[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
A FAILURE TO PLAN: EXAMINING THE BIDEN
ADMINISTRATION'S PREPARATION FOR THE
AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
July 27, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-42
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53-406PDF WASHINGTON : 2024
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey GREGORY MEEKS, New Yok, Ranking
JOE WILSON, South Carolina Member
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania BRAD SHERMAN, California
DARRELL ISSA, California GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
ANN WAGNER, Missouri WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
BRIAN MAST, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
KEN BUCK, Colorado AMI BERA, California
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee DINA TITUS, Nevada
ANDY BARR, Kentucky TED LIEU, California
RONNY JACKSON, Texas SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
YOUNG KIM, California DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida COLIN ALLRED, Texas
BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan ANDY KIM, New Jersey
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN-RADEWAGEN, SARA JACOBS, California
American Samoa KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas SHEILA CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK,
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio Florida
JIM BAIRD, Indiana GREG STANTON, Arizona
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York JONATHAN JACOBS, Illinois
CORY MILLS, Florida SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
RICH MCCORMICK, Georgia JIM COSTA, California
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas JASON CROW, Colorado
JOHN JAMES, Michigan BRAD SCHNEIDER. Illinois
KEITH SELF, Texas
Brenden Shields, Staff Director
Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
BRIAN MAST, Florida, Chair
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania JASON CROW, Colorado, Ranking
DARRELL ISSA, California Member
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee DINA TITUS, Nevada
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas COLIN ALLRED, Texas
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida ANDY KIM, New Jersey
CORY MILLS, Florida SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK,
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas Florida
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
Ari Wisch, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Krummrich, Colonel (Ret.) Seth, Vice President, Global Guardian
(Former Chief of Staff, Special Operations Command Central).... 11
Kolenda, Colonel (Ret.) Christopher D.,.......................... 25
Smith, Command Sergeant Major Jacob, 4-31 Infantry, 2Nd Bct, 10Th
Mountain Division.............................................. 32
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 83
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 85
Hearing Attendance............................................... 86
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Additional information submitted for the record.................. 87
A FAILURE TO PLAN: EXAMINING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION'S PREPARATION FOR
THE AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL
Thursday, July 27, 2023
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
210, House Visitor Center, Hon. Brian Mast (chairman of the
subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Mast. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability
will come to order.
The purpose of this hearing is to examine the Biden
Administration's preparation for the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Before we begin I want to recognize some that are with us in
the audience today.
I want to begin by recognizing Christy Shamblin. If you
wouldn't mind standing we'd love for everybody to see the
mother-in-law of Sergeant Nicole Gee, lost at the Abbey Gate.
Alicia Lopez, the mother of Corporal Hunter Lopez killed in
action at the Abbey Gate; Coral Briseno and Alan Doolittle,
parents of corporal Umberto Sanchez, also killed in action at
the Abbey Gate.
Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for raising
patriots, and I'm sorry for your loss.
I'm now going to recognize myself for an opening statement.
I'm not going to begin by belaboring any points. The
President's withdrawal was a complete and utter catastrophe.
The images of people hanging off of planes and desperate
parents handing their babies over the airport walls to soldiers
are seared into our country's collective conscience.
Yesterday every member of this committee in this room,
Republican and Democrat, voted to require the State Department
to come up with a plan for reimbursing the numerous outside
groups who had to get involved to rescue Americans from
Afghanistan.
I can guarantee that private citizens flying 7,000 miles
across the world to rescue Americans and those that worked
alongside America for 20 years was not a product of the State
Department's good planning and order.
That was a product of chaos and a failure to plan and we
have witnesses here today that will be able to give specific
pictures of what was happening on the ground that will be
clearer and more accurate than any news report that I've seen
and, frankly, I believe that's because the White House and its
mouthpieces were lying to the American people as they were
narrating what was taking place during the withdrawal out of
Afghanistan.
I have no doubt that your eyewitness testimoneys will
demonstrate a clear failure to predict or plan for the worst
case scenarios as we do when we plan military operations. I'm
grateful to each of you for appearing here today.
Command Sergeant Major Jake Smith specifically is here in
his personal capacity. He is an active duty service member and
so I would ask members of the committee to refrain from
engaging him in political questions.
The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the failure to
plan and the major repercussions that it had on diplomatic
efforts and National Security. This Administration said time
and time again that Afghanistan was not a war that could be won
militarily. That's the Administration's words. It could only be
won diplomatically. If this could only be won diplomatically
then there is no other conclusion than the withdrawal was a
complete and total loss because that is when we lost all
diplomatic options.
The literal failure to plan was completely--completely
erased the potential for on the ground diplomacy and created a
black eye for the United States' standing abroad and National
Security at home.
I'm going to say this. I wrote black guy in my comments
when I wrote this. This isn't a black eye. Black eye does not
come close to constituting what took place--what it is for
America with the withdrawal of Afghanistan.
I do not know the appropriate word to say what exactly that
is but it's--black eye is not the right one. In the words of
the Administration's spokesperson Jennifer Psaki, the
mouthpiece, the President asked for a review from his National
Security team.
He asked them not to sugarcoat it, and he was provided with
a clear-eyed assessment about the best path forward. These are
the words of Jennifer Psaki. She said that the President was
the ultimate decisionmaker.
He was the decisionmaker who chose September 11th as the
initial drawdown date. He was the decisionmaker who pulled the
people with the guns out before the people without the guns,
the decisionmaker who collapsed the operations at HKIA Airport.
It was President Joe Biden, the ultimate decisionmaker. He
decided to make the decisions and none of those decisions in
that process of the withdrawal they weren't made in the Doha
agreement. That's not when they were made. They were made by
the ultimate decisionmaker, Joe Biden.
Americans asked after the withdrawal how could the
intelligence have gotten it so wrong. But I find it to be
clearer each and every day that the intelligence did not get it
as wrong as Americans thought. It was the ultimate
decisionmaker that was refusing to listen to the intelligence
being given.
Again, in the words of the White House spokesperson,
Jennifer Psaki, the President believes there is not a military
solution. This will require a diplomatic solution. She said
that the President was clear from the beginning that we
anticipated and planned to have a diplomatic presence on the
ground, moving forward.
Why then did we see a repeat of Saigon with diplomatic
personnel being evacuated off of the roof of an embassy, though
that is exactly what President Biden said would never happen?
It's because of a failure to plan for Murphy--a failure to plan
for a situation when things do not go exactly perfect, exactly
as you planned.
It's basic military. A failure to plan meant that the
security of diplomatic personnel could not be guaranteed and as
a result there's no diplomatic presence on the ground today.
Again, in the words of the Administration's spokesperson,
Jennifer Psaki, the United States will retain significant
assets in the region, as the President talked about, over the
horizon capabilities to counter the potential reemergence of
the terrorist threat.
That's garbage. Any over the horizon capabilities that we
had to deal with terrorist threats were wiped out almost
immediately and it has only gotten worse.
From the onset of the withdrawal and the decision to
abandon Bagram Airfield, our capabilities were diminished and
our security deteriorate. The Abbey Gate bomber was a member of
ISIS-K, who had just been released from the Bagram Prison.
Now, in the 2-years since Afghanistan has essentially
become a Club Med for terrorists. ISIS is using it as a
training ground, though, fighting with the Taliban. The Taliban
is sending welfare payments to al-Qaeda fighters. There are no
over the horizon capabilities to deal with that. It's the
opposite.
Our adversaries are literally gaining a foothold there.
Just 3 months ago leaders from Iran, Russia, China, they met in
Uzbekistan to discuss what they call the, quote, ``regional
solutions rather than Western interference in Afghanistan.''
Our witnesses here today will be able to speak to the
situation on the ground and that the failure to plan wiped out
any possibility of what the Administration said had to be the
victory. That was diplomatic efforts.
As a direct result of, in my opinion, a failure to plan--
not bad luck, bad planning--America mourns 13 of its sons and
daughters. We have families sitting in our audience who mourn
the loss of their sons and daughters.
I've had numerous conversations with the families and what
I've extracted from those conversations is there's nothing that
can bring back anybody's children. My colleague--we have lost
friends. You all have lost friends. There's nothing that can
bring back anybody that we have lost.
We look for solace and how we do not repeat the mistakes of
the past. To be frank, that's what I've heard from the
families--how do we make sure that something like this never
happens again.
So we're trying to learn so that we do not repeat those
past mistakes. But from where I see it those that made the
mistakes are still in the exact same positions today or they've
advanced in the positions that they hold, and they are now
trying to rewrite history in order to tout the withdrawal of
Afghanistan as a success.
And what that tells me is that as of right now they haven't
learned a thing.
I'm now going to recognize my colleague, Ranking Member
Crow, the gentleman from Colorado, for any opening statement
that you may have.
Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman Mast.
Let me begin by joining the chairman and recognizing the
Gold Star families--Ms. Shamblin, Ms. Lopez, Ms. Briseno, Mr.
Doolittle.
Our country owes you a debt of gratitude that, frankly, we
will never be able to repay. Your families have made the
greatest sacrifice that any family can make for this Nation and
we owe you a debt of gratitude that even though we cannot repay
we must attempt to do so by conducting ourselves in a way that
is worthy of the sacrifice of your children and that requires
honesty.
It requires candor. It requires giving answers, and that's
what I will endeavor to do with my colleagues here in a
nonpartisan way because that's what you deserve.
Also, I want to recognize Command Sergeant Major Smith in
the category of it's a very, very small world. I was Command
Sergeant Major Smith's platoon leader in the Second Ranger
Battalion where we did multiple Afghanistan rotations during
that time. So, Command Sergeant Major Smith, it's really great
to see.
Sergeant Major Smith. Rangers lead the way.
Mr. Crow. All the way. I do want to say--I mean, this is an
incredibly emotionally charged issue as it should be because
the consequences were so high and so catastrophic for so many
people.
But to do this right--and I'm not reading off of
prescripted remarks here. I'm just kind of speaking from the
heart, frankly. To do this, right, in my view, requires honesty
and candor, as I mentioned earlier, and, you know, my critiques
of the withdrawal, my criticisms of the withdrawal are lengthy
and actually well documented.
It was--I was very clear in 2021 that I did not think it
went the way it should have been, that there were a lot of
missteps, there were a lot of problems, and we do owe it to the
fallen, we do owe it to America, we owe to the taxpayers that
spent tens of billions of dollars, the over 3,000 people that
gave their lives in Afghanistan. We owe it to all of them to
actually have an honest accounting of that.
But I also want to make it clear that my goal here is that
the story of Afghanistan is not the story just of August 2021.
That's not the whole story, right. And that's not to pivot away
from having an honest assessment of that month and that
withdrawal because we have to have that and the American people
deserve that.
But we have to broaden the aperture, right. This was a 20-
year war. This was America's longest war, right. Multiple
generations of Americans fought in this war and sacrificed and
gave for it.
