I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, August 20th.

The life and death drama unfolding in Afghanistan as the U.S. failure to anticipate the Taliban's rapid takeover threatens

the evacuations of Americans and especially Afghans who have helped the U.S.-led war effort.

As Taliban checkpoints continue to control who is and who isn't allowed to get to the Kabul

airport, at least several new developments are worth mentioning.

Protests against the Taliban are spreading.

At least one violent crackdown on the protesters is being reported, important in its own right, but also how will that affect Taliban decisions about how free movement movement to the airport

will be.

And the Wall Street Journal is reporting on a

State Department cable sent last month from about two dozen people working at the U.S. Embassy in

Kabul, warning of a potential collapse of the city soon after President Biden's August 31st

troop withdrawal deadline. The journal says the cable offered ways to speed up the

evacuation and was sent through the State Department's confidential dissent channel.

With us now is someone who recently served at a high level in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Annie Forsheimer was deputy chief of mission there in 2017 and 2018 and then became the acting deputy

assistant secretary of state for Afghanistan until March of 2019. She is now an associate with the

Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Annie Forsheimer joins us now. Thank you so

much for your time at this very crucial time.

Welcome to WNYC.

Well, thank you very much for having me.

Can I ask you first to give our listeners from some context for that July cable from the embassy staff reported on by the Wall Street Journal?

What is the dissent channel that the article says the cable was sent through?

...