Biden Ignored Terror Warnings—Now Americans Are Paying the Deadly Price

Paul Riverbank, 12/16/2025Biden skipped terror warnings; botched Afghan vetting left Americans exposed to deadly attacks.

Buried in freshly leaked briefings and investigations, senior U.S. intelligence officials allege that President Biden received explicit warnings about suspected terrorists among the surge of Afghan evacuees after America’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. By their account, he made the call not to intervene. That’s no wild conjecture—a clutch of government watchdogs have found themselves sifting through evidence that’s tough to ignore.

The controversy surrounds Operation Allies Welcome, a scramble to relocate Afghans who’d risked their safety alongside American forces. Intelligence circles flagged more than a thousand Afghan nationals with histories tying them to groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS—at least, that’s the unvarnished finding spelled out in recent oversight reports. Depending on who you ask inside those agencies, the tally may edge much higher—some insiders whisper it could be near 2,000, which, if accurate, might represent the lion’s share of known jihadists to enter since the evacuation began.

Simon Hankinson, veteran diplomat turned Heritage Foundation voice, offers a rarely discussed rationale: “The deliberate decision was taken to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghan nationals and their immediate relatives on the premise that the principal applicants had rendered significant service to the US government effort in Afghanistan.” In plain English, loyalty and urgency took precedence over red tape.

But here’s where the well-intended plan faltered. Sheaves of missing paperwork—names, dates of birth, abandoned or never-issued travel documents—left vetting offices in disarray. In audits that have since become public, the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector general observes, with some understatement, that the system “failed to properly screen, vet, or inspect the evacuees because basic information was missing.” Some border agents, according to their own reports, simply waved people through—unsure, unable, to do much else.

Despite the administration’s recent insistence that every evacuee was “screened,” findings from both DHS and the FBI increasingly point to a breakdown. The FBI captured the core dilemma succinctly: “Normal processes required to determine whether individuals posed a threat to national security and public safety were overtaken by the need to immediately evacuate.”

That abstract threat soon turned visceral. One particularly jarring episode unfolded in D.C., when Rahmanullah Lakanwal—once vouched for by U.S. intelligence—shot two National Guard members. Eyewitnesses heard him shout “Allahu Akbar” moments before killing Sarah Beckstrom and wounding Andrew Wolfe. Beckstrom, still in uniform, hadn’t even unwrapped her Thanksgiving leftovers. The night before, another Afghan evacuee in rural Texas—this one making bomb threats online—was quietly taken into custody.

It’s easy after such tragedies for voices to call for accountability, but the official response has been so muted, it nearly amounts to an absence. Press teams put in calls to President Biden, Vice President Harris, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and senior military officials. All lines, it seems, have stayed silent. Even the much-quoted House Homeland Security Committee’s top member got nowhere. Those who led Operation Allies Welcome have largely moved on to academic or consulting careers, and few—if any—have been eager to revisit details.

The Biden team, and their diminishing chorus of defenders, emphasize the chaos of the Afghan collapse—how bureaucratic caution might have spelled death for thousands more left behind. Yet the unavoidable truth stands: “Standard background check procedures were suspended, due to the immediate need to evacuate Afghan allies,” admits one official attached to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The paperwork, the oversight, the meticulous scrutiny—these gave way to triage.

Joe Kent, now with the National Counterterrorism Center, drew a sharper line while testifying to Congress this spring: “The number one threat right now is that we don’t know who came into our country in the last four years.” He’s mentioned the figure—85,000 Afghan admissions without enforcement of tough screening—enough times you wonder whether he dreams about it.

And so, what began as a matter for inspectors general and counterterrorism hawks has now bled fully into the political theater. Critics frame the oversights as “the predictable outcome of prioritising speed and volume over security.” Republicans, along with several nonpartisan watchdog groups, are pressing for a comprehensive review, and possibly a string of new investigations, into the government’s vetting failures.

For the grieving families of those killed—Sarah Beckstrom’s parents, Andrew Wolfe’s partner—or the residents of American towns unsettled by terror threats, Washington’s slow-winding postmortems feel cold and untimely. “It’s the citizens who pay the price when the government doesn’t do its job,” Hankinson offered, his voice flattening at the memory of earlier diplomatic crises.

Now, as pressure mounts on the Biden administration to clarify how warnings went unheeded, and what systems will change to prevent a repeat, the only sound from officialdom is a deeply disquieting hush. In a moment where loose borders and panicked decisions might have bloody results, the nation’s patience grows thin. Americans, in coffee shops, living rooms, and city halls, keep returning to that nagging question—who, exactly, is looking out for them?

There’s a certain kind of fatigue that sets in when the daily news cycle forces Americans to pivot—deadly shootings close to home one week, bombs detonating on another continent the next. In the past few days, front pages filled up with violent headlines out of Washington and Australia. Yet, away from the klieg lights, an altogether quieter but equally serious crisis has been taking root in the U.S.—and only now is it surfacing in the open.Buried in freshly leaked briefings and investigations, senior U.S. intelligence officials allege that President Biden received explicit warnings about suspected terrorists among the surge of Afghan evacuees after America’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. By their account, he made the call not to intervene. That’s no wild conjecture—a clutch of government watchdogs have found themselves sifting through evidence that’s tough to ignore.The controversy surrounds Operation Allies Welcome, a scramble to relocate Afghans who’d risked their safety alongside American forces. Intelligence circles flagged more than a thousand Afghan nationals with histories tying them to groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS—at least, that’s the unvarnished finding spelled out in recent oversight reports. Depending on who you ask inside those agencies, the tally may edge much higher—some insiders whisper it could be near 2,000, which, if accurate, might represent the lion’s share of known jihadists to enter since the evacuation began.Simon Hankinson, veteran diplomat turned Heritage Foundation voice, offers a rarely discussed rationale: “The deliberate decision was taken to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghan nationals and their immediate relatives on the premise that the principal applicants had rendered significant service to the US government effort in Afghanistan.” In plain English, loyalty and urgency took precedence over red tape.But here’s where the well-intended plan faltered. Sheaves of missing paperwork—names, dates of birth, abandoned or never-issued travel documents—left vetting offices in disarray. In audits that have since become public, the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector general observes, with some understatement, that the system “failed to properly screen, vet, or inspect the evacuees because basic information was missing.” Some border agents, according to their own reports, simply waved people through—unsure, unable, to do much else.Despite the administration’s recent insistence that every evacuee was “screened,” findings from both DHS and the FBI increasingly point to a breakdown. The FBI captured the core dilemma succinctly: “Normal processes required to determine whether individuals posed a threat to national security and public safety were overtaken by the need to immediately evacuate.”That abstract threat soon turned visceral. One particularly jarring episode unfolded in D.C., when Rahmanullah Lakanwal—once vouched for by U.S. intelligence—shot two National Guard members. Eyewitnesses heard him shout “Allahu Akbar” moments before killing Sarah Beckstrom and wounding Andrew Wolfe. Beckstrom, still in uniform, hadn’t even unwrapped her Thanksgiving leftovers. The night before, another Afghan evacuee in rural Texas—this one making bomb threats online—was quietly taken into custody.It’s easy after such tragedies for voices to call for accountability, but the official response has been so muted, it nearly amounts to an absence. Press teams put in calls to President Biden, Vice President Harris, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and senior military officials. All lines, it seems, have stayed silent. Even the much-quoted House Homeland Security Committee’s top member got nowhere. Those who led Operation Allies Welcome have largely moved on to academic or consulting careers, and few—if any—have been eager to revisit details.The Biden team, and their diminishing chorus of defenders, emphasize the chaos of the Afghan collapse—how bureaucratic caution might have spelled death for thousands more left behind. Yet the unavoidable truth stands: “Standard background check procedures were suspended, due to the immediate need to evacuate Afghan allies,” admits one official attached to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The paperwork, the oversight, the meticulous scrutiny—these gave way to triage.Joe Kent, now with the National Counterterrorism Center, drew a sharper line while testifying to Congress this spring: “The number one threat right now is that we don’t know who came into our country in the last four years.” He’s mentioned the figure—85,000 Afghan admissions without enforcement of tough screening—enough times you wonder whether he dreams about it.And so, what began as a matter for inspectors general and counterterrorism hawks has now bled fully into the political theater. Critics frame the oversights as “the predictable outcome of prioritising speed and volume over security.” Republicans, along with several nonpartisan watchdog groups, are pressing for a comprehensive review, and possibly a string of new investigations, into the government’s vetting failures.For the grieving families of those killed—Sarah Beckstrom’s parents, Andrew Wolfe’s partner—or the residents of American towns unsettled by terror threats, Washington’s slow-winding postmortems feel cold and untimely. “It’s the citizens who pay the price when the government doesn’t do its job,” Hankinson offered, his voice flattening at the memory of earlier diplomatic crises.Now, as pressure mounts on the Biden administration to clarify how warnings went unheeded, and what systems will change to prevent a repeat, the only sound from officialdom is a deeply disquieting hush. In a moment where loose borders and panicked decisions might have bloody results, the nation’s patience grows thin. Americans, in coffee shops, living rooms, and city halls, keep returning to that nagging question—who, exactly, is looking out for them?