Four presidencies were responsible for this war. Ten
Congresses were responsible for this war and, frankly,
honestly, before August 2021 if you asked most Members of
Congress to find Afghanistan on a map and they couldn't, right,
and there's an awful lot of Monday morning quarterbacking now
and people sitting back and saying that they knew what should
have happened, this is what should have happened and, you know,
having all sorts of opinions where for years nobody even paid
attention to it, which I know frustrated us, right, to no end,
all my fellow veterans as we talked and worked on this and said
this was moving in a bad direction for a long time and nobody
was listening and paying attention to it.
So that's the history and the context and I hope that we
can have a hearing today that addresses elements of the
withdrawal, that learns important lessons to make sure that we
do not repeat the mistakes of the past but that we also provide
context, that we also understand that there were--there's a
long history here and August 2021 just did not happen on its
own.
There are years and a lot of things that led us to that
moment that are a part of this story here that we have to have
an honest accounting of. So that's my goal and I look forward
to the conversation today.
I yield back.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Crow. And pleased to have the
chairman of the full Committee, Chairman McCaul, with us, and I
recognize you for as much time as you may consume for an
opening statement.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for that generous
recognition. I want to thank both of you for your service in
the Afghanistan war, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member. I remember
traveling as a member, spending days and you were spending
years, and we got a little snapshot of what was going on but
you were on the ground fighting.
And, Mr. Chairman, you know, your loss of limbs, the
sacrifice that both of you made, Mr. Chairman, particularly
you, does not go unnoticed by this committee or me as the
chairman of the full committee and I just want to thank you for
your service.
And I want to thank the Gold Star families. It's good to
see you again. We had a very nice visit last week--you know,
Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Sergeant Nicole Gee,
Alicia Lopez, mother of Corporal Hunter Lopez. I used, by the
way, Hunter's pen to sign my subpoena for the after action
report from the State Department that is still yet to be
complied with. And Alan Doolittle and Coral Briseno, the
parents of Corporal Sanchez, thank you, and the witnesses for
your moral courage to come here today to speak the truth about
what happened.
And to the ranking member, I agree there were many mistakes
made in the 20 years. But the ultimate mistake ended 20 years
of blood and treasure with now the Taliban in charge, raising
their flag over our embassy, taking $7 billion of our weapons,
leaving the women behind under Sharia law now where they cannot
even go outside.
I was with the Ambassador to Afghanistan, Roya Rahmani. Had
dinner with her last night and we talked about what happened,
what--how it was stabilized and then it went into chaos because
one man made the decision and that is the commander in chief
and the buck stops here, as Harry Truman would say.
So let's own it and take responsibility and not try to kick
it down or go back in time and say it was someone else's fault.
True leaders own mistakes and this was a mistake of epic
proportions.
This unconditional withdrawal--I call it unconditional
surrender to the Taliban, who now have taken over Afghanistan,
and what's really sad, especially when we examine the Abbey
Gate and we heard from Sergeant Tyler Vargas about the fact
that it could have been prevented in many cases.
That is the hardest thing, I know, for the families to
accept. And I was there. We were there for the briefings from
State, from DoD and the IC, and for months President Biden
ignored warnings from his own generals and his own intelligence
community and bipartisan Members of Congress about what was
happening on the ground.
As the narrative did not fit what was happening on the
ground coming out of the White House, as the chairman so
eloquently went through, whether it was his spokepersons to him
himself about what was happening, it was like a blind eye.
The result of this committee's oversight so far we did get
access to the dissent cable from the employees at the embassy.
They were telling the story about what was happening.
They were the ones who said, Mr. President, it's going to
happen fast. They predict by September 1st. They got pretty
close, and they said we're not prepared and you need to prepare
for this. There's an old adage if you fail to plan you plan to
fail.
This was a complete failure because we did not have a plan
of action and what they said was disturbing because it
predicted exactly what was going to happen if we did not act
fast.
And, yet, even with that warning President Biden and
Secretary Blinken failed to change course to the very end.
Rather than prioritizing U.S. National Security and the safety
of thousands of Americans they forced this rapid withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Afghanistan on an artificial time line.
I remember it was going to be September the 11th. What an
insult to the victims of 9/11. It was going to happen on 9/11.
We all know they stop fighting in the wintertime. Why wouldn't
you--why wouldn't you plan it at a time that made sense?
And then the shutdown of Bagram Air Base, our ISR crown
jewels, to see Russia, China, and Iran and the terrorists in
the region, was shut down in the dead of night.
It was not driven by National Security. It was driven by
politics. You know, the idea that you can drop troop levels to
650 service members to do this is insane, and once we abandoned
Bagram--I'm sure we'll hear this from Jacob Smith--you know,
12,000 prisoners are released into--ISIS-K, the suicide bomber
released from Bagram.
Seven billion dollars of equipment left behind and now
they're selling it to our adversaries and to terrorist nations.
And, yet, we made zero--it seems to me very little attempts to
get the men and women who fought alongside U.S. servicemen out
of that country to safety and our partners, our interpreters,
are now left behind to be hunted down by the Taliban with the
very biometrics that we created and now they can go door to
door to get a fingerprint to confirm if they worked with the
United States and then they're executed.
To me, it's sad that after 20 years of blood and treasure
where are we now with the women, the Taliban in control, the
geopolitical issues that face--you know, China now is there for
God's sakes. And the lithium--China will probably get access to
Bagram.
It's hard for me to tell the veterans that, and the suicide
rate is so high. And to them I tell them it was worth it
because you made this country safe for 20 years.
I chaired the Homeland Security Committee. We stopped a lot
of external operations to kill Americans and it's because men
and women like these two and your sons and daughters were there
getting that intelligence to make this country safe. So I
wanted to again thank the families for being here. I cannot
imagine the grief that you have.
But I can tell you that we are going to hold--we're going
to cover what happened. We're going to uncover--transparency
and accountability is very important to me and I think to all
members of this committee and we want accountability and I will
not rest until we get that.
And I promise you that while the President wants to sweep
this under the rug that I will never forget what happened and I
will hold people accountable and we will on this committee
ensure that something like this never, ever happens again in
the United States of America, the greatest country in the
world.
So I want to thank the chairman for holding this hearing.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Chairman McCaul. A little bit of
procedure that we have to do here, gentlemen.
First of all, I ask unanimous consent that the following
members be allowed to sit on the dais and participate in
today's hearing should they be able to attend: the gentlelady
from New York, Ms. Stefanik; the gentleman from Pennsylvania,
Mr. Fitzpatrick; the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Ellzey; the
gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Crane; the gentleman from
Wisconsin, Mr. Van Orden; the gentleman from Indiana, Mr.
Banks; the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gonzales; and the
gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Nunn.
Without objection, so ordered.
There's a lot of folks from the military that want to speak
to you all is what that says. Other members of the committee
are reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the
record.
We are pleased to have with us a distinguished panel of
witnesses. It's an important topic and we look forward to
hearing answers to many questions.
Colonel Seth Krummrich is the former chief of staff of
Special Operations Command Central and while serving in this
capacity he led strategic planning initiatives for CENTCOM and
SOCCENT to defeat violent extremists.
He was involved in the withdrawal planning for Afghanistan
in 2021. He was previously deployed in Afghanistan during the
initial invasion as part of Task Force Dagger. So from the
literal beginning of the war in Afghanistan to the literal end.
Colonel Christopher D. Kolenda is a West Point graduate, a
combat leader, and a retired Army colonel. He's also the
founder of Saber Six Foundation, which he founded to honor the
six paratroopers from his unit who were killed in action in
Afghanistan. Bravo.
Command Sergeant Major Jacob Smith has served for 14 combat
tours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation
Freedom Sentinel and his military decorations and awards
include the Legion of Merit and the Purple Heart. He was also
the senior enlisted leader responsible for shutting down the
bases in Afghanistan during the withdrawal.
Thank you for being here today. Your full statements will
be made a part of the record and I'll ask each of you to keep
your spoken remarks to, roughly, 5 minutes to ensure all
members have time for questions.
I now recognize Colonel Krummrich for your opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF COLONEL (RET.) SETH KRUMMRICH, VICE PRESIDENT,
GLOBAL GUARDIAN (FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, SPECIAL OPERATIONS
COMMAND CENTRAL)
Colonel Krummrich. Good morning. I want to start by
thanking Chairman McCaul, Chairman Mast, Ranking Member Meeks,
Ranking Member Crow, and the members of the committee and
subcommittee.
I also want to pass a special thanks to the members of the
committee who served in Afghanistan and a special thanks to the
Gold Star family members that are here in attendance today.
I appreciate your invitation to speak today. My goal or the
goal of my testimony is to help the committee understand how
the Administration and the military's planning process
functioned throughout Afghanistan's withdrawal and illuminate
the points of failure that doomed the effort.
We're all painfully aware of the terrible optics of our
departure and the utter failure in Afghanistan. My hope is this
testimony provides clarity, highlighting what worked, what
failed, and how we can avoid making the same mistakes in the
future.
It's important to acknowledge our three strategic
objectives and end States for the withdrawal. The first was to
maintain an ongoing diplomatic presence, the second was to
support Afghan security forces, people, and the government, and
the third was prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a
safe haven for terrorism.
We were not successful. I'll separate our planning efforts
into two categories--first, strategic decision failures and,
second, the planning process and its effect on mission
execution.
Four critical strategic decision failures set the
conditions and the environment for the entire withdrawal.
First, failure to follow the Doha agreement. Fundamental to our
Doha agreement were seven conditions that the Taliban had to
meet that would trigger our full withdrawal from Afghanistan.
An agreement only works if both sides participate. The
Taliban failed six of seven conditions. An example--one key
provision was the reduction of violence by both sides. We
greatly curtailed our air support to the Afghan forces,
weakening their offensive capability, while the Taliban
increased their attacks by up to 70 percent.
Yet, we still began our withdrawal, giving no incentive for
the Taliban to follow any of the Doha agreement provisions.
Therefore, both sides failed--the Taliban, to follow the basics
of the agreement, and we failed to enforce the agreement.
The statement we held up our end of the bargain rings
hollow and naive when our duplicitous partner never tried or
intended to support the agreement.
Second, selective intelligence blindness. Senior
decisionmakers rely heavily on intelligence to make the right
decision both for what to do and when to do it. The trap
decisionmakers fall into is selectively choosing intelligence
to support their favorite course of action rather than letting
the intelligence inform and shape their decisions.
A 5-month full retrograde operation with the transition of
power to a questionable Afghan government only makes sense if
you believe the Taliban will not threaten the outcome and the
Afghan government is ready to lead.
The Administration made that determination based on
intelligence that overestimated the Afghan government's
capabilities and wished away the Taliban's capabilities. There
was very little evidence to suggest that the Biden
Administration's plan would work and a mountain range of
evidence to suggest the plan would fail.
General Milley, General Miller, and General McKenzie all
recommended not withdrawing until the Doha agreement conditions
were met. These seasoned experts were ignored and the best case
scenario plan to withdraw immediately started the domino effect
to catastrophe.
