A management notice was sent to all American personnel in Afghanistan from the US embassy facilities manager, asking staff to “reduce the amount of sensitive material on the property.”
The email further asks that they destroy anything with US logos, flags “or items which could be misused in propaganda efforts.”
The email details the ways diplomats can destroy material: use burn bins and shredders for paper, a disintegrator for electronics, incinerators for medical waste and a compactor that “can crush items that are too big for the disintegrator.”
The first of 3,000 troops being brought in to help evacuate many of the embassy’s employees have arrived.
The US has been surprised – and frustrated – by the Afghan army’s inability or, in some cases, unwillingness, to fight back.
Many fighters and officials have given up their weapons and surrendered to the Taliban.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday that it appears the Taliban is “trying to get Kabul isolated” but that the capital city was not under “imminent threat”.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the embassy remains open for now. “This is not abandonment, this is not an evacuation, this is not a wholesale withdrawal,” Price said.
