The Pentagon appeared to backtrack on President Biden’s implication that al Qaeda was “gone” from Afghanistan and admitted the terror group still has a “presence” in the region.

The United States military doesn’t know the size of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations’ presence in Afghanistan, as troops attempt to evacuate thousands of Americans and Afghan allies from the country that’s been overtaken by the Taliban.

“We do not believe it is exorbitantly high,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday. “It’s not like they carry identification cards and register somewhere.”

The admission came less than two hours after President Joe Biden defended the decision to put an end to the longest war in U.S. history and withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by implying that al Qaeda was no longer in the country.

“What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda gone?” Biden told reporters during an update Friday on the status of evacuations. “We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, as well as getting Osama bin Laden, and we did.”

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Roughly an hour later, Fox News National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin questioned Defense Department Press Secretary John Kirby on Biden’s statement.

Griffin asked Kirby for an estimate on how many al Qaeda operatives were currently in Afghanistan, and Kirby was not able to give her a specific number.

“I haven’t seen an estimate on that,” Kirby said. “OK, I don’t know if we have an exact estimate.”

“You don’t have military intelligence estimates about how many al Qaeda remain in Afghanistan?” Griffin pushed back.

“We know that al Qaeda is a presence as well as ISIS in Afghanistan,” Kirby said. “And we’ve talked about that for quite some time. We do not believe it is exorbitantly high, but we don’t have an exact figure for you, as I think you might understand.”

Griffin then asked Kirby about the comment from the president less than an hour before where he suggested the terror group was “gone.”

“The president just said that there is no al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan,” Griffin told Kirby. “That does not seem to be correct.”

Kirby responded, “What we don’t think is that what we believe is that there isn’t a presence that is significant enough to merit a threat to our homeland. As there was back on 9/11 20 years ago. The president also said there is no national security interest, no national interest in Afghanistan.”

Griffin told Kirby she was “a little confused by that” and asked for an explanation as to why U.S. troops were in Afghanistan for two decades if there is no “national interest” in Afghanistan.

Kirby responded by saying that there was an interest 20 years ago but now that al Qaeda has been “defeated” it is safe to withdraw, and the United States will maintain an “overwatch vigilance with respect to the counterterrorism threat emanating out of Afghanistan.”

“But, John, you just said that you don’t have intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan anymore. How are you going to have overwatch?” Griffin said. “And you still have al Qaeda in the country.

“What I said was we don’t have the degree of dexterity, intelligence to be able to give you a headcount, a nose count of exactly how many al Qaeda fighters are in Afghanistan,” Kirby said. “Nobody’s walking away from the fact that they aren’t there. And we’re certainly going to maintain as much vigilance as we can absent a presence on the ground.