The chairmen of two House committees — Michael McCaul (R., Texas) of Foreign Affairs and Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) of Armed Services — are demanding answers from the Pentagon on why the Kabul Airport bombing in 2021 was not averted.
The bombing occurred during the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving 13 service members and at least 170 Afghans dead. In March, Marine Corps sniper Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was catastrophically injured in the bombing, testified before McCaul’s committee. He said he and others spotted the suspected suicide bomber based on intelligence provided to them and requested permission to engage. They never received the go-ahead.
“Eventually the individual disappeared. To this day, we believe he was the suicide bomber. Plain and simple, we were ignored,” Vargas-Andrews said. “Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety.”
The two chairmen wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that “testimony during the hearing raises serious questions regarding the events leading up to the attack, which must be answered.”
“Battlefield decisions are often made in a cloud, but in honor of the lives lost and those still living following that terrible day, it is incumbent we learn whether events were avoidable and if uncertain procedures, broken lines of communication, or worse, contributed to the lack of engagement,” wrote McCaul and Rogers.
The pair are requesting a detailed description of the response to the request for engagement authority by Sergeant Vargas-Andrews’s sniper team and all documents and communications relating to the events at Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021. They are also seeking nonpublic information connected to the After Action Review.
McCaul has been leading a reexamination of the Afghanistan withdrawal. He notched a success earlier this week when Secretary of State Antony Blinken allowed McCaul to view a document he was withholding.
Blinken was doing so despite the fact that McCaul had subpoenaed the document — a dissent cable in which diplomats warned about the repercussions of U.S. withdrawal — back in March. The secretary of state relented only after being threatened with contempt.