Third, bad timing. The withdrawal window, May to September
21, was planned during the peak of the well known
Afghan fighting season. The Taliban are at their strongest,
most aggressive, and logistically capable during this time
period.
Why would we leave fragile Afghan governments vulnerable to
the Taliban's strongest advantage? Why did the tactically
meaningless 20-year anniversary of 9/11 drive the time line?
Ripping out U.S. military support with little to no warning at
the height of the summer fighting season led to disastrous
results.
With the aggressive Taliban on the March the U.N. reported
Afghanistan suffered its highest civilian casualty count on
record, not because of international military action but
because of Afghan on Afghan violence.
And No. 4, limited time for DoD and interagency to fully
plan and execute the withdrawal mission and the subsequent and
separate NEO mission. The military has a planning maxim--one-
third time to plan, two-thirds time to rehearse before we
execute the operation.
There was no time for traditional military planning to
include looking at worst case scenarios in real detail. To meet
the 11 September time line we had to plan immediately and
execute now. Prudence and patience were replaced by speed of
action without the time to study the consequences and mitigate
those risks.
Shifting to the plan, the bottom line is the Administration
controlled how we withdrew and when we withdrew, making them
the majority stakeholder of many guilty parties in the failure
and collapse of Afghanistan and the current Taliban rule.
How the plan was chosen--the new Administration discussed
options between February and April 21 with the National
Security Council. U.S. 4A and CENTCOM offered their best
experienced advice in the form of courses of action that
provided the Administration distinct options based on troop
levels, time lines, conditions, and end States.
The President's decision to ignore the best military advice
and execute an immediate military withdrawal was a shock and a
rude awakening for all the planners. There was a sense of dread
and cynicism based on the time line and the enemy threat.
Given the strict guidance CENTCOM executed a fast
retrograde to provide the best force protection for our service
members, reducing their exposure to any potential enemy action.
It was impressive in scope and scale, achieving success by
mid July, but the unintended consequence of an unannounced and
immediate departure of a trusted ally was the demoralizing
impact it had on Afghan units at the height of the Taliban's
fighting season.
The brittle Afghan military collapsed. Many units quit.
Those that stayed and fought found their reinforcements,
resupply, and air support had abandoned them, damning them to
be captured or executed by the Taliban.
I highly recommend watching the documentary ``Retrograde''
which captures this horror firsthand. The NEO--by mid July and
the successful withdrawal of our military the Taliban tripled
the number of districts they controlled from 78 to over 200 of
Afghanistan's 419 districts in just 2 months.
They achieved irreversible momentum to take Kandahar and
ultimately Kabul in the next month. While CENTCOM was hyper
focused on executing the withdrawal the NSC level tabletop
exercises in DC lacked the granular detail required to identify
the Achilles' heel of the NEO, the State Department's broken
Special Immigrant Visa process that would directly lead to the
humanitarian crisis at the HKIA gates. Again, our military
executed an unprecedented airlift of over 120,000 U.S. citizens
and visa holders, largest in U.S. history.
However, the Afghan allies who planned to stay and run the
government could not secure a visa to leave the country and
were trapped with their families at the chaotic HKIA walls. Pop
up ad hoc groups like Pineapple Express and the Afghan Evac and
Exfil Network sprung up to help our Afghan friends when our
government failed and abandoned our allies. I provide a
firsthand account in my written testimony of Brigadier General
Latiff and his family's experience as an example.
Looking at these decisions in total it becomes clear our
hasty actions set the conditions for the Afghan government's
collapse, the Taliban's slingshot to power, and the loss of 20
years of hope and progress in the Afghan people.
In conclusion, fighting a war and establishing a sovereign
government means we have the moral responsibility to end the
conflict and withdraw our military in a deliberate and
responsible manner.
We failed. The enemy rules Afghanistan. We owe our killed
in action, wounded in action, Gold Star family members, combat
veterans, their families, our allies, and the current bill
payers, the men and women still trapped in Afghanistan under
the heel of the Taliban, especially the women and the girls, a
full accounting of our missteps and a commitment to never let
this happen again.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I look
forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Colonel Krummrich follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Colonel Krummrich. I now recognize
Colonel Kolenda for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF COLONEL (RET.) CHRISTOPHER D. KOLENDA
Colonel Kolenda. Thank you so much for the opportunity and
the honor to be here, and I also want to recognize our Gold
Star families, and devaStated by your loss of what happened at
the Abbey Gate.
I know we're talking about a different date but July 27th,
which is today, is a very important day for me. Sixteen years
ago today my unit was involved in the biggest firefight we had
in the 450-day deployment in Afghanistan.
Hundreds of insurgent fighters attempted to trap one of our
units in a valley floor in Nuristan province--eastern Nuristan
province near the border of Pakistan. Staff Sergeant Ryan
Fritsche, while reconnoitering a place to employ his squad
against the enemy, was shot and killed. He was awarded the
Bronze Star for valor and is buried outside of Indianapolis,
Indiana in Hall, Indiana.
A few minutes later Captain Tom Bostick, now Major Tom
Bostick, was leading this company and his command post came
under overwhelming attack. He directed the members of his
command post to move to a different position where they could
continue taking the fight to the enemy.
Tom single handedly counter attacked by fire this large
enemy force. He was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. It's
a boom I still here. He was awarded the Distinguished Service
Cross for his actions that day.
We lost four more soldiers. Tom is buried at Arlington
grave site 8755. He's originally from Lano, Texas. We lost four
other soldiers in that 450-day deployment: Private First Class
Chris Pheiffer, buried in Spalding, Nebraska; Sergeant Adrian
Hike, buried in Carroll, Iowa; Specialist Jacob Lowell, who's
buried at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery outside of
Chicago, Illinois; and Captain Dave Borris, who is buried in
Minersville, Pennsylvania.
Watching the collapse of Afghanistan in August 2021 I had a
number of emotions just like everybody else here. I watched
with sadness and horror at the attack on Abbey Gate that cost
13 of our service members' lives.
I was angry. We have been at this for 20 years. We have
spent over $2 trillion. More than 2,300 service members killed,
tens of thousands with wounds both seen and unseen, and it all
came crashing down like a house of cards.
I was disgusted, disgusted knowing that Afghan military
commanders were creating ghost soldiers so they could take
their--the pay. They were selling their soldiers food, fuel,
and ammunition on the black market as a part of the kleptocracy
that would become the Afghan government, and to see the fact
that Afghan senior officials just seemed to take the money and
run.
And I was disappointed, disappointed that another war ended
in disaster. I mean, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan--you know, one
disaster is a horrible accident. Two disasters is a tragic
coincidence. Three disasters and these large-scale
interventions, fighting insurgencies, is a disturbing trend
that suggests that we are not learning from experience.
In fact, I wrote this book ``Zero Sum Victory: What We're
Getting Wrong About War,'' that looks at the three conflicts
and the repeated errors--the chronic errors that we make in
each one at the policy and strategy level that are increasing
the risk that these wars turn into disasters.
You know, in each case our troops fight valiantly. They do
exactly what they're told. They do it to a very high standard.
But too often the policy and strategy are not worthy of their
sacrifice and that's got to change.
I agree that we have an opportunity not to repeat the
mistakes of the past. But if we do not address these policy and
strategy errors that we continue making then we are likely to
have a fourth disaster in our next military--major military
intervention and that I find totally unacceptable.
In my written testimony I talk about three of the immediate
causes of the collapse in Afghanistan. I also address some of
the systemic failures that are common to the three recent wars
that I mentioned and also some low cost high payoff reforms
that we can make today that reduce the risk of another disaster
while increasing the probability that we're going to be
successful in our next conflict and I will be delighted to take
questions about those during the Q&A.
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Colonel Kolenda follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Colonel. What you said very much stuck
with me in my mind. Too often the policy and strategy are not
worthy of their sacrifice. We need to make sure that it always
is, always, and I think we're all united in that.
And I now recognize Command Sergeant Major Smith for your
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF COMMAND SERGEANT MAJOR JACOB SMITH, 4-31 INFANTRY,
2ND BCT, 10TH MOUNTAIN DIVISION
Sergeant Major Smith. Members of the committee, it's an
honor to be able to come here today and speak before you, and
to the Gold Star families it's an honor to be in your presence.
It truly is.
My name is Command Sergeant Major Jake Smith. I use my rank
and title only to identify myself and my position to speak on
this matter. I testify before you not as an official
representative of the United States Army but as a citizen.
I must preface my testimony by making it abundantly clear
that I am not here to place blame on any organization or
individual for the result of our Nation's end days in
Afghanistan. It is not my place as a soldier to do so.
It is merely my duty to present this committee with the
facts I know to be true so that you may make a well informed
decision. I want to make it known that I have little insight
into the overarching strategic planning of the Afghanistan
withdrawal.
My area of expertise comes from the tactical planning and
execution of the closure of Bagram Airbase and the
recommendations I made to members of the U.S. embassy in Kabul
regarding a noncombatant evacuation. I will stick to the facts
and circumstances I personally witnessed and offer minimal of
personal opinion.
I very respectfully ask that any questions you ask of me
keep to the facts of the matter and shy away from any personal
beliefs or opinions I may hold.
From October 11th, 2020 to July 2021 I served as the area
support group for Afghanistan, or ASG, Command Sergeant Major.
The duties and responsibilities of ASG included all base life
support functions for the remaining nine U.S. military
installations in Afghanistan.
These functions included billeting, dining facilities,
public works, sanitation, and emergency response. Of particular
importance to my testimony is my understanding of the life
support capabilities of Bagram and HKIA.
In May 2021 I was given the additional duty to serve as the
Bagram senior enlisted advisor. This duty included the
oversight of all force protection measures and entry control
points on Bagram.
Of particular importance to my testimony was my
understanding of the security posture of Bagram and its
capabilities. It was sometime in the spring that we received
the first tentative date to work toward in finalizing our go to
zero effort, September 11th, 2021.
The order came to begin to close all the smaller bases but
two were left in question, Bagram and HKIA. For those two
installations there was a looming question of whether or not
they would close. Part of General Miller's guidance was to
maintain order, discipline, and dignity as we collapse. We
would not just up and leave. We would hand over exceptionally
orderly bases to the Afghan government.
We were instructed to get as small as we could but still
function on the chance that Bagram would be used in future
efforts. This presented a significant issue to Bagram as we
could not collapse to the point of inoperability.
We would have to have the personnel vital to running power,
security, and sanitation. If we began to close the base
infrastructure too aggressively we would not be able to
function and maintain security on Bagram if it was to remain
open.
It was sometime in March or April that I first met with
planners from the U.S. embassy. Four planners came to Bagram to
conduct a site survey to determine if Bagram was the
appropriate spot to conduct a noncombatant evacuation.
In this conversation I was told that HKIA would be the
other option. Prior to this meeting I had reviewed the
contingency plan for a NEO that had been created years prior.
The contingency plan accounted for 45,000 to 50,000 persons
that would need to be evacuated.
