NBC’s Dilanian: A Lot of Frustration Inside the CIA that We Left Many Afghan Allies Stranded

EXCERPT:

DILANIAN: "Sources tell our colleague Richard Engel and me that the CIA Director William Burns met face-to-face yesterday with the Taliban de facto leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in what amounts to the highest level contact between the Biden administration and the Taliban. The irony here is that Baradar is a man the CIA helped to capture and jail back in 2010, he was kept in Pakistan for eight years. During that time, the Pakistanis refused to let the CIA talk to him for a bit. Intelligence sources told me at the time that he was seen as a more reasonable alternative to many of the Taliban figures on the scene. Now he is the leader and CIA Director Burns, a longtime diplomat, was likely negotiating with him over all the issues surrounding America's messy exit, including access to the airport and the status of Americans and our allies, who are trying to figure out how to get there without being harmed by the Taliban. And I can tell you, Chris, there’s a lot of frustration inside the CIA about the fact that the United States has left many Afghan allies essentially stranded. It remains to be seen whether the Burns/Baradar meeting will help solve that problem."