In 2008 President Joe Biden was still serving as a senator and was running for president for the second time. On a visit to Afghanistan, he became stranded in a remote part of the country during a snowstorm, The Wall Street Journal reported.
He relied on an interpreter named Mohammed for rescue. Now he has left Mohammed stranded in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, according to a new, exclusive report from the Journal.
“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” Mohammed told the Journal on Monday. “Don’t forget me here.”
Mohammad is reportedly hiding from the Taliban with his four children, and he asked the Journal not to use his full name.
“I can’t leave my house,” he said on Tuesday. “I’m very scared.”
On Monday the U.S. ended its two-decade war in Afghanistan. It evacuated 120,000 people since August 14, but left behind more than 100 American citizens, in addition to thousands of Afghan nationals who aided the U.S.
During the 2008 snowstorm, Biden was traveling by helicopter with former Senators John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, and they made an emergency landing in a valley. Mohammed was working at an airfield, and he drove several hours into the mountains to rescue the three senators, according to the Journal report.
Biden himself spoke of this incident. On the campaign trail in 2008, he said, “If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”
“It’s in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said, “where my helicopter was recently forced down.”
After talking with Mohammed, the Journal’s Dion Nissenbaum wrote, “Mohammed spent much of his time in a tough valley where the soldiers said he was in more than 100 firefights with them.”
Mohammed has been trying to exit the country for several years, according to the report. He applied for a special immigrant visa, and he earned a recomendation from Lt. Col. Andrew R. Till.
In June, Till wrote, “His selfless service to our military men and women is just the kind of service I wish more Americans displayed.”
However, Mohammed has been kept in the country by bureaucratic red tape. The Journal reported that Mohammed’s employer, a defense contractor, lost Mohammed’s records.
Mohammed reportedly tried to leave Afghanistan via the Kabul airport earlier this month. Mohammed himself was allowed into the airport, but U.S. officials turned away his wife and children.
Mohammed also mustered some support from his colleagues, like Shawn O’Brien, an army veteran who worked with Mohammed in 2008. “If you can only help one Afghan, choose [Mohammed],” O’Brien wrote to Congress. “He earned it.”
The Journal reached out to the White House for comment. A White House official responded but declined to discuss any individual cases due to concerns about confidentiality.
Still, if the report is true, then Biden has some explaining to do.
The Horn editorial team