It was members of the embassy team who informed me that the
actual number would be anywhere from 120,000 to 140,000. I
advised the embassy team against using HKIA for the following
reasons. Bagram could house 35,000 people without overloading
the infrastructure whereas HKIA could only hold, roughly,
3,000.
HKIA was a shared airfield. It was not completely
controlled by the military. It had significant weak points in
the security. Bagram had a completely secure airfield that
would require massive military offences to overrun or breach.
HKIA was surrounded by the city of Kabul and its 4.4
million residents. If there was to be a fight it would be in an
urban environment and exceptionally difficult to undertake and
control.
Bagram had a small town on the western edge and open
terrain in the majority of the north, east, and west. Movement
of any kind could be detected, controlled, or eliminated very
early.
The defendability of Bagram was exponentially that--greater
than that of HKIA. Bagram held the logistical capability to
meet the requirements of 130,000 people. Bagram had over 35,000
bed spaces and could create more using cots within the airfield
hangars if necessary.
Bagram had four dining facilities and food that could have
fed those fleeing. Bagram had tens of thousands of gallons of
potable water and onsite water for purification capabilities.
HKIA did not.
Bagram had a role three hospital, meaning that it had the
greatest lifesaving capability of any hospital remaining in
Afghanistan. HKIA had a role two hospital meaning that it had a
degraded capability to that of Bagram.
Finally, Bagram had four industrial size incinerators. It
had two industrial size material shredders. It had the
mechanical capability to destroy sensitive equipment on an
industrial scale in a short amount of time. HKIA did not.
When I laid out all my points to the site survey team they
verbally agreed with my assessment. I met twice more with the
site survey team, once in May and once in June.
In these meetings I inquired about the offensive the
Taliban had launched in May and the increasing ground they
controlled. I asked if the NEO was going to be held in Bagram
due to the Taliban's rapid advance that indicated an assault on
Kabul.
The team acknowledged the ground that the Taliban had
gained but offered little insight as to the decisionmaking
process at the embassy. On or about June 14th we were given the
order to close Bagram by July 4th, well short of the originally
planned date of September 11th.
HKIA would remain open and provide a quick reaction force
to the embassy located approximately four driving miles away.
This was to be an enduring mission. All talks of conducting a
NEO were ceased.
It is my understanding that those in the embassy believed
that the Taliban would not advance to take Kabul and a NEO was
unnecessary. I exited as one of the final conventional forces
in Bagram on 2 July 2021.
My thoughts stayed with the forces that would stay on the
ground as the Taliban controlled about 50 percent of
Afghanistan on the day I departed.
One single U.S. infantry company, Charlie Company 4-31
Infantry 10th Mountain Division led by Captain Swasey Brown and
First Sergeant Andrew Kelly, protected HKIA for approximately 6
weeks before things began to unravel in mid August.
An area once protected by hundreds of soldiers and
contractors was now protected by 113 American soldiers and two
companies of our Turkish partner forces. Approximately 430
other U.S. service members and logistics maintenance air
defense and service roles also occupied HKIA. This was the only
force left in Afghanistan.
I will offer this final bit of opinion. The mission asked
of this company and the subsequent Marines, soldiers, airmen,
sailors, and coalition forces called to reinforce the smallest
security contingent was monumental. The military executed this
mission and the closure of Afghanistan with honor, integrity,
and dignity.
There's no force in the world that have executed such a
chaotic and difficult mission better than our U.S. and
coalition forces did under the direst of circumstances. They
were asked to control absolute panic and anarchy and they
somehow did it.
I thank every single one of them for our sacrifice to our
great nation. Thank you for allowing me to speak here today.
[The prepared statement of Sergeant Major Smith follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Command Sergeant Major.
We're now going to move to questions. I'm going to begin by
recognizing the chairman of the full committee, Chairman
McCaul, for 5 minutes.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first,
again, acknowledge the Gold Star families here and I want to
thank the three witnesses for your moral courage and clarity in
your testimony here today.
You know, there's an old adage if you plan--if you fail to
plan you're planning to fail. Benjamin Franklin, first chairman
of this committee, Continental Congress, he was right. There
was no plan. If you fail to plan you plan to fail.
We have uncovered that there was a request that came from
the State Department to the Defense Department for an
evacuation plan. However, that came on August 17th, 2 days
after the fall of Afghanistan--the fall of Kabul, 4 days after
our embassy was evacuated.
And yet, the President says we planned for all
contingencies. I think, Colonel Krummrich, you eloquently
talked about how he recklessly disregarded his own National
Security Council, his own generals, and the intelligence
community that we were being briefed at the same time while we
saw this rosy narrative by State and yet this dire warning by
the rest--the DoD and the intelligence community--and the
result was this complete debacle and failure.
So Colonel Krummrich, my first question is to you. Was
there a plan? Did you ever see an evacuation plan?
Colonel Krummrich. Thank you for the question. Chairman,
the way the process works for planning is we'll get an initial
guidance that we need to come up with courses of action.
So CENTCOM U.S. 4A built a number of courses of action that
were very different. They were very unique in each, you know,
characteristics of each one. It could be time line. It could be
conditions, troop levels, and then the senior military members
and----
Mr. Mast. Colonel, could you pull that microphone a little
bit closer? Thank you.
Colonel Krummrich. Thank you. So the senior commanders then
will pick one and give them a recommendation and explain why
that is. Now, feeding into this is also the intelligence
community.
So this is part operations, part intelligence, and they'll
lay out, OK, this is the plan we think we should take and in
this case General Milley, General Miller, General McKenzie all
recommended we should not do the withdrawal until conditions
are met because violence had risen in Afghanistan and their
concern was the timing was wrong. This isn't going to give our
allies a chance to be able to react accordingly to the Taliban
offensive.
Chairman McCaul. So in the 2-minutes I just want to drill
this down because, yes, there was a recommendation and you talk
about the failure to meet the Doha agreement but the President
disregarded that--ignored that.
He disregarded the advice of his DoD and IC and National
Security Council. Was there ever an evacuation plan? Did you
see--I know there's discussions. Did you ever see an evacuation
plan?
Colonel Krummrich. I did not. The discussions were going on
at this high level. The problem was those that would need to
actually plan and rehearse it were extremely busy. I think
Sergeant Major captured it eloquently of how busy and how few
service members we had on the ground. They were not in a
position to be able to plan and rehearse.
Chairman McCaul. Now, we have issued several subpoenas. I
have not seen an evacuation plan. If they had it I'd think they
would have produced it to this committee. And this led to the
chaos. Who was in charge?
We heard Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrew testify that he had
the suicide bomber in his sights but they did not know what the
rules of engagement were, for God sakes. I mean, there's no
plan. There is--there--our rules of engagement are confusing at
best. They do not know what they are. Did you know what the
rules of engagement were?
Colonel Krummrich. I was not in the ground so I cannot
speak to the specific rules of engagement. I know the military
had a clear leadership position of who was in charge on the
ground. What was lacking, from my perspective, was the
Department of State leadership on the ground----
Chairman McCaul. So when I ask you who was in charge, you
know, if you have an evacuation plan State takes over the
evacuation, correct? Prior to that the DoD is in charge but
nobody knows who's really in charge because there's no plan in
place. And guess what? The Taliban takes over.
My last question--the rules of engagement are, you know,
confusing at best. You had mentioned a defensive strike would
be a rule of engagement.
If you saw a description of the suicide bomber along with
your sniper team who confirmed this is the suicide bomber would
the rules of engagement provide that you could take out the
threat as a defensive strike?
Colonel Krummrich. If I saw the suicide bomber and I saw
the threat I would absolutely kill that suicide bomber.
Chairman McCaul. And yet, when he contacted his commanding
officer, who we're going to interview, he says, I do not have
that authority. And they ask, who does have that authority? He
goes, I do not know. I'll have to get back to you.
And in the interim time, guess what? The bomb goes off,
killing 13 servicemen and women, 160 Afghans, injuring 45
additional U.S. servicemen and women. Massive, because one man
says you do not have permission to engage.
We're going to followup on that chain but I think it all
results because there's confusion on the ground. Nobody knows
what the plan and nobody knows who's in charge.
Yes, sir?
Colonel Kolenda. Sir, if I could just build on that. I
think the point that you're making that there's nobody in
charge is exactly right. There's nobody functionally in charge
of our wars on the ground in theater.
So what happens, if I could just draw a quick, quick
picture, is we deploy to combat zones in bureaucratic silos. So
you've got the--you've got the President and then National
Security Council beneath him, of course, and then you've got
these different bureaucratic silos.
So it could be DoD, State, AID, the IC with their different
silos and there's nobody in charge of this group on the ground.
And had there been somebody in charge of this group on the
ground then what you would have seen is a plan that not only
synchronized the military withdrawal but also the evacuation.
So until we get this problem fixed, we actually have
somebody in charge on the ground of our wars, we're going to
continue to have high risk of these kinds of disasters.
Chairman McCaul. I agree. And by law they're required to
come up with a plan and they did not and that's the point the
chairman has made over and over and I thank you for indulging
me.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for your
responses.
Ranking Member Crow is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you all for your
testimony and opening.
I just wanted to provide a little bit of context here and I
want to ask a few quick questions, starting with both Colonel
Krummrich and Colonel Kolenda.
From 2016 to 2021 are you aware that the Taliban had
increased its control of territory every year for those
consecutive 5 years?
Colonel Krummrich?
Colonel Krummrich. Yes.
Mr. Crow. Colonel Kolenda?
Colonel Kolenda. Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Crow. Are you aware of any indications in that 5-year
period that the Taliban was internally involved in discussions
that indicated that they would be willing to enter into a peace
agreement with the government of Afghanistan or that they
believed that continued combat operations was the key to
success?
Either one of you.
Colonel Krummrich. Their participation in the Doha
agreement would----
Mr. Crow. I'm not talking about the participation. I'm
talking about intelligence indicating whether or not the
Taliban really believed that the path to success for them was a
negotiated peace agreement or whether they were going to
continue to press combat operations.
Colonel Krummrich. I do not have visibility on this
specific intelligence that would lead to their thinking.
Mr. Crow. OK.
Colonel Kolenda. Mr. Ranking Member, I can provide some
insight on that.
Mr. Crow. Yes, please.
Colonel Kolenda. So in 2017 and 2018 I was in a--in my
personal capacity. I was outside of government at that point. I
was involved in some track two discussions with the Taliban
leaders, their version of diplomats who were in Doha, and then
relayed----
Mr. Crow. If you could be succinct here because I have a
bunch of other questions.
Colonel Kolenda. Yes.
Mr. Crow. Just answer the question if you can.
Colonel Kolenda. Yes. When the United States removed the
timeline the Taliban--at least their diplomats said we want to
start talks because we do not want our country, to use their
words, to turn into another Syria.
Mr. Crow. OK. So who started those talks and who--what
president agreed to the Doha agreement?
Colonel Kolenda. Those talks started in 2018, I believe,
under President Trump.
Mr. Crow. OK. And after that agreement was executed did the
Taliban, largely, stop attacking U.S. soldiers on the ground in
Afghanistan?
Colonel Kolenda. Yes.
Mr. Crow. And then after the Taliban stopped attacking
soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan--U.S. soldiers--did that
allow us to then reduce troop numbers?
Colonel Krummrich. I'll answer that.
Mr. Crow. Yes.
Colonel Krummrich. So there were seven provisions. One of
those--one of those----
Mr. Crow. I'm not--just answer the question. After the
Taliban stopped offensive operations against U.S. military in
Afghanistan then did that allow us to reduce troop numbers?
Colonel Krummrich. It did.
Mr. Crow. OK. And then when did that troop reduction start?
Colonel Krummrich. A specific date.
Mr. Crow. Rough.
Colonel Krummrich. Roughly speaking, I know that we had
started reducing troop numbers after the Doha agreement.
Regardless, the Taliban were not meeting the conditions
required of them for us to be doing those withdrawals and at a
certain point there was discussion----
Mr. Crow. We started in 2020, correct?
Colonel Krummrich. Correct.
Mr. Crow. Largely--drastically reducing troop numbers in
2020?
Colonel Krummrich. We did. We were moving----
Mr. Crow. OK. Are you--OK.
Next question. Are you aware of a provision that me, Mr.
Waltz and Ms. Cheney passed in the 2020 NDAA cycle that would
restrict the ability of the Trump Administration to reduce
troop levels below 2,000 unless certain conditions and certain
planning and reports were made to Congress? Are you aware of
that provision?
Colonel Krummrich. I'm not but I'm glad you did.
Mr. Crow. OK. Well, this passed. It became law. Are you
aware that President Trump in early January weeks before the
transition of the presidency actually waived that provision so
that he could reduce numbers below 2,000?
Colonel Krummrich. I know there was a discussion to bring
the troops below 2,000 and I know General Milley and senior
military commanders advised him not to do it and they rescinded
that order.
Mr. Crow. So he did it, correct?
Colonel Krummrich. He did. Then it was rescinded.
Mr. Crow. The numbers dropped below 2,000 due to a
Presidential waiver in January 2021, correct? Or if you're not
aware then just say you're not.
Colonel Krummrich. I would have to----
Mr. Crow. OK. Well, that is true. If we had not withdrawn
by the end of August 2021, is it--I want to hear from each of
you very briefly--is it your belief that the Taliban would have
resumed combat operations against U.S. soldiers--U.S. troops in
the ground?
Colonel Krummrich?
Colonel Krummrich. I believe--I believe if we had not
pulled out by that date that they would have had a hard time
once the winter started to be able to actually execute that,
which would have given the Afghan government the time and space
to get their feet wet to be able to fight back----
Mr. Crow. So you do not--your testimony--your testimony is
that you believe the Taliban would not have resumed combat
operations against the United States in the fall of 2021?
Colonel Krummrich. As long as there was negotiations going
on the Taliban were--we were telegraphing what our time line
would be. I believe that they would have respected it. It was
the only thing they did out of the entire Doha agreement.
Mr. Crow. Colonel Kolenda?
Colonel Kolenda. I think if we did not talk with them and
coordinate a new date and it looked like we were violating our
end of the agreement then I believe the Taliban would have
resumed attacks.
Mr. Crow. Sergeant Major Smith?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, respectfully, I do not have
enough information and I'm not in a position to give my opinion
on this matter.
Mr. Crow. And had they resumed attacks, which most of the
intelligence shows they would have, would we have been able to
adequately defend ourselves with the roughly 1,000 troops we
had or would we have had to have added troops on the ground?
Would we have had to have surged into Afghanistan again?
Colonel Krummrich?
Colonel Krummrich. My recommendation would have been to add
all the force protection required----
Mr. Crow. So we would have had to have added troops?
Colonel Krummrich. Right. I wouldn't call it a surge.
Mr. Crow. OK. Colonel Kolenda?
Colonel Kolenda. I agree, Mr. Ranking Member, that we would
most likely have had to add troops in order to protect
ourselves.
Mr. Crow. Commanding Sergeant Major Smith?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, again, I do not have enough
information to speak educatedly.
Mr. Crow. OK. My point here is there was a really, really
hard decision that had to be made that President Biden made
choosing from extremely difficult alternatives that would have
potentially caused more conflict and more combat operations
through 2021 into the present.
Thank you for the additional time. I yield back.
Mr. Mast. Absolutely. Thank you, Ranking Member Crow.
You considered a nonsensical question to ask about if
something would resume that never ceased right up to the
bombing of the Abbey Gate.
But I now recognize Ms. Stefanik for 5 minutes.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Chairman Mast and Chairman McCaul,
for the opportunity to waive on this hearing on this committee
today.
I want to start by thanking our witnesses for their
service, sacrifice, and your testimony today.
Command Sergeant Major Smith, I'm especially grateful that
you took on this tremendous responsibility of testifying as I
have the distinct honor of representing Fort Drum, home of the
10th Mountain Division, the most deployed division in the U.S.
Army since 9/11.
And I want to make sure in today's hearing that we remember
to highlight that although Joe Biden and the Biden
Administration made reckless decisions that resulted in the
avoidable tragic deaths of our service members it is important
to recognize so many men and women in uniform who served
valiantly and bravely.
In the spring of 2021, Command Sergeant Major Smith, you
met with a U.S. embassy site survey team and they told you they
were considering Bagram and HKIA as two potential evacuation
operationsites. Why did you advise the site survey team against
using HKIA and were your concerns taken into consideration?
Sergeant Major Smith. Ma'am, I appreciate you letting me
speak.
As far as the site survey team taking my advice into
consideration, I do not know the private conversations they had
after they left. I cannot speak on that.
From my standpoint, Bagram had a much more tactical
advantage to conduct an EO out of. It was much easier to defend
it. The entry control points were very much defended in depth.
They would have been very easy to create a filtering
process within those entry control points to filter out those
that needed to be evacuated and those who did not. It was just
a much more tactically advantageous location.
Ms. Stefanik. And, meanwhile, the Taliban was rapidly
advancing on Kabul and every day it became clear that an
evacuation would likely be necessary, and the recently released
State Department after action review shows that the Biden
Administration understood that the closure of Bagram meant that
the only place this evacuation would be conducted would be
HKIA.
And we know there were 113 soldiers from Charlie Company 4-
31 of the 10th Mountain Division assigned to protect HKIA as
the Taliban was rapidly approaching.
From your extensive experience in Afghanistan was a company
sized element adequate to perform the mission the 10th Mountain
soldiers were assigned?
Sergeant Major Smith. Ma'am, if I was in command I would
have had at least a battalion there.
Ms. Stefanik. A battalion. That is a big difference from a
company. This disastrous decision leading up to the Afghanistan
withdrawal forced Charlie Company 4-31 into a mission that was
nearly impossible to execute and yet for over a month the brave
soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division defended HKIA as
Afghanistan was engulfed in chaos.
This hearing is important to bring transparency and shed
light and ultimately answers to those families, particularly
our Gold Star families of whom I know some are here today. We
can never thank them enough for their sacrifice.
Thank you for your service and I yield back the balance,
Chairman Mast.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Ms. Stefanik.
The chair now yields 5 minutes to Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the three of
you to come on out here. Colonel Krummrich, I want to start
with you. You know, we talked a lot about the Doha agreement.
You were talking about how the--you know, the seven
conditions. You know, six were not met. But I want to just kind
of start by taking a step back.
Did you agree with the approach of starting those
negotiations with the Taliban to start with? It was--there was
a lot of controversy about that, you know, should we be engaged
in negotiations directly unilaterally with the Taliban without
the government of Afghanistan at the table. What were your
thoughts about that?
Colonel Krummrich. I think the--it's clear that when you do
20 years of war you have to find an end. It starts with open
conversations and it starts with having those open channels of
communication with the Taliban.
I think that that was an important step. I think it was
something that needed to begin so that we could then expand it
over time to bring in all the parties that were relevant to the
situation.
Mr. Kim. So you supported the idea of starting with the
Taliban without the government of Afghanistan in there and then
trying to see if you can bring in the other parties. Is that
correct?
Colonel Krummrich. In my written statement I was clear. I'm
a realist. I know that this has to end at some point. It's
really when you control the how and the when you have to be
very methodical and deliberate about it. If that is an open
avenue to begin the process, absolutely.
Mr. Kim. Was it a good deal? Was the Doha agreement a good
deal?
Colonel Krummrich. On paper?
Mr. Kim. Yes.
Colonel Krummrich. Sure. But the Doha agreement is
worthless if you cannot get both parties to do what is
required. We operated in good faith, to our detriment and more
importantly the detriment of the Afghan people.
Mr. Kim. When you were talking about the challenges in 2021
you were talking about how they were just tactically--if I
remember correctly, you were saying to tactically, you know,
trying to organize the withdrawal in the spring and the summer
is just not a good tactical effort. Is that correct?
Colonel Krummrich. That's correct.
Mr. Kim. Would you then extend that to the time line set
out in the Doha agreement? The Doha agreement was agreed to in
February. Fourteen months later if conditions were met that
there would be a withdrawal so that would bring it to May 2021?
Was that sort of a flaw then in the document to start with?
Colonel Krummrich. No. I think if we got to May 21
and the conditions were met, which is critical, then the stage
would have been set for a responsible withdrawal.
Mr. Kim. Did you--you've talked very deeply about your
distrust of the Taliban. Did you have a belief that those
conditions actually could have been met--all seven conditions,
realistically?
Colonel Krummrich. We wouldn't get into this conversation
if we did not believe that there was a chance. The problem, and
I think Colonel Kolenda hit it too is----
Mr. Kim. So you thought realistically there was a chance
that the Taliban would agree to all seven conditions?
Colonel Krummrich. We wouldn't have put them out there if
they hadn't. I mean, you have to--you've got to take a leap of
trust to say, look, we're going to give you the opportunity to
do it. The conditions based portion----
Mr. Kim. Even if you take a leap of trust, I mean, you
know, have some sense of contingency and setting that kind of
timetable up front of May.
Look, I mean, you talked about how there haven't been these
conditions met. You know, I agree with you. There were not the
conditions met and if I agree--if I heard you correctly you
said we should not have started troop withdrawals and
reductions unless the conditions were met. Is that correct?
Colonel Krummrich. That's correct.
Mr. Kim. Yes. So I just want to just make sure. So then the
withdrawals that happen, you know, on October 7th, the
reductions to less than 5,000, Trump saying we should try to
have the troops home by Christmas, so you would disagree with
those decisions as well?
Colonel Krummrich. I think there was prudent steps taken
when we saw the conditions weren't being met when we began our
troop withdrawals and then we saw that there was no intention
of the Taliban to actually follow these.
At that point, you know, General Milley and other senior
leaders talked to the President and they halted the withdrawal
at that point to make sure that we were making sure that the
conditions were driving the decisions.
Mr. Kim. Yes. Colonel Kolenda, I want to bring you in on
this. I mean, I think what I'm just trying to tease out here is
that I think you kind of really hit the nail on the head.
