Director for Counter Terrorism National Security Council Sebastian Gorka discussed Wednesday evening on Fox News how he helped take down alleged Abbey Gate terrorist Mohammad Sharifullah, saying that President Donald Trump kept his promise to the families of the 13 U.S. service members who were killed in the attack.
During the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 under the Biden-Harris administration, a suicide bomber killed 13 service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians outside the Abbey Gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. During his joint address to Congress Tuesday evening, Trump announced that Sharifullah, who was allegedly involved in planning the bombing, was arrested by his administration.
On “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Gorka, who had been with the team at the time of Sharifullah’s arrest, was asked by Fox’s Jesse Watters to describe the takedown, specifically what led to nabbing the suspected terrorist.
“We just unleashed the hounds of hell,” Gorka said. “I came into office to run counterterrorism for Mike Waltz, the former Green Beret National Security Advisor to President Trump. In my first two weeks, I’d been told by the intelligence community, our special operators, that they’ve been surveilling bad guys, jihadis across the planet for four years, and the Biden administration just didn’t care. We said, ‘Well, we told the president, and he said, find them and kill them.’”
Gorka said he told the CIA, NSA and FBI that they need to find Sharifullah for Trump and the families affected, whether that be killing him or bringing him “to U.S. soil to face justice.”
“The NSA especially, we salute, you know who you are … The NSA team that found a certain piece of intelligence. We provided it to the government of Pakistan,” Gorka said as he thanked that country for taking the suspected terrorist down and arresting him.
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“Then our brave flight team members from the FBI went to Islamabad on Saturday. They interviewed Sharifullah, and he confessed not just to Abbey Gate, but to numerous other ISIS mass murders. We were there on the tarmac with Kash [Patel], Pam [Bondi], Tulsi [Gabbard], John [Radcliffe], with my counterterrorism team and about 100 other agents. It was like a movie. President Trump made the promises to the Abbey Gate 13 families. Last night at 3 a.m. at Dulles Airport, President Trump kept that promise.”
A Pakistani intelligence official familiar with the operation told ABC News that Pakistani special forces had recently captured Sharifullah on the Pakistani-Afghan border and extradited him to the U.S. by Tuesday evening.
Watters went on to ask Gorka what he said to the suspected terrorist as he met him face-to face Tuesday evening. Gorka described seeing the “pits of hell” in Sharifullah’s eyes.
“I just looked him in the eyes, and I looked into his eyes. I saw the pits of hell. I saw darkness in that man’s eyes, the likes of which I’d never seen before. I just felt good for the families,” Gorka said. “President Trump spoke to those families privately before the joint session from the White House. I was there with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”
“We gave them just a little bit, a little bit of closure for their loved ones when we brought that walking piece of human filth evil to justice last night,” Gorka added. “I salute everyone, the FBI, the agents of CBP, the marshals, the pilots. God bless what you did for America. This is why elections matter, Jesse, because of that man being in a supermax and paying a penalty for the murder of American war fighters.”
During both former President Joe Biden’s and former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the 2024 presidency, the two leaders were heavily criticized for their handling of Abbey Gate, particularly regarding the families of the slain service members. In a September 2024 interview with Fox News, two fathers of the Gold Star service members called out Harris and Biden for “gaslighting” families and ignoring them over the past three years since the incident.
Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America
