The classified documents, allegedly stashed away in safes, should have been disclosed, review panel chief Sean Parnell has said
Pentagon investigators reviewing the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan have uncovered classified documents that they say were deliberately hidden from previous probes. The discovery comes amid long-running accusations that the administration of former US President Joe Biden concealed failures surrounding the operation.
Sean Parnell, chairman of the Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel, said on Wednesday that his team had recovered “highly relevant classified documents” that “should have been disclosed.”
The material had been “stashed and hidden away in safes where they would not be found,” Parnell said in a video statement on X, five years after the deadly bombing of the Abbey Gate entrance to Kabul airport.
“After the team reviewed these documents, it became clear why someone tried to hide them,” he said.
Parnell did not disclose what the documents actually contain, who allegedly concealed them, or whether they relate to any specific decisions made by Biden or his officials.
However, he said his panel would follow the evidence “wherever it leads and to whoever it touches,” and promised veterans and the families of those killed “the full picture” of how and why decisions were made during the disastrous withdrawal.
Thirteen US service members and around 170 Afghans were killed when an ISIS-K suicide bomber attacked Abbey Gate during the August 2021 evacuation. During the chaotic withdrawal, the Taliban rapidly swept across Afghanistan, the Western-backed government collapsed, and thousands of people crowded Kabul airport in an attempt to flee the country.
Images of desperate Afghans clinging to a departing US military aircraft became emblematic of the withdrawal, which ended a 20-year American military presence with the Taliban back in power.
Republicans have since repeatedly accused Biden officials of ignoring or downplaying warnings that a complete US withdrawal could trigger the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and security forces, and of waiting too long to launch a full-scale evacuation.
House investigators have also consistently raised concerns that potentially relevant photographs, video, and other material from the evacuation were missing, deleted, or otherwise unavailable during subsequent probes. They have accused Biden-era officials of withholding information and frustrating congressional attempts to establish exactly how key decisions were made.
Biden administration officials have denied any cover-up and argued that the unexpectedly rapid collapse of the Afghan government severely complicated the evacuation.
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