Just these were systemic problems across the board over 20
years, four Administrations, two presidents of either party. I
mean, we recognize there were problems and mistakes that were
made leading up to the withdrawal. But also, you know, going
backward, would you agree with that kind of statement there?
Colonel Kolenda. In February 14th of 2018 the Taliban
issued an open letter to the American people saying they wanted
talks, and I agree with my colleague that we have got an
obligation fighting a just war to explore those opportunities.
Now, you negotiate to secure your interests, not to give
them away, and the Doha agreement seemed to trade--make an
agreement trading no U.S. troops for promises of no terrorism,
and then there was no accountability.
So there is no single person who was able to--below the
president of the United States who was able to say the Taliban
are in material breach, we're stopping the withdrawal and we
are resuming, you know, military operations against them.
Nobody had that authority. And, again, it's this--it's this
silo problem, and a related problem is that the State
Department does not have any body of expert knowledge on how to
conduct wartime negotiations in which the United States is an
active participant.
This is a major shortfall in the State Department's body of
knowledge. It's a major shortfall in our National Security
thinking and one of the common sense reforms that we can make
to prevent something like this from happening again.
Mr. Kim. Great. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Kim.
I find it an amazing leap to think that President Trump,
Obama, or Bush are responsible for what happened in the literal
withdrawal of Afghanistan but everybody's entitled to their
opinions.
I now yield to Mr. Waltz for 5 minutes.
Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You know, I think we hear this from the other side of the
aisle quite a lot--well, we have to put this all into context
and there were a lot of mistakes made in the 20 years of war
and, frankly, I think that's a sad deflection from the mistakes
that were made, the debacle that this withdrawal was.
I could fill this room with think tank reports and studies,
some of which you authored, Mr. Kolenda, and that I
participated in in the Pentagon back under the Bush
Administration, which by the way talks began in the Bush
Administration.
They continued in the Obama Administration, all to varying
degrees, and then we hear about--as we're hearing from the
other side about, well, it was really about Doha. Heck, we even
just saw that in President Biden's after action review.
But at the end of the day, and this is the fact that people
just cannot get over, is President Trump's National Security
team went into him and said the Taliban are not living up to it
and he did not withdraw.
They did not live up to their end of the bargain and,
therefore, we stopped and then we hear, well, the
Administration--the Biden Administration did not have any
choice.
They had no problem with the--getting back into the Paris
Accord. They had no problem reversing course on Iran. They had
no problem reversing course on the border. Heck, they even
canceled an entire pipeline on day one.
But yet we're supposed to be--you know, we're supposed to
believe that they had no choice when it came to Afghanistan.
It's a bunch of crap. It's a garbage argument and I think deep
down my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know it in
their hearts.
So let's just stick to the fact at hand of this withdrawal
and how it was handled.
Colonel Krummrich, you are a senior staff officer in
Central Command and you're testifying that President Biden
ignored the military of advice of three four-star generals:
General Miller, General McKenzie, and General Milley, correct?
Colonel Krummrich. That was correct.
Mr. Waltz. And it's probably--it's safe to articulate that
our soldiers, their loved ones, were asked to do two
conflicting missions to completely get everything out as fast
as possible in a full withdrawal but yet also facilitate an
evacuation. Is that accurate? Correct?
Colonel Krummrich. That is correct.
Mr. Waltz. Sergeant Major, you're testifying that your best
military advice on using Bagram instead of HKIA was also
ignored. Is that correct?
Sergeant Major Smith. That's not the way it happened, sir.
We did not do it out of Bagram.
Mr. Waltz. And on Bagram, and this is critical to the
families sitting behind you, was the prison holding 7,000--
7,000 of the most hardened terrorists, including the suicide
bomber that killed their loved ones at Abbey Gate, correct?
Sergeant Major Smith. That is correct.
Mr. Waltz. And were you aware of any contingency planning?
The Afghans were guarding it but they needed the base for
power, for life support, for supplies.
Were you aware of any contingency planning as the Taliban
are closing in on Kabul to deal with those prisoners should
that prison fall or should they be released? Were you aware of
any contingency planning? Anyone?
Sergeant Major Smith. I was not, sir.
Mr. Waltz. Colonel Krummrich, finally, I'll just ask you.
Were you aware of any contingency planning to deal with our
SIVs, key Afghans like ministry officials, journalists, women,
activists, people that the Taliban obviously had targeted for
20 years and would continue?
Were you aware--including, heck, our own U.S. citizens--any
contingency planning as part of this rapid withdrawal to get
those folks out should our assumptions that the Afghan
government could hold in the military--an Afghan military hold
would fail? Any contingency planning along those lines?
Colonel Krummrich. No, and it became very painfully obvious
under extreme duress how big of a gap that that was.
Mr. Waltz. So this was an utter lack of planning that their
loved ones paid the ultimate price for and that our Afghan
allies right now today are being hunted down--as we speak are
still paying the price for and future American soldiers have to
go up and--to go back and cleanup this mess as we have had to
do in Iraq from the Obama Administration decisions.
I mean, there's a direct causality there, in your opinion?
Colonel Krummrich. There is.
Mr. Waltz. Thank you. And what would happen to a leader in
the military who ignored intelligence and failed to plan, in
this case till the day before, resulting in troops killed? What
would happen?
Colonel Krummrich. They would get court martialed.
Mr. Waltz. How does it make you feel that not a single
official has resigned, been relieved, then court martialed,
even laterally transferred, heck? How does that make you feel?
Colonel Krummrich. Terrible, and I would like, one, to take
responsibility. You know, when JFK had the Bay of Pigs he came
out and said, the buck stops with me. You know, I am----
Mr. Waltz. Not only are they not taking responsibility, the
President of the United States saying its outstanding success.
So should at least Secretary Blinken with the State Department
in charge of this operation, in your opinion, at least resign?
He's not going to be fired by the President. Should he at least
resign?
Colonel Krummrich. I cannot speak of what he should do. But
I would say that senior leaders definitely need to be held
accountable in that organization.
Mr. Waltz. Well, they're not under this Administration,
Colonel, but this committee will not let this go. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman, for your indulgence, both chairmen.
And to our families we will not let this go. As long as I
sit in this seat we will drive accountability for you and for
your loved ones.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Waltz.
We now yield 5 minutes to Ms. Titus.
Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the witnesses
and I too honor the Gold Star families who are here and
appreciate them sitting through and having to relive some of
this.
I would point out that you've been mentioning about the
7,000 prisoners released. Part of the Doha agreement was to
release 5,000 of those prisoners. Isn't that right, Colonel
Krummrich?
Colonel Krummrich. I would have to go back and look at the
numbers. But that was--that was part of the Doha agreement. If
conditions were met and people were acting in good faith that
there would be steps taken.
Ms. Titus. And as I understand it you were the chief of
staff at Special Operations Command Central starting, what,
back in 2019?
Colonel Krummrich. I was.
Ms. Titus. So while you were there you've said over and
over and over and over--we have heard this--there was no plan,
no plan, no plan. Did you see any planning during the time you
were there starting in 2019 leading up to Doha.
Colonel Krummrich. To be clear, U.S. 4A had plans. Like, on
the military side--and this is something I want to make sure is
really clear--the military has military plans and they executed
them with--under great duress and they executed very well, both
the acting of the withdrawal, which was key.
I mean, they did that in an incredible time line and it's a
testament to the planning and the execution, given the nature
of the plan, and the actual NEO itself. To get 120,000 people
out----
Ms. Titus. I appreciate that. I know how well our military
performed and how many people were removed. But why then do you
keep saying there's no plan, no plan, no plan?
Colonel Krummrich. I do not think I said that. I said that
there was a plan----
Ms. Titus. Well, you did not disagree when someone up here
keeps saying it.
Colonel Krummrich. No. The plan that we put forth as the
military recommended course of action was not chosen and a
separate course of action was selected by the Administration,
which focused on the diplomatic footprint. Going back to my
earlier testimony, there was three goals. The first was having
to----
Ms. Titus. I've got--I've got the testimony. I can read it.
You know, talk about diplomatic solutions. This is a committee
that looks at foreign affairs, not at military. That's a
different committee.
So I'd like to get back to some of the diplomacy. We have
heard a lot about how the women and children left in
Afghanistan or women and girls are being so mistreated.
Isn't it true that during the negotiations for the Doha
plan there were no women at the table? No women in the room?
Would that have made a difference in some of the decisions that
were made?
Doctor, could you comment on that? Dr. Kolenda?
Colonel Kolenda. I wasn't in the room at Doha. I know on
the--certainly on the Taliban side there were no women present.
I think on the American side maybe there were. So that's all
I----
Ms. Titus. As part of the--how about as part of the Afghan
government, as Mr. Kim was saying? They weren't in the room
either, were they?
Colonel Kolenda. No, they were not in the room.
Ms. Titus. OK. Well, another thing is the reform that we--
we have got to look at fixing this. We have got to look at how
to make it better, not just keep going over and over and over
again about how terrible it was.
We acknowledge that. There were mistakes made. Our hearts
go out to those families. But let's try to prevent it from
happening again. Maybe one of the reforms that we could make
and talk about is expanding that Afghan adjustment, I think, in
the Afghan agreement act where we look at the number of visas
that are provided to get families out.
Can we expand that? Would that make a difference? Would
that be helpful?
Colonel Kolenda. I was talking with--Congresswoman, I was
speaking with one of my former interpreters yesterday who I
helped get a Special Immigrant Visa and his family is still in
Afghanistan--his parents. He's got siblings still in
Afghanistan under threat and it would be--it would be wonderful
if immediate family members of our SIV holders could qualify as
well.
Ms. Titus. Well, let's do something, that something come
from this other than just a rehashing. I think that's something
that the committee should look at.
You also mentioned that in your written testimony some of
the solutions that we--systemic solutions, the problem with the
silos, nobody on the ground. Would you just lay out for us some
of those other solutions? So we can read it but let's put it on
the record.
Colonel Kolenda. Sure, Congresswoman. The first one I
mentioned is we need a basic National Security doctrine at the
military. Call it a doctrine or set of terms and concepts so
we're using--across agencies we're using the same terms to mean
the same things.
I was in the White House Situation Room listening to people
use the word defeat, reconciliation, other terms, to mean
completely different things and that impeded communication,
undermined our ability to coordinate.
The terms evacuation and withdrawal mean different things
to different people. If we were speaking the same language
within the--within any Administration across agencies then we
would have a much greater chance of improving communication and
coordination, fewer things falling through the cracks.
Second, or related to that is we need to--we need to have a
doctrine about war termination. The military does not have one.
The State Department does not have one.
The State Department's got no expert body of knowledge on
how to conduct wartime negotiations in which the United States
is the active participant and it has not worked out well every
single time.
So that expert body of knowledge is not difficult to create
and something that, you know, could be--could be done fairly
rapidly. The next reform is to actually put somebody in charge
on the ground of our wars.
