WH Spox Kirby: Zawahiri’s Presence in Kabul Was Threat to U.S. That ‘Some Senior Leaders’ of Taliban-Linked Haqqani Network Knew of

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” White House National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby responded to a question on whether the Taliban knew of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul by stating that “some senior leaders of the Haqqani Network” — a group whose head, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is Interior Minister in Afghanistan — “were aware. And we know that from the way that they tried to cover things up over the last 24, 48 hours.” Kirby also stated that Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul was a threat to the U.S. homeland “because he has been actively involved in planning and plotting threats against our homeland going forward.”

Host Rachel Maddow asked, “Do you believe — does the administration believe that the Taliban knew Zawahiri was in Kabul? Obviously, the justification for invading Afghanistan in 2001 was that the Taliban were providing a safe haven for Zawahiri and for Bin Laden and for the al-Qaeda organization ahead of 9/11. Did they know that he was back in Afghanistan, back in Kabul?”

Kirby responded, “We know that some senior leaders of the Haqqani Network were aware. And we know that from the way that they tried to cover things up over the last 24, 48 hours. That’s really about as far as I can go into this. But we have indications that some of them were aware. Look, I mean, al-Qaeda was on the ground in Afghanistan even when the president decided to end that war, and we knew that, and we talked about that, that al-Qaeda was already re-establishing a presence there. We also said that we were going to watch that very, very closely and stay vigilant and make sure that we had the capacity, from an over-the-horizon perspective, to deal with any threats to the homeland. Mr. Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul certainly met that test because he has been actively involved in planning and plotting threats against our homeland going forward.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett