Pentagon Spox Admit Unaware of Kabul Embassy Warning Under Grilling from Reporters Over Airport Threat

On Saturday, the State Department issued a warning through the embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan that Americans wishing to go to the airport and attempt to board flights out of the country should avoid doing so, based on the danger and threat. At a Pentagon briefing hours later, both Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby were unaware of the details of that guidance.

The embassy alert issued on August 21 stated that, “Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport, we are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so.”

It wasn’t long after that alert, which contradicted comments from President Joe Biden on Friday, that his trip to Delaware was cancelled.

A reporter at the Pentagon briefing asked about the warning, saying that “the embassy has issued a warning telling people not to go to the airport,” and asking about what exactly was the “key threat” that prompted the warning.

Gen. Taylor answered first, expressing that he did not know about that.

“You talked about guidance going out to not go” to the airport, he replied. “I’m not familiar with that directly. We are continuing to process people throughout the last 24 hours.”

He added that the commanders are “metering” the number of people coming through the gates, and said there was no “reported change to the current enemy situation in and around the airport at this time.”

Social media is full of videos from verified and foreign press accounts of multiple acts of violence, including directly from the Taliban, in and around the airport.

In a follow-up question, a reporter read from the embassy alert to Kirby, who answered with equally unfamiliar responses.

“What you’re seeing out of our state department colleagues, I think, is prudent notification to make sure that whatever movement there is to the gates from outside the airport is done as safely as possible, and that people have the information that they need to make the best decisions for themselves going forward.”

On what the threats might be, Kirby simply said he couldn’t say due to security reasons.

In another follow-up Kirby continued not to inform anyone of the nature of the threat, saying they are in regular communication with the Taliban. (Though not, it would seem, the American Embassy.)

Reporters continued to push on the subject of the airport and the security of Americans attempting to get to it, without any real answers from the Pentagon. One reporter specifically asked about the contradiction between what they were hearing in the briefing versus the statement of warning.

Watch the clips above, via Fox News.