“[U.S.] leaders were told by the military it would take no time at all for the Taliban to take everything,” an anonymous U.S. intelligence official told ABC News. “No one listened.”

Other intelligence sources said that Biden and his team of advisers had reached their decision about the U.S. military’s withdrawal — which was all but completed on July 4 — based on a variety of factors that went beyond Kabul’s fate.

A senior congressional official who asked not to be named in order to discuss sensitive briefings told ABC News that intelligence officers had warned the U.S. leaders about a swift and total victory by the fundamentalist Taliban militants who had held power in Kabul during the late 1990s up until after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The intelligence community assessment has always been accurate; they just disregarded it,” the official told ABC News, speaking about the Biden administration.