State Department STILL didn’t have a full Afghanistan evacuation plan when the Taliban stormed Kabul... days before the suicide blast: Devastating new details reveal the chaos in the bungled operation.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is investigating the Afghan withdrawal.
13 US service members died and hundreds of Americans were left behind in 2021
Testimony by two officials reveals how speed of Taliban advance surprised them.
Hours of private testimony by two of the top State Department officials who oversaw the evacuation from Afghanistan lays bare the confusion at the heart of the operation, and how they failed to respond to warning signs that the Taliban was sweeping across the country.
The result was a chaotic operation at Kabul’s airport in August 2021 with Americans scrambling to get on flights after the extremist group had seized control of the country.
American citizens had to pass through checkpoints run by the same gunmen who had spent years battling U.S. forces.
Yet even as the Pentagon prepositioned forces to support an evacuation as ground conditions worsened, the officials, Brian McKeon and Derek Chollet, said their priority had been to work out how to keep the U.S. embassy open.
They were still working on a plan to evacuate Americans and their Afghan allies when the militant group overran the capital.
Taliban gunmen swept into Kabul on August 15, 2021. The speed of their advance, as Afghan National Security Forces collapsed, took U.S. officials by surprise
Two top State Department officials, Derek Chollet (left) and Brian McKeon were interviewed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee investigation last year. Their testimony, obtained by DailyMail.com, offers fresh insight into how officials failed to anticipate the Taliban advance
Whistleblowers from the Washington D.C. National Guard will tell Congress that Donald Trump did want them deployed during the Capitol riot and the Army delayed telling them to mobilize in a bombshell hearing next week.
DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal that at least three officers will appear Wednesday before a House subcommittee to claim their stories were also ignored by the Democrat-led January 6 committee, because it didn’t fit their narrative.
The hearing will aim to further prove that Acting Defense Secretary at the time Christopher Miller did give advance approval of D.C. National Guard deployment at the direction of then-President Donald Trump.