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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files with

your host, David Axelrod.

I first met Raja Cristina Morthy in the early 2000s when he was the volunteer research director

for another promising young Illinois politician named Barack Obama. Raja was a very successful

young lawyer at the time, but it was clear he had his eye on public service.

And today he represents a portion of Chicago suburbs in Congress. Raja has a great immigrant

story and a wide aperture on issues, but we started with the issue of the moment.

He's a member of the House Intelligence Committee. We talked about events in Afghanistan

in a conversation we had this week. Here it is.

Congressman Raja Cristina Morthy, my old friend. It's good to see you.

Hey David, it's my honor. I'm a big fan.

We go back a long way and we'll talk about that so much so that I'm going to call you

Raja for the rest of the conversation. But normally I would start by talking about your

personal story and your personal story is really compelling and it's one that I want

to get to. But we're talking on the day after Afghanistan fell. Even as we speak, there

are horrendous scenes at the airport in Kabul of Afghans who have cooperated with Americans,

collaborated with Americans, supported American troops and intelligence and so on, who are

climbing the fence at the airport to try and force away onto planes to escape the Taliban

as the Taliban search for them to punish them for cooperating with us. It's a horrendous

scene and it's like nothing that I've seen since the fall of Saigon in 1975. You're on

the House Intelligence Committee. How did this happen? How did we, how did this happen

...