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The Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guardsmen just blocks from the White House on the day before Thanksgiving served in an elite CIA counterterrorism unit in Afghanistan, according to new details that emerged Thursday about the suspect’s background.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, served in Afghanistan with NDS-03, an elite unit operated by the CIA with direct U.S. intelligence and military support, according to Afghan Evac, a non-profit that works with Afghans on Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).
Lakanwal’s unit operated in Afghanistan’s southern region — in Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan — out of the former compound of the late Taliban leader Mullah Omar, commonly referred to as “Mullah Omar’s house” and by U.S. forces as “Camp Gecko.”
NDS-03 was one of about five paramilitary groups working with the CIA. They were commonly called “Zero Units” due to the numbers following their National Directorate of Security (NDS) or Afghan intelligence service designation.
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The Afghan members of the units were highly vetted and trained by the CIA and carried out some of the toughest counterterrorism missions against the Taliban, Al Qaeda and others. They were very trusted and brave, according to those who worked with them.
Lakanwal entered the U.S. legally in 2021 under humanitarian parole as part of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of the country. The operation aimed to support and resettle vulnerable Afghans, including those that had helped U.S. troops in the past.
He had his asylum application approved in April 2025 under the Trump administration, the non-profit group said.
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U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro and FBI Director Kash Patel criticized the vetting process during a press conference on Thursday.
Pirro said the shooting is an example of what happens “in this country when people are allowed in who are not properly vetted.” Patel said the Biden administration allowed “thousands of people into this country without doing a single piece of background checking or vetting.”
A senior U.S. official told Fox News that the CIA would have done its own vetting of him through a variety of databases, including the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) database, to see if he had any known ties to terrorist groups before working with him.
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Lakanwal began working with the CIA around 2011, when he was likely 15 years old, according to the official, who added that the CIA would have kept the identities of those they worked with secret.
The official noted it was common at the time for Afghans to forge their birth certificates to appear 18 or older before applying to work with the U.S. government. Few official records of birth are kept in Afghanistan, and it was often difficult to know anyone’s exact age, the official added.
NCTC would have vetted him during Operation Allies Welcome in 2021 for any ties to terrorism before he was allowed into the U.S., the senior official said.
“In terms of vetting, nothing came up,” the senior U.S. official told Fox News. “He was clean on all checks.”
The senior official added that the U.S. government had been doing continuous, annual vetting since the Afghans’ arrival in the U.S., especially in the wake of the foiled terror plot in Oklahoma before last year’s election, which involved an Afghan evacuee.
Lakanwal is accused of shooting National Guardsmen Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, near the Farragut West Metro station around 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday.
Pirro said the suspect “ambushed” the pair in a “targeted” attack. The suspect was then shot by a responding Guardsman and subdued. He was hospitalized and placed under “heavy guard,” she said.
Beckstrom and Wolfe remained in critical condition after undergoing surgery, Pirro said.
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