The White House on Tuesday continued to highlight what it said was President Joe Biden’s “success” in killing Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader involved in the planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying it “has undoubtedly made the United States safer.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan also said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the strike vindicated Biden’s controversial and chaotic withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
“It has proven the president right when he said one year ago that we did not need to keep thousands of American troops in Afghanistan fighting and dying in a 20-year war to be able to hold terrorists at risk and to defeat threats to the United States,” Sullivan said.
The White House also released a new photograph it said showed Biden in the Situation Room on July 1 getting briefed briefed on the proposed operation by CIA director William Burns and being shown a model of the safe house where al-Zawahiri was hiding.
A White House official confirmed to ABC News that the closed wooden box on the table in the photograph contained the scale model of the house.
President Joe Biden meets with members of the CIA and National Security advisers about al-Qaeda leaders and their locations, July 1, 2022, in the White House Situation Room. Biden announced on Monday, August 1, 2022 that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who helped plot the 9/11 terrorist attack, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul.
Adam Schultz/ White House Photo via UPI/Shutterstock
When Biden announced al-Zawahiri’s death on Monday in an address from the White House, he stated “justice has been delivered” and he and the White House have made a point of saying he had been careful before approving the strike that no civilians would be killed or wounded.
A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that the CIA carried out the operation.
A separate senior administration official said Monday there was no indication of anyone else harmed by the two Hellfire missiles fired from a drone, missiles with rotating blades that use kinetic energy to kill, different from large explosions, to limit collateral damage.
But with no U.S. forces on the ground, it was unclear how the administration could be certain of that.
Al-Zawahiri was killed at approximately 9:48 p.m. on July 30 on the balcony of his safe house in downtown Kabul after months of planning among various parts of the counterterrorism community, a senior administration official told reporters Monday.
Biden was first briefed on al-Zawahiri’s whereabouts back in April, the official told reporters, and received updates on the development of the target throughout May and June.
Biden convened several other meetings with his key advisors and Cabinet members in the weeks that followed to carefully scrutinize the intelligence and evaluate the best course of action, the official said.
A final meeting was held on July 25, where Biden authorized the strike.
The White House photo of Biden was reminiscent of a similar photo of President Barack Obama in the Situation Room watching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
While the strike was largely applauded by members of Congress, Republicans focused on what they call Biden’s “disastrous withdrawal” from Afghanistan that they say reopened the door for al-Qaeda in the country.
“President Biden deserves credit for approving this strike,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement. “But al-Zawahiri’s return to downtown Kabul further indicates that Afghanistan is again becoming a major thicket of terrorist activity following the President’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is demanding an immediate intelligence briefing for Congress on the “possible reemergence” of the terrorist organization. Rep. Mike McCaul, who sites on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, went so far as to say Biden lied to the American people when he said last year al-Qaeda was “gone” from Afghanistan.
Sullivan pushed back on the criticism on “Good Morning America,” stating the drone strike is proof the U.S. can continue to go after its enemies without endangering service members.
“There is not a single American in harm’s way in that country in uniform and there was nobody on the ground in uniform when this strike occurred and yet we were able to take Ayman al-Zawahiri off the battlefield,” Sullivan told George Stephanopoulos. “I would call that a successful, effective policy that protects our troops, protects our people and ensures that Afghanistan will not be a safe haven for terrorists.”
But questions remain on how the U.S. will respond to the Taliban’s actions in sheltering al-Zawahiri. Senior members of the Taliban were aware of his presence in Kabul this year, the senior administration official told reporters Monday.
The official also said Haqqani Taliban members took actions after the airstrike to conceal al-Zawahiri’s presence at the location and acted quickly to remove al-Zawahiri’s wife, his daughter and her children to another location consistent with a broader effort to cover up that they had been living in the safe house.
Sullivan said the U.S. is in direct communication with the Taliban but did not reveal any specifics on how exactly the Taliban will be held accountable.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday the Taliban “grossly” violated the Doha Agreement by sheltering al-Zawahiri. In the 2020 agreement, the Taliban said they wouldn’t harbor al-Qaeda members.
“They also betrayed the Afghan people and their own stated desire for recognition from and normalization with the international community,” Blinken said. “In the face of the Taliban’s unwillingness or inability to abide by their commitments, we will continue to support the Afghan people with robust humanitarian assistance and to advocate for the protection of their human rights, especially of women and girls.”
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Trish Turner, Allison Pecorin and Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.