So instead of right now all the silos--deploying by silos
so the lowest ranking person that anybody on the ground reports
to--the senior leaders on the ground report to--the lowest
ranking person they all report to is the President of the
United States.
I mean, you cannot run a business that way. You certainly
cannot run a war that way. So we need a congressional
equivalent of like a Goldwater-Nichols Act for the interagency
which gives the President the capability to appoint a senior
civilian or military official to be in charge of our--of our--
all U.S. efforts on the ground and everybody reporting to--you
know, to that individual, and that person is then held
accountable by the President for achieving U.S. aims and can
also appear before Congress for proper oversight and
accountability.
It would--we're missing that today in this hearing. There's
no one person Congress can point to and say, talk to us about
this disastrous evacuation.
And then the final point is we need a much better doctrine
for how we build developing military institutions. The way we
built the Afghan military was in our own image and likeness
because that's what we knew.
But there are other models for militaries and if we had a
greater menu of options and, you know, what sort of
considerations would make one option more advantageous than
another we could have built an Afghan military that was much
more self-reliant, much less dependent upon us.
And, quite frankly, I mean, I'm a consultant. I work with
clients and I've got an ethical obligation to make sure that
when we part ways, which we will always do, that my clients are
better off and they're able to soar to new heights on their
own.
What we did creating such a dependent military was
malpractice.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Colonel.
Ms. Titus. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mast. Absolutely, Ms. Titus.
And I would think just personally that if the President
does not delegate an authority than he has the authority and
the individuals report to the President directly should he not
delegate somebody.
In that, I now yield 5 minutes to Mr. Issa.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I'll just briefly say the first time I was in
Afghanistan was shortly after we went in in 1901 and I observed
that it was a shit hole. I observed that it was never much of a
country.
I went to the so-called palace and I was underwhelmed by
the facility that the king had occupied. So it does not
surprise me that 20 years later we still had problems. During
that time I saw rampant corruption including Karzai who he and
his brother raped the country and I'm going to phrase it rape
the American taxpayers of billions of dollars. We can talk for
as long as anyone is allowed about the failures of Afghanistan.
But I do want to talk about the subject as you are here for a
moment.
Sergeant Major, you laid out the difference in the
facilities, one which was defendable, one which was able to
almost occupy a siege if necessary but, if I'm correct, would
have required some flexibility in the number of personnel.
In other words, if you have a mandate of less than a
thousand and they have to include the embassy then you really
do not have the flexibility to use Bagram. Is that correct?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, Bagram, being such a large
military installation, it had 84 guard towers and that takes a
significant amount of manpower to man.
Mr. Issa. So given maybe double the amount, 2,000 or so,
you could have defended that airbase and that's 2,000 not
including the people operating aircraft and other things that
might have been left there. But Bagram could have been
maintained and would have been safer had we had some
flexibility from the commander in chief as to the number of
personnel, correct?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, if you had 2,000 people Bagram
would be a much safer location.
Mr. Issa. OK. Colonels, I'll address you together for a
moment. You both went to the war colleges. You both went and
commanded a general staff. So I'm going to go through a little
quick history. I'll try to be as quick as possible.
During Vietnam the now 100-year-old Henry Kissinger
negotiated what some would call a flawed agreement. You know,
they had these peace agreements.
But both during the time and afterwards isn't it true that
when Richard Nixon saw failures to comply, saw aggression, saw
an attempt to take ground by his adversaries being the North
Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, he bombed the shit out of them.
Is that correct? Using a technical military term. Am I--am
I not remembering history? That if you're noncompliant with it
that the commander in chief uses his or her authority to
essentially let them know that there was a consequence for not
obeying an agreement?
Colonel Krummrich. That is my recollection.
Mr. Issa. OK. So knowing that the commander in chief had a
history in what people often call that failed withdrawal of
Saigon, which by the way was long after we had left and our
military had left and it really was a post period, we certainly
could have a discussion about, you know, failure to plan a NEO
sufficient.
I'd like to just go on to one other, Benghazi. There were
similarities with Benghazi, which seems to be there was no plan
to withdraw. The military did not know who could do it and the
like and the facilities were insufficient.
In the investigation of Benghazi what did we find? We found
that the facilities chosen, the facilities in which the
Ambassador was hunkered down, were not compliant with any State
Department requirements. In fact, he died because the fuel tank
was right next to where he was supposed to be in a safe house.
So, Sergeant Major, I'm going to come back to you. The
actual loss of 160 human beings plus and 13 of our service
members can it be reasonably attributed to the difference in
facilities chosen between Bagram versus HKIA?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, the events that happened on
Abbey Gate I believe that would have--that would not have
occurred in Bagram. The defense that Bagram held, the ability
to see for, you know, hundreds of meters and the defense in
depth of those control points I do not believe the result would
have been the same.
Mr. Issa. OK. I'm not going to defend the work of the
Secretary of State Pompeo in the Doha agreement but I will ask,
Colonel Krummrich, I think I'll start with you.
Am I correct that there, roughly, were sort of 9 months and
9 months--nine months of the Trump Administration followed by 9
months of--nearly 9 months of the Biden Administration.
Each of--each of them had 9 months, more or less, to make
decisions on that plan. What would you say were the fatal flaws
during that first 9 months? Did, for example, the Trump
Administration withdraw troops to an artificially low level?
Did they signal in a way that would cause people to evacuate?
You know, go through just quickly were there actions during
the Trump Administration that you can say absolutely led to the
events that cost 13 members lives that you can you can point to
today?
Colonel Krummrich. Not during the Trump Administration. I
do not see a direct causation during that time period.
Mr. Issa. And wasn't there during that next 9 months plenty
of time to make adjustments based on the actions of the Taliban
during that next nine or so months?
Colonel Krummrich. In my opinion, there was time to make
adjustments. Yes.
Mr. Issa. And were there any adjustments made that you know
of during that period of time that said to the Taliban that
there would be consequences for their violations?
Colonel Krummrich. No, and that was our failure in the Doha
agreement. We did not hold them accountable to meeting those
conditions yet we continued to withdraw.
Mr. Issa. OK. Last, the closing--the release at the time of
that 5,000 to 7,000 bad guys, if you will, was that related to
the agreement or was that inherently related to the closing of
Bagram?
Colonel Krummrich. I do not know the answer to that
question.
Mr. Issa. Well, were they released essentially simultaneous
with the closing of the airbase? Sergeant Major, you were
probably the closest to knowing the time schedule.
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, I do not know the time line.
Mr. Issa. OK. We'll take that one to find out later. Mr.
Chairman, thank you very much for your indulgence.
Mr. Mills [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Issa. At this point,
we'll recognize the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Dean, for
5 minutes.
Ms. Dean. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you,
Ranking Member Crow. I thank you, our witnesses, for testifying
today and, of course, even more thank you for your service to
our country.
I also recognize the service members in the audience--
veterans and service members as well as Gold Star families. My
heart is with you. Our gratitude is with you and it's something
we can never repay.
This 20-year war cost our country so much, and while the
end was devastatingly heartbreaking we could not continue to
send Americans to fight a war no longer in our vital national
interest.
We owe a tremendous debt to the more than 2,400 U.S.
service members killed and the more than 20,000 wounded during
the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan and we are here to
understand what happened and importantly to learn how do we do
better in the future.
As my Democratic colleagues have said, August 2021 did not
happen in a vacuum. This was a 20-year war and to understand
what happened we need to look at the broader context.
Colonel Krummrich, you testified in response to a question
from my colleague, Mr. Kim, that prudent steps were taken in
2020 to start withdrawing troops. But later when we saw that
the conditions weren't being met by the Taliban General Milley
and others ceased the draw down.
But isn't it true in January 2021 President Trump further
drew down U.S. troops just days before the change of
Administrations?
Colonel Krummrich. I would have to go back and look. I do
not know the specific answer to that question.
Ms. Dean. I believe it is. I think maybe drew down to 2,500
literally within days of what we would hope was a peaceful
transfer of power. Do you believe that President Trump knew
that the Taliban was not meeting the Doha deal?
Colonel Krummrich. Yes, which is why there was a halt on
the withdrawal in late 2020.
Ms. Dean. And yet a continued withdrawal in January just
days before he was to leave office?
Colonel Krummrich. I would have to go back and look at
those numbers.
Ms. Dean. If you would provide those to the committee that
would be really helpful and I think we need the record to be as
clear as possible.
For all of you, what lessons should U.S. civilian and
military leaders take from this war? Colonel Kolenda, as you
point out, what happened in Afghanistan is not unique. There
was Iraq. Before that was Vietnam.
I had two brothers who served during the Vietnam War in the
Navy. My eldest brother Bob served two terms--two tours of duty
in Vietnam on destroyers and hospital ships. I remember as a
little girl the devastation of that war and, of course, of the
end of that war. How do we prevent another such disaster,
Colonel?
Colonel Kolenda. Thank you, Congresswoman. And I'm not sure
if Minersville, Pennsylvania, is in your district but one of my
troopers, Dave Borris, is buried there at the--at the cemetery.
Ms. Dean. Oh, my. Thank you for telling me that.
Colonel Kolenda. I wrote this book ``Zero Sum Victory: What
We're Getting Wrong about War'' to address the exact question
that you--that you posed. I think there are a lot of different
reforms that we need to make so we do not have a disaster like
this occur again.
I identified a few of those in my written testimony to
include the fact that we need to put somebody in charge on the
ground in charge of all U.S. forces. We need a--we need the
State Department to develop an expert body of knowledge for
conducting wartime negotiations in which we're a participant.
I found the whole process leading up to the Doha agreement
to be deeply troubling where instead of trying to focus on a
deal and putting a total withdrawal of U.S. troops on the table
immediately, as participants have told me what happened, we
should have instead worked this a bit more like the Northern
Ireland peace agreement--peace process where it was a step by
step process, testing the Taliban's bona fides and intentions
to see if they would uphold their commitments. And then you got
to make sure that you got accountability and somebody on the
ground who is able to make those determinations about
accountability in the event the adversary does not uphold their
terms.
Finally, we need something just as basic as a National
Security doctrine, a set of terms and concepts so we're all--
the same terms mean the same things to the same people. We do
not have that right now.
So DoD speaks one language. State speaks a different
language. The intelligence community speaks a third language,
and coordination, good strategy, good policy falls through the
cracks.
Ms. Dean. I thank you, and I see my time has expired.
Again, I thank you all for your service and for those in the
audience thank you also. I yield back.
Mr. Mills. Thank you, Ms. Dean.
At this point, we'll recognize the gentleman from
Tennessee, Mr. Green, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Chairman, for leading this critical
oversight hearing, and I want to thank Chairman Mast for his
leadership continuing to hold the Biden Administration's feet
to the fire on one of the biggest strategic failures in
American history.
I also want to thank the Gold Star families that are here,
thank them for their unprecedented sacrifice to our country. I
am confident that looking at my fellow veterans and leaders on
this dais we will finally get the record straight.
