Hegseth Orders Probe Into 2021 Afghanistan Withdrawal, Previous Investigations

Several reports and hearings have found successive administrations culpable.

A sign displaying photos and names of the 13 service members killed in a terrorist attack at Abbey Gate outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, is seen during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 9, 2024. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the Pentagon to investigate August 2021’s “chaotic withdrawal” from Afghanistan.

Hegseth also said he wants to “thoroughly examine previous investigations” into decisions made by the Biden administration before the suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 servicemembers and more than 170 civilians.

Hegseth said in a May 20 memorandum to Pentagon and combatant commanders that since assuming his post, he has been “engaged in a review of this catastrophic event” and has concluded that the United States needs “to conduct a comprehensive review to ensure that accountability for this event is met and that the complete picture is provided to the American people.”

Several reports have already been issued following investigations into the withdrawal.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee conducted a year-long investigation into decision-making during the six months before the bungled withdrawal, staging three full committee hearings on the matter from 2023 to 2024.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform followed with two hearings in 2024.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), committee panel chairs, have accused the Biden administration and the Pentagon of not cooperating in congressional efforts to determine how the catastrophe unfolded.

Hegseth said in a May 20 statement announcing the latest probe into the withdrawal, “We have an obligation to the American people and to the warfighters who fought in Afghanistan to get the truth—and we will.”

The Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing marked the end of the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Republicans lay sole responsibility on the Biden administration’s actions—specifically those of then-President Joe Biden, then-national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken—in the months preceding that day.

On Sept. 9, 2024, the House GOP issued a 345-page “Willful Blindness” report arguing that Biden, Sullivan, and Blinken discarded advice to maintain a stronger military presence in Afghanistan to keep the terrorist group the Taliban at bay, opting to stick to the September 2021 “go to zero” withdrawal timeline set in April 2021.

Democrats and Biden administration officials, including Blinken, during a marathon Dec. 11, 2024, hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the genesis of the disaster was the Doha Agreement with the Taliban, which President Donald Trump signed during his first term in February 2020 without consulting the Afghan government.

The Doha Agreement outlined a 14-month withdrawal of coalition forces from 14,000 to 8,600 U.S. troops by the end of 2020 and to 2,500 by January 2021, a reduction ordered by Trump in one of his last acts before leaving the White House at the end of what would be his first term.

That determination was buttressed by the State Department’s “After Action Report“ published in June 2023 and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report released in October 2023.

Both reports concluded that the Trump and Biden administrations share responsibility for the bungled withdrawal—one administration’s bad treaty leaving the next in an untenable position that devolved into a deadly disaster through dogged adherence to timelines that ignored what was happening on the ground.

Pentagon senior adviser Sean Parnell, a former Army airborne ranger who spent more than 15 months in Afghanistan and “was wounded in action along with 85 percent of his platoon,” will spearhead the new probe into the investigations, according to Hegseth.

“It is fitting that he will lead the effort to reexamine previous Abbey Gate investigations conducted by U.S. Central Command during the Biden administration,” Hegseth said.

He also named former Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, “a combat-decorated Marine officer who spoke out about the Afghanistan withdrawal,” and author Jerry Dunleavy, “who helped lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s investigation into the Afghanistan withdrawal,” to the special review panel.

“[Parnell] and his team will look at the facts, examine the sources, interview witnesses, analyze the decision-making, and post-mortem the chain of events that led to one of America’s darkest moments,” Hegseth said.

“[Parnell] and his team will provide updates at appropriate times to keep the American people informed of our findings and any directed actions resulting from our review.”