Pentagon to revisit Kabul airport bombing with new witness interviews

Facing renewed scrutiny, U.S. military officials said Friday that they will interview nearly 20 service members wounded two years ago in a catastrophic bombing as the Biden administration raced to leave Afghanistan, firsthand witnesses whom investigators never consulted but whose public accounts so far have cast doubt on the Pentagon’s determination that the attack was “not preventable.”

Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, who oversees U.S. Central Command, ordered the additional interviews “to ensure we do our due diligence” with information that came to light after the military closed its investigation of the incident, Michael Lawhorn, a Central Command spokesman, said in a statement. By itself, the move does not formally reopen the investigation, but the general could determine that doing so becomes necessary once the new interviews are complete.

Kurilla, the statement says, wants to ensure that “relevant voices are fully heard and that we take those accounts and examine them seriously and thoroughly so the facts are laid bare.”

Thirteen U.S. troops and an estimated 170 Afghans died in the bombing, which occurred the afternoon of Aug. 26, 2021, as thousands of civilians, desperate to escape the incoming Taliban regime, massed outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport in a frantic bid to board one of the evacuation flights. Three days later, a U.S. drone strike killed 10 civilians, including seven children, in a botched operation that senior U.S. officials initially called a “righteous” attack on a suspected Islamic State suicide bomber preparing to hit the airport again.

The twin calamities in Afghanistan remain a low point in the Biden presidency, and House Republicans have spent much of the past year interrogating the actions by key members of his administration before, during and after a decision was reached to follow through with the complete withdrawal of American personnel.

Lawhorn’s statement singled out the account of Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a Marine sergeant who lost two limbs in the attack on the airport’s Abbey Gate. Vargas-Andrews first told The Washington Post in an interview published in August 2022 that he believed he had the bomber in his gunsights before the explosion but that commanders rejected his request to fire on the suspect.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people died,” because of the decision to stand down, he told The Post last year. “That’s a hard thing to deal with. You know, that’s something that, honestly, eats at me every single day.”

Through tears, Vargas-Andrews repeated those claims under oath during an emotional congressional hearing seven months later.

Vargas-Andrews and other U.S. troops present during the attack, carried out by the Islamic State’s branch in Afghanistan, also dispute the U.S. military’s conclusion that, despite some service members’ assertions, there was no evidence that gunmen opened fire on them after the blast.

A former sniper, Vargas-Andrews said both in his 2022 interview with The Post and in his testimony months later to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he was told by superiors that there were too many civilians nearby when he spotted the suspected bomber. The Post could not determine if the man he identified was in fact the bomber, nor whether an attempt by U.S. forces to kill him could have triggered the explosion or some other form of carnage.

The top commander at Central Command during the evacuation, Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, told The Post last year that no request to engage a suspected suicide bomber reached his level or surfaced during the military’s investigation. More than 130 people were interviewed as part of the inquiry.

In his congressional testimony, Vargas-Andrews called the withdrawal “a catastrophe,” telling lawmakers that, to date, there had been “an inexcusable lack of accountability” for the extreme loss of life.

The attack’s suspected mastermind was killed by the Taliban earlier this year, U.S. officials disclosed in April.