A warning for listeners. This podcast features harsh language and descriptions of war, terrorism, and violence.

It's important to hear, but it can also be disturbing.

Back in Episode 3, you heard about Fred, an Afghan interpreter who served with American soldiers for more than 13 years.

I was thinking the troops were going to stay in Afghanistan forever. I will be with the troop forever.

As long as I'm alive, I'm going to help these troops to bring peace and prosperity to my country.

Fred went on hundreds of combat missions in Afghanistan. To many American soldiers, Fred was known as one of the best interpreters in the field.

Fred is a tough guy and very, very smart and just had tremendous instinct.

And he was so good at it that whenever troops were going out on patrol, they would want to bring him with him.

That's Dave Lemoine, a former FBI agent who worked with Fred in Afghanistan.

Lemoine passed away in 2020. This audio is from an interview with the International Refugee Assistance Project or IRAP.

Fred was always out on combat missions. Sometimes he'd be out all day and he'd come back late in the evening and somebody would be going out at night.

And he hadn't been back an hour and then asked him to go out again and he never would refuse.

Lemoine and Fred met in 2008. They bonded over a shared sense of humor and a relentless belief in the US's mission in Afghanistan.

They were admittedly an odd duo. Lemoine, a former cop with a thick southern accent and Fred, a soft-spoken Afghan who learned profanity from American soldiers.

When Lemoine went back to the US, he stayed in touch with Fred. Fred told him he was trying to come to America too, but Fred was having lots of problems with his application for a special immigrant visa. Here's Fred.

I always think one thing when I apply for visa, my case is going to get denied again.

No one knows what's going on, right? There's somebody else in charge of all the people. They process it. They don't care about you, you are. Yeah, you serve for the US government, sure. But you're Afghan. You did not deserve it.

In 2013, Congress passed a series of reforms to the SIV program. You heard about them in the last episode. IRAP came up with those reforms from their experience dealing with past SIV cases.

Those reforms were tailored to fix problems that they had encountered within the application process. In effect, those amendments led to more Afghans getting visas.

So Lemoine told Fred to keep applying. He had given up at one time after the second, maybe a third or fourth time, he got rejected, he wanted to quit. I said, well, you might quit, but Sherry and I aren't quitting. So you might as well come along with a ride.

That other name he mentioned is a woman named Sherry Long. She was an attorney who was doing pro bono work. Long was given Fred's case through IRAP in 2014.

I'm not sure how many times it was denied before I met him. I know how many times it was denied after I started working on it.

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