The publisher of The Washington Post pleaded with the White House on Monday to have the U.S. military move to safety more than 200 journalists and related people affiliated with the Post, Wall Street Journal and New York Times who are “in danger” at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.
Post Publisher Fred Ryan asked National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in an “urgent request” email to have them moved from the civilian side of Hamid Karzai International Airport “to the military side where they can be safe as they await evacuation flights.”
“They are currently in danger and need the US government to get them to safety,” Ryan wrote in the email, which he said he was writing on behalf of the three newspapers.
Afghan people sit as they wait to leave the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule.