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All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.

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This is Veterans Radio.

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Welcome to Veterans Radio.

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I am Jim Fossone.

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I'm the officer of the deck today.

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We've got some great programs for you.

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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today.

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We have a great author to talk to, a staff sergeant from the U.S. Army, six years, Michael

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Cook.

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Michael, welcome to Veterans Radio.

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Hey, thank you so much for having me.

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I'm really excited.

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Well, you have written a book called Life and Death at Abbey Gate.

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It's really not only about the fall of Afghanistan, but the operation to save Afghanistan individuals,

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taking them out through the gate, but also afterwards.

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That's really what we're going to talk about.

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The book is published by Case Mate.

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Let's start with a little background.

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You're a guy who went to Eastern Michigan University primarily to play hockey, if I understood

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reading you right.

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Later on, said, well, you know what?

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I'm going to join the U.S. Army.

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Kind of an unusual step at that point.

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Tell us why you did it.

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Yeah, so I grew up a local guy here in Michigan growing up in Ann Arbor and then going to

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Eastern Michigan.

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Hockey was always a big part of my life as it is with many people in this area.

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I think I always had that camaraderie, that teen feel in my life through my hockey experiences.

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Then once I graduated college and moved out to California, I kind of lost that.

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I was out there for about five or six years and was just feeling like I really needed

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something more, like I needed to be a part of a greater organization.

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That's really what I think led me down to the recruiter's office down in Huntington

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Beach, California.

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I went in and talked to the Marine recruiter, talked to the Army recruiter, decided that

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Army was the branch that I was more interested in and started pursuing a career with them.

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Could you talk a little bit about your MOS, your engineer battalion I think in construction?

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Tell us a little bit about that.

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Yeah, so as an engineer, 12 WISC is the designator that I started at.

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Mainly we did all the Army's construction work or security or anything like that.

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Anything that would need to be built or erected essentially, engineers do that job.

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That's what most of our training consisted around.

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On our deployment to Afghanistan in 2019 and 2020, that's primarily what we were doing.

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It's just building bee huts like barracks or joint operation centers or fences for security,

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whatever the military needed from us, we built it.

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While the general population, 99% of the US population doesn't serve, they only think

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of guys in the Army with a rifle going forward at the pointy end of the spear.

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Somebody back here is building stuff, cooking meals, doing all the logistics things, taking

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care of the mechanics on tanks and planes and what have you.

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We don't think much about what the construction engineers are doing, so you probably find

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that pretty frustrating.

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Yeah, I mean everyone in the military has a specialty, right?

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There's a million jobs that need to be done, so you just have to make sure that we have

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guys in the field of operations that are able to complete those tasks when needed.

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It's really through that effort of being an Army engineer that you came to work with a

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couple of Afghanistan men and got to know them and their families.

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Set that up a little bit because it's really the cornerstone of the rest of the story.

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Yeah, so when I was in Afghanistan in 2019 and 20, the first part of my deployment was

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up in a city called Mazari Sharif, which is the second largest city in Afghanistan.

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It's in northern Afghanistan, right on the side of the Hindu Kush mountains.

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It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my whole life.

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On that base, we were stationed on a NATO base up there that was ran by the German forces.

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But on that base, there was two men, two Afghan nationals named Abdul and Mohammed, who I

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developed a very strong relationship with.

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They started as a working relationship and turned into a friendship.

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So they were contractors and they would essentially supply us with whatever materials that we

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would need to accomplish our mission.

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So going through the military pipeline of getting materials while you're in Afghanistan

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can be very time consuming.

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It could take multiple weeks or months to get things, but these guys could get them there

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on the next day, right?

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So they were very useful to us.

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We worked with them every single day, but they also took really good care of us.

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So they bring us home cooked meals from their wives just because they knew that we were

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eating deployment food for a whole year.

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So like I said, it just really turned into a friendship and they took great care of us.

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So when I left Mazari Sharif to move on to my next base in Afghanistan, I was in the

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winnings and said goodbye to them.

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And it was pretty much with the understanding that we were never going to see each other

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again.

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Not knowing what was coming down the road, right?

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Not knowing that the Taliban was going to recapture Afghanistan in summer of 2021.

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So that's kind of to tee it up how the relationship started with them.

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And if I understand it right, these men, Abdul and Mohammed were brother-in-laws.