I also want to thank our witnesses for their selfless
service to our Nation and the people of Afghanistan. We will
continue to look to your bravery and your grace under pressure
for inspiration in the decades to come.
I find it tragic that the other side keeps going back to
the previous Administration when we know that during that
Administration the Taliban did not gain massive ground because
they know he'd have bombed the--bombed them into oblivion.
When the circumstances changed massively on the ground and
the military commander said exfil from Bagram Biden told Milley
no. It's that simple. And mistakes made throughout the 20-
year--20 years of our time in Afghanistan do not justify
stupidity in the end. They just do not. Any other wrong does
not make a right.
As I did during the full committee Foreign Affairs hearing
in March, I want to say a word to my fellow Afghanistan
veterans. Our service and our sacrifices were not in vain.
Despite the strategic mistakes made in Washington we kept
America safe for a major--from a major terrorist attack for
over 20 years. No one who served and like myself lost friends
should ever allow these mistakes we are addressing today to
detract in any way from those sacrifices.
We protected America for 20 years. Please know
accountability is coming. My own combat deployment in
Afghanistan illustrated to me the importance of teamwork and
dedication to the mission at hand, particularly when it comes
to planning.
In Afghanistan we always had our fellow soldier's back no
matter what it took and no matter the personal costs. We took
care of our own, including our Afghan brothers in arms because
our mission to keep Afghanistan free and America safe required
it.
In one of the darkest hours of American foreign policy you
all stood in the breach to save the lives of vulnerable
American citizens and our Afghan allies from the vicious
Taliban. You did not let the mission down even when the
politicians did.
You were left without proper direction or support from your
commander in chief but you did not let that deter you. You all
stood up and have continued to do so in a way that our State
Department has been unable or unwilling to do so.
For 2 weeks in August 2021 we basically had no State
Department in Afghanistan. Our active duty service members and
our veterans did the essential security and humanitarian work
on the ground, proving once again that America's greatest
resource in any challenge is our men and women in arms.
You all are a testament to the critical fact we have
learned about the United States military and our veterans
throughout the global war on terror, that even when Washington
fails you you rise to every occasion. America thanks you for
your dedication, courage, and hearts of service to your fellow
man.
Sergeant Major Smith--Command Sergeant Major Smith, you
testified that after Bagram's closure only one single infantry
company, 113 U.S. soldiers, and two companies of partner forces
was left in Afghanistan to protect HKIA.
Can you give us the detail on how complicated this is and
do you feel there was--do you feel that number of troops was
sufficient and why not?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, with the Turkish forces--I need
to preface that with--their involvement in this. They manned
one gate. That was their area of responsibility.
It was those--the remaining 113 from that company that was
responsible for the rest of that airfield. That includes
manning all the gates and ECPs. That includes manning all the
towers and all the guard positions. It was an exceptionally
hard task and there should have been more people there.
Mr. Green. We know that General Milley asked for more and
was turned down. I have a question now for--and I hope I'm
pronouncing your name right--Colonel Krummrich--is that
correct?
Can you explain why you were incredulous to hear senior
officials express surprise at the swiftness of the Afghan
government's collapse and the Taliban takeover?
Colonel Krummrich. I think there's two aspects to this. The
first was the underestimation of the Taliban's capability. Over
the last 20 years--we saw them in 2001. That initial Taliban
force was not very proficient compared to what I saw, say, 10
years later, standing next to a bed in Walter Reed with a
friend of mine who was a team sergeant that got caught in a
green on blue attack and he described to me the thousand meter
accurate firefights they were having with machine guns with the
Taliban.
The Taliban were getting much, much more lethal and it was
only going to continue to rise. They were improving and they
were getting the logistics they needed, the training they
needed. They were a real threat that was on the rise.
Meanwhile, on the Afghan government side--I think it was
crystallized eloquently by Colonel Kolenda--the Afghan
government had a kleptocracy, had an issue all the way through
that is preventing them from being able to achieve what they
needed to achieve.
So you had this very strong Taliban that was always going
to be a threat and, to your point, they were stuck in those 78
districts that were, frankly, pushed way out to the hinterland.
They weren't important areas.
But once we telegraphed that we were going to leave and the
pressure was then put on the Afghan military it was clear that
that increasingly lethal Taliban were going to have a serious
effect.
We left immediately, absolutely spinning an empty chair
when our Afghan allies were looking around, where did we go,
when the red storm was coming at them from the Taliban and at
that point disaster followed.
Mr. Green. I apologize. I cannot stay for the remainder of
this committee hearing and I'm over my time. I'm the chairman
of the Committee on Homeland Security and I'm going to a
classified briefing on the 14,000 Chinese nationals who have
poured across our southern border, many with ties to the PLA,
another tragic failure this Administration.
So I must leave. But thank you for your service to this
country.
Mr. Mills. Thank you so much, Mr. Green, and thank you for
your support as well and helping to secure our borders.
You know, I want to go back to a couple of things that's
been said throughout this by my colleagues on the left. You
know, you have things where they say, well, there's no point in
us rehashing this.
You know, in the military we call something that's being
rehashed as an AAR, an after action review, and the whole point
of conducting those after action reviews is to, one, ensure
that these types of incidents do not occur again but also to
ensure that accountability is held and we can actually go
forward and make sure that the right people are there.
You also continue to hear, well, we need to look at it in
its entirety over the last 20-plus years. You know, as someone
who had served in the United States military--so I was a combat
veteran like many of my colleagues who are up here.
When we take command and we basically go out on operations
and those operations go wrong we do not look at the previous
command and go, well, the previous command had them for the
last 2 years and it's their training that happened in the past.
That's the reason for these actual incidents and mistakes.
But that's what they want to do to President Trump. They
want to say that, well, let's look at its entirety. Let's not
talk about the Obama era. Let's not talk about the Bush era.
Let's ignore, you know, August 26th, which was under the
Biden Administration. Let's just focus on President Trump, and
I wonder if that has anything to do with the upcoming elections
and the fact that he's ahead in the polls, and we're playing
politics, which is why we're sitting here right now, over
strategy and over actually holding those accountable for the
actions that they're responsible for.
You know, I wasn't an officer but I was a noncommissioned
officers so I worked for living and the Command Sergeant Major
understands that all too well. The one thing that we know is
that when we deploy out, whoever does not come home with this
is on us. We do not shuttle that responsibility and that blame
on anyone. That's exactly what everyone wants to do.
I want to also just comment on something real quick. On
August 31st of 2021, President Biden claimed that the Afghan
withdrawal, and to quote him, ``was an extraordinary success.''
You know, I want to play a video, if I may, and then I want
to ask that exact same question. If you can please direct your
attention.
[Video.]
Mr. Mills. Now, that was an American who was waving her
passport at the gate that the Biden Administration, that the
Department of State, Secretary Blinken, and that Secretary
Austin claims was manned full time in enablement of trying to
help guarantee Americans free access, and to quote Biden, he
actually said all you have to do is show your blue passport and
we'll let you in.
He also tried to say that there was no chaos in regards to
the withdrawal. Did that look structured as loved ones go
through and look through body after body to try and find their
deceased loved one who had passed?
Did that look like proper force protection like we would
have found at Bagram Air Base that would have guaranteed the
necessary standoff, that Hesco barriers that was going to be
provided, the ability to house the SIVs and P-1 and P-2s so we
could do a proper medical and biometrics before just throwing
people on an aircraft?
That they call the greatest successful operational airlift
in history, even though it's reported that almost 70 percent
weren't even properly vetted.
Do we call that an extraordinary success, Colonel?
Colonel Krummrich. That video is what failure looks like.
That is failure. Absolutely.
Mr. Mills. You're exactly right. Command Sergeant Major,
what would you say on that?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, under the conditions that the
United States military found themselves under I believe that in
that chaos and anarchy the military had a successful mission.
The conditions were less than ideal, though.
Mr. Mills. But to your exact point, and you're right, the
issue--and I say this--and I spent, you know, over 7 years of
my life in Iraq, over 3 years in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Pakistan,
northern Somalia. Was hit with roadside IEDs in 2006 in Baghdad
twice, once with an EFP, which we're all familiar with.
Those aren't failures by the U.S. military and those who
are wearing the uniform. It's the suits, not the boots, who are
actually responsible for these types of failures and these
collapses.
One of the reasons I ran for Congress is I got tired of
people who sit here trying to make decisions that impact us as
war fighters on the ground but, yet, they have no
accountability, no understanding, and no actual on the ground
experience themselves.
You know, less than 17 percent of Congress is actually made
up of veterans prior to this last election. Probably the reason
why, to your point, Colonel Kolenda, that we have continued to
have strategic military failures time and time again.
This incident that occurred during the botched Afghan
withdrawal under the Biden Administration was because they
applied political optics over military strategy. But they're
also responsible for that intelligence blindness that you talk
about.
There was credible intel that we know was provided day
after day and I've looked at that in our SCIF in the classified
briefings and shown the day to day where it was giving an
update on what was going to occur, what was happening, where
the planning was, plannings finish, execution getting ready to
happen, and then August 26th happens and that's why we have 13
of our fallen heroes and 13 new Gold Star families.
And I'm here right now and proud and hold this in my pocket
so I know I'm not here alone. And I've got our young Corporal
Sanchez, his coin right here with me that was given by his
family who I know is looking for the same accountability
because his death was preventable.
But so was the Americans in that video I just showed. You
know, we report our 13 heroes but the thing that hasn't been
reported was all the Americans who were on the other side of
that gate waiting to get in whose families still do not have a
clue where they're at.
The reason I know that there's more Americans there is
because whenever I heard about what was going on in Afghanistan
Congressman Ronny Jackson called me and told me about a mother
and three children that were trapped in Afghanistan that are
his Amarillo, Texas born and raised natives, and he tried to
reach out to the State Department to get support and they told
him, well, we'll call and see where they're at.
You know, he's a rear admiral as well, and when he called
the DoD they told him they couldn't do anything--they were in
the midst of a withdrawal. So I put a team together of former
squadron members and I had the great support of a friend of
mine, Glenn Devitt from the Sentinel Foundation, who we put a
team together and flew over there and actually conducted the
first successful overland rescue.
Why was it over land? Because the Biden Administration had
thwarted our efforts on three different occasions to rescue
Americans even though we had an aircraft that was scheduled to
pick up 28 Americans and fly them out.
You know, it's interesting to me when I talk about the
Americans on the other side where they're not admitting to them
because one was a woman that we were in contact with with her
2-year--old son and her father who are Americans, who we were
in contact with and told to meet at Abbey Gate, who had
rehearsed our entire--our policy and what we were going to do
in our operational--I guess, our op con white paper, if you
will.
And when we found out that we weren't going to be able to
come in there and we had to reroute we asked everyone to leave.
But she's still texted and told us she thought that she can
still get in.
That was August 26th, and when we tried to reach out to her
again we never heard from her again. So very likely another
American and her son who's dead.
You know, you also talked--and, Colonel, I want to just
clarify this for the record. When we talked about this metric-
based withdrawal, the Doha agