, would come over the wall and grab the kids and pull them over the wall,” the colonel said. “Then, they’d grab the wife and pull her over the wall. Then, the husband.”

Myers said the locations kept changing to give the Marines and the families the advantage of surprise. “They were doing it all around the airfield.”

The Republican House hopeful said he worked with one family of American citizens for 12 hours. Moving them around to different gates and checkpoints. “I have been running them around all day long.”

At one point, a Taliban checkpoint fired at them and pinned them down as they hid behind and under parked cars, he said.

After, they broke free of that encounter, and Myers said he sent them back another day.

That time, they were in the middle of the street outside the airport, holding up their blue passports, Americans in a van pulled up, opened the side door, and pulled them, he said. “Eventually, they made it out.”

Someone who did not make it out was an interpreter, who was applying for a Special Immigration Visa, he said. Applicants for the SIV program were supposed to be vetted by the embassy in Kabul and then flown to Camp Al Sayliyah.

This plan did not survive the fall of Kabul, so the interpreter was on his own until Myers said he connected with him.

Tragically, Myers said he successfully directed him through the Taliban perimeter placing him at the Abbey Gate when the blast went off.

“I lost all contact with him,” he said. “I assume he was killed. I kind of blocked it out.”

Myers: Taliban more cooperative than State Department

Once the last American boot left Afghanistan, the colonel said he continued to work his connections to get Americans and American allies out.

“We had two airplanes up north,” Myers said. “There was a total of seven or nine airplanes, and we were trying to coordinate clearance for our airplanes via the State Department and via Centcom,” he said. Afghanistan and the plane’s intended destinations fell under the battlespace of Central Command.

The planes were massed at Mazar-i-Sharif, the last northern city to fall to the Taliban.

“We had contacts with Centcom, and they were like: ‘Yeah, yeah, bring them here. We’ll give you clearance. We don’t have a problem.’ The State Department wouldn’t give clearance to leave the country–but the Taliban would,” he said.

“It became easier to just coordinate via an intermediary with the Taliban at the airfield up north,” the colonel said.

“They said: ‘Yeah, you can fly your planes out of here. You can take all of those Americans you have on the airplanes or in the hiding spots around the airport—we have no problem,’” said the man, who worked as a civilian intelligence officer for the State Department.

“They said: ‘You can put them on the planes and take them out of here.’ The State Department stopped us.”

This came as Biden administration officials were briefing reporters on background that State was supporting the effort to airlift American and allied personnel out of the northern city.

The senior administration official said the U.S. was working to clear the flights through diplomatic channels “at the highest levels. That includes engagement with those who have a stake in the future of civilian air travel into and out of Afghanistan,” including Qatar and Turkey.

Myers said he knew it was the State Department because of his interactions with NGOs linked to State and a call during the witching hours.

“Somebody at Centcom called me in the middle of the said: ‘Hey, you know, we cleared you to come here with the airplanes, but I gotta tell you, somebody at the State Department is blocking you.’”