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Yes, that's correct.

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So there's a tight family relationship among them and you and your team were, some of them

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were at least brought into that and got that sense, I take it.

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Yes, absolutely.

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And as time goes on and you're out of Afghanistan, but in 2020, a year later or so, you begin

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to see what's going to happen.

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Talk us through kind of what you were watching from the outside and had concerns about.

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Yes, so obviously the Taliban starts encroaching on all of Afghanistan and taking perimeter

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cities slowly as they march towards Kabul.

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By this point, all US troops have left Afghanistan.

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We've made the decision to give up Bagram, the most, probably the most strategic base

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in all of Asia in the Middle East.

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And when I look back on it, on my deployment, I can see signs of where things were going

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wrong.

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Like I was there during the Doha agreement that Trump signed and I remember the Afghan

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contractors that were there coming up to me after hearing about it and saying, sir, you

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can't leave because if you guys leave, we're all going to be slaughtered, is exactly what

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one of them said.

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And again, I couldn't see the writing on the wall, but they could see it so clearly, like

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they knew exactly what was going to happen.

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And all of our intelligence assets were saying that the Afghan National Army, the Afghan

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government that we put in place is going to be able to hold up after we left for different

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periods of time.

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But most of them said a year, five years, 10 years, infinite.

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Of course, all of them are wrong because as soon as we left the Taliban to control the

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country in, I think, five days or something.

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It happened so fast and the, I would say, the American planning was so bad that these

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inevitabilities just crashed upon the Afghan Nationals that had been working with the US

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military, didn't it?

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Yeah.

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I mean, in my book, I do a deep dive into exactly what the failures were at the highest

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levels as well as doing a deep dive into what the DOD report says happened versus what boots

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on the ground were saying that happened.

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But there's just so many failures at the highest levels that we ended up paying for

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in blood, unfortunately.

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Well in your words, in the book, the withdrawal was a clusterfuck.

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And everybody knows it was and unfortunately a lot of Afghan Nationals had to live with

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that cluster.

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This is everybody from interpreters and translators and drivers and as Abdul and Muhammad were,

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folks working on the construction side, materials, logistics.

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I mean, it's a pretty big group of people plus their family members that are sort of

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left in the lurch, isn't it?

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Yeah, it is.

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And a lot of those people are still there.

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Hundreds of thousands of our allies are still stuck there and a lot of them are in hiding

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and on the run from the Taliban because if they get caught, there's a very strong likelihood

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that them and their families will be killed.

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So it's incredibly vulnerable.

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There was something created, and we're talking to Michael Cook, author of Life and Death

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at Abbey Gate.

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Michael, there was something created called the Special Immigrant Visas, SIV.

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I don't know that the general public actually understands what that was supposed to be and

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how it actually worked.

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Yeah, so the Special Immigrant Visa, commonly referred to as the SIV, was a visa that came

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into existence in the early 2000s, I believe, during the Iraq War.

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And essentially the visa was supposed to get awarded to our local allies that had worked

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with us for a certain amount of years.

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I want to say it's two years.

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So if you're an Iraqi, if you're an Afghan, and you devote your service to the United

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States and help us against our enemies, we're going to make sure that you're protected should

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you ever need protecting and we'll bring you here to the United States under a Special

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Immigrant Visa.

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That was the point of it.

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The program was wildly unsuccessful because they just weren't prepared for the amount

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of people that were going to be applying.

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Again, just backed up very poor government planning at the highest levels.

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So due to the influx of applicants and not enough resources to process them, that's why

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so many of them got left behind in those summer months of August 2021.

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Well, and some of it was just whoever planned this thing or thought this thing through,

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you had to prove up that two-year status.

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You had to prove up how important you were to the American cause.

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It's not like there was somebody sitting in a desk cranking out paperwork on the computer

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system, was there?

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No, and one of the big problems actually was that a lot of paperwork got lost.

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So these contractors, these Afghan allies that were working for like a third party,

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like an American contractor, you know, anytime those contractors would go out of business,

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all that paperwork would be lost.

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So now we get stuck with this position where we have these Afghan allies that have devoted

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their lives to the United States and helping us while we're overseas.

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And now we don't have any of their paperwork to prove that they're qualified for these

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visas.

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So just one of the failures.

