Honestly, if there’s one agency in the federal government we should expect to know how to carry out a background check, and how to uncover if a particular person is potentially dangerous or harbors radical beliefs, that agency would be the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA.) I mean, it’s their job, right?
Advertisement
One guy slipped through the cracks – and he happens to be Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who was recently arrested for plotting an Election Day terror attack right here, in the United States. And he worked for the CIA:
An Afghan man arrested on charges of planning a terrorist attack on Election Day worked as a security guard in Afghanistan for the CIA, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was arrested on Monday in Oklahoma and accused of plotting to kill Americans with an assault rifle on behalf of ISIS. Court documents said he had contributed to an ISIS charity in March and accessed online ISIS propaganda, but they did not say whether he was radicalized before or after he came to the U.S. in 2021.
One senior administration official said counterterrorism officials assess that Tawhedi became radicalized during the three years he lived in the U.S. A senior law enforcement official said the FBI is still investigating that question.
It would be roundly interesting to know more about these counterterrorism officials’ assessment of this goblin. They are of the considered opinion that Tawhedi was radicalized here, in the United States. Not during the lifetime he spent in Afghanistan, the homeland of the Taliban, the nation that harbored the 9-11 attackers, the nation that sheltered Osama bin Laden for years?
Advertisement
We can presume the CIA did some kind of investigation on Tawhedi before employing him. Investigation of foreign nationals is what they do. Now, in all fairness, it’s not impossible that Tawhedi was indeed radicalized here in America after his admission into the country. Plenty of young skulls full of mush on our nation’s university campuses have bought into the whole “Hamas good, Israel bad” horse squeeze, after all. While most of these kids are more inclined to cosplay with a kaffiyeh and sit in pop-up tents on the lawn drinking Starbucks and texting their antisemitic remarks to each other, a guy born in Afghanistan and raised in that culture may be far more inclined to take things to the next level.
Previously on RedState: It’s Going to Happen Here: Afghan National Arrested in US for Plotting Election Day Terror Attack
CNN Once Again Exposed As Hacks After ‘Fact-Check’ on Afghani Arrested for Election Day Terror Plot
Court documents say Tawhedi entered the country in September 2021, about a month after the U.S. military completed its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.
Now, assuming the screening of these people is adequate – that’s questionable in this case – this is a good practice. There are people in Afghanistan who worked with us, who helped us, and who are in serious, no-squeeze danger if they remain in the country. If they provided faithful service to America, then America should reciprocate and not leave them twisting in the breeze in Afghanistan once the Taliban took back over, which I think we all knew would happen.
Advertisement
The senior administration official also said:
“Every Afghan resettled in the U.S. undergoes a rigorous screening and vetting process no matter which agency they worked with,” the official said. “That process includes checking against a full range of U.S. records and holdings,” the official said.
Yeah, about that:
The CIA declined to comment.
No kidding.