An Afghan man arrested on charges of planning an Election Day terrorist attack worked as a security guard in Afghanistan for the CIA, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.
Nasir Ahmed Tawhedi, 27, was arrested Monday in Oklahoma and charged with conspiring to kill Americans with an assault rifle on behalf of ISIS. Court documents say he contributed to an ISIS charity in March and accessed ISIS propaganda online, but they do not say whether he was radicalized before or after coming to the United States in 2021. A senior law enforcement official said the FBI is still investigating this matter.
The CIA declined to comment.
A US official said Tawhedi, like other Afghans who have been resettled in the US, must undergo rigorous security screening in other countries before arriving in the US. Court documents say Tawhedi entered the country in September 2021, about a month after the end of the U.S. military. Their chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.
“Every Afghan resettled in the United States goes through a rigorous screening and vetting process, regardless of the agency they work with,” the official said. “This process includes checks of the full range of U.S. records and collections,” the official said.
The Department of Homeland Security, which plays a key role in vetting, declined to discuss the case, saying in a statement that “Afghan evacuees seeking to enter the United States are subject to multi-level screening and vetting against intelligence, enforcement of law and counterterrorism. Appropriate action will be taken upon arrival of new information.”
But members of Congress and other U.S. officials said the evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans in the final days of the U.S. war raised concerns that not all of them had been properly vetted. A report DHS inspector general said the agency was “missing critical information” as it tried to vet refugees.
The CIA conducted its own large-scale evacuation of Afghans who worked or helped the agency.
The question of how and why Tawhedi was in the country before it was revealed that he worked for the CIA has become politically charged. Donald Trump Jr. wrote Wednesday on Platform X: “Border Czar Kamala Harris literally imported a terrorist into our country from Afghanistan. Enough!
He retweeted a post from Oklahoma's Republican attorney general who said: “The American people need to know that these radical Islamic terrorists were imported directly into the US by the Biden-Harris administration as part of their controversial refugee resettlement program. “
It is unclear whether Tawhedi was a radical Islamist when he arrived in the United States, and American authorities have refused to answer questions about how he was vetted.
The Justice Department's charging document states that he obtained a special immigrant visa “and is currently on probation awaiting trial in his immigration case.” Special immigrant visas are granted to Afghans who served in the United States in Afghanistan after passing DHS screening.
However, two American officials familiar with the matter told NBC News that the charging document is inaccurate and that Tawhedi entered the United States under what is known as humanitarian parole.
Officials say humanitarian parole generally involves much less screening than special immigrant visas.
Sources familiar with his work in Afghanistan say he had minimal interaction with Americans and was not a CIA informant or member of the US-armed and trained paramilitary force that “Zero Units.” Many of these fighters were evacuated to the United States after rigorous screening. and tests.
According to court documents, Tawhedi indicated in intercepted communications that he planned his attack for election day, November 5. Authorities said that in an interview after his arrest, he confirmed that the attack was aimed at large crowds and that he was expected to die. An authorities witness says he planned the operation with a teenage co-conspirator, described as an Afghan citizen with legal permanent resident status.
The pair were arrested after meeting with two confidential human sources and an undercover FBI agent posing as business partners in a rural area in the Western District of Oklahoma to purchase rifles, 10 rounds and ammunition for the planned attack.