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Yeah, there's this view that, well, we'll vet people.

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Well, if there's no paperwork or not a cooperating government, you can't vet them.

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There's no way to do this.

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And while this maybe made sense in creating the SIV program, boy, it did not work at all,

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did it?

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No, it was, I sat down with Senator Blumenthal after the evacuation and when I was writing

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my book, and he straight up told me that the system is completely broken and needs to be

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rebuilt from the ground up.

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You talk in the book about what happens at Abbey Gate and also talk about kind of what

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happens afterwards, the digital Dunkirk I want to talk about.

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But give us your view on what happened at Abbey Gate there in August of 2021.

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Yeah, so I guess there's a few ways to go down that path, but Abbey Gate was essentially

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an entrance at the Hameed Karzai International Airport, which is in Kabul.

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It's the civilian airport that's at Kabul.

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It's the airport that the US government decided to run the evacuation out of, why we decided

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to run out of there, civilian airport and not Bagram, a military base that was very

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well fortified.

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It's a big mystery.

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But essentially Abbey Gate was one of the main gates where a lot of people ended up escaping,

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but also was the site of the suicide bomber, the ISIS K suicide bomber that ended up killing

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13 of our troops.

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And it was just utter confusion at the gate.

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There was no good way to get good people out.

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While a lot of people evacuated over that week, not nearly enough, which sort of left

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people like Abdul and Muhammad in this position of getting in touch with old friends like

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yourself and saying, what can you do for me?

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How did that develop and walk us through that couple of days of craziness trying to make

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something work thousands of miles away?

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Yeah.

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So I had kept in touch with Abdul and Muhammad via WhatsApp after deployment.

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So communication kind of slowed a little bit in the years that passed, but then July and

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August of 2021 when the Taliban's coming up on Kabul is really when our communication

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picked up heavily.

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So at that point, both men and their families had fled from Mazar Shariq down to Kabul because

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that was the last remaining stronghold of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan government.

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So the Taliban essentially had them surrounded as well as all of our allies surrounded.

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So I get a call from our FaceTime from Abdul.

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I'll never forget at this use holding his little daughter, his baby daughter, and I'm

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sitting in my kitchen with my mother and we're FaceTiming.

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I remember my mother had to step off screen because she was just so devastated because

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she understood what was about to happen, not only to Abdul and Muhammad, but to their

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families and their daughters.

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These daughters, if they survive, they're going to grow up in a country where they're

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not allowed to go to school, they're not allowed to work, they're not allowed to leave their

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homes without a mail-ass quarter, without their faces covered.

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Their entire futures are being stripped from them in the moment that we're having this

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phone conversation.

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So that was obviously very tough, but Abdul just essentially asked if I could help him

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find a way out.

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And that's really when we started looking into the visas and found the special immigrant

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visa process.

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So I reached out to Senator Debbie Stabenow here in Michigan.

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Her and her team were amazing and very helpful in trying to expedite the process of getting

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these visas going.

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Unfortunately, there just wasn't time to get a visa in those short weeks.

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It can take years.

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And a lot of people that applied for SIVs still don't have case numbers today, years

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later.

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So at that point, we pretty much just knew we needed to make a run for the airport because

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even Debbie Stabenow was set up for failure by the State Department because the guidance

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that she was getting and passing on to me was have them shelter at home, wait for the

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call to get their visas, and then they can proceed to the airport.

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Well, like I just said, that was never going to happen.

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So at that point, we knew we had to make a run for the airport.

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And they had a pretty disastrous first run at the airport.

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They ran into a tailband checkpoint.

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Muhammad got roughed up real good.

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They beat him with their rifles.

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And when I ended up seeing him a few months later, he was still covered, had the tailband

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bruising.

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So at that point, we knew we needed to make some deeper connections.

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And that's really what led to the Digital Dunkirk Network of People, essentially the

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underground group of people that were working online, veterans and civilians alike, just

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to try to find ways to help these Afghan allies get out of the country.

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And this Digital Dunkirk Network is working outside, really, the US government process,

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if I understand it.

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It was.

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I mean, there was a lot of active duty military and there were a lot of veterans, a lot of

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guys and girls that understood the processes that would need to take place, but weren't

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subjected to the same red tape that government evacuation was.

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So we were able to kind of run a little loose outside the lines, which was a lot more effective

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than whatever the government was doing.

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And you go through in the book, which is an easy good, informative read, Life and Death

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at Abbey Gate, you go through various, talk about various individuals who helped along

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this process because you were stumbling in the dark.

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You didn't know how to make this happen.

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And everybody was learning from everybody else and the line I wrote down was about the

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individual courage displayed, not only by the Afghan nationals, but also by civilian,

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veterans, active duty military, that individual courage, which was running up against the

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inept bureaucracy.

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It had to be frustrating.

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Yeah, it was.

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And like you said, we didn't, you know, you didn't really know what we were doing.

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We just knew that it had to happen fast.

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So I think one line in my book is we were building the airplane mid-flight is essentially

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what we were trying to do.

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So we were setting up all these essentially joint operation centers online through all

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these encrypted messaging apps and just passing information as fast as possible on what was

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happening at the airport in different ways.

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And there's a whole range of people who help out on this.

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I mean, some sort of big names, maybe bigger influences than others, but a whole range of

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people are helping on this effort that not only you are engaged with, but, you know,

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tens of thousands of other Afghan nationals are trying to get out.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, I mean, it took everybody.

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If you were useful, you were put to work.

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So whether that you were a famous politician or just some veteran like myself that deployed

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Afghanistan a couple of years prior, everyone was put to work and did whatever they could

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to help.

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This was in a 24-7 exhaustive effort as you were writing about what you're trying to do

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in the time zone differences.

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And I just felt reading it how exhausted you were, but how exhausted Abdul and Muhammad

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and their family was.

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Yeah.

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And I can't even imagine because I do remember how tired I was because, you know, when I

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stayed time over there, it's nighttime here.

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So I stayed up every single night for probably a week in a row and I was exhausted, but I

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kept putting myself in their shoes.

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I mean, they're being hunted by a brutal enemy and just trying to escape with their

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lives, you know, and adding small children into that equation is just terrifying for

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any American to even think about.

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But that's the situation that they were in.

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So I knew, and everyone else working on it knew that there was nothing that was going

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to stop us.

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So I had to give everything we had.

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And it was really some active duty military marines and others who are sort of violating

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or breaking and bending protocol to make some of this work.

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And that's an amazing part of the story that those men and women, active duty men and women

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ought to get credit for their humanity and what they're doing right for the country.

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Absolutely.

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I mean, I hate to say that a lot of the marines were set up for failure at the gates as well,

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but they really were.

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I mean, the State Department just really botched this evacuation and they just weren't the

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marines that were at the front lines were not giving the proper guidance to execute

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this evacuation properly.

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So yeah, like I said, a lot of times they had to kind of go against policy and just

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do what they knew was right to save lives.

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So I was just so proud to share the same uniform as those men and women that stood on the

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front lines at Abbey Gates.

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I do want to say before we run out of time that Abdul and Muhammad and the family was

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able to get out and relocate.

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Give us that synopsis quickly.

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Yeah.

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Thank you for asking.

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They're doing great.

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They, I won't say exactly where they live, but they live very close to me.

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I get to see them constantly.

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I'm going over to their house this weekend for dinner.

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They're doing great and are fluently speaking English and they're in school and playing

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soccer and you know, the money to have jobs and they're have their own apartments.

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So they're doing fantastic.

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And we're just so happy to have them here safely.

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Well it's an American success story and we hope they are embrace it, enjoy it.

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Michael Cook, author of Life and Death at Abbey Gates, somebody wants to read your very

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candid, straightforward account of the fall of Afghanistan, the operation to save our

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allies.

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Where can they find the book?

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Yeah, anywhere you buy your books, Amazon obviously, Barnes & Noble.

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You can go to my website, which is Michael Cook.com.

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That's M-I-K-A-E-L Cook.com and you can purchase it there as well.

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Well your service to the country and the army was really quite noble, but more importantly

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the work you did afterwards to honor a commitment made to these Afghan nationals and their families

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is even more noteworthy.

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So Michael, we are very happy to have you here on Veterans Radio.

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Yeah, thank you so much.

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I really enjoyed that conversation.

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And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.

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I am Jim Fossone.

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It's been a pleasure to be your host.

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I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at

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00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:22,040
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.

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You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio

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shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.

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That's veteransradio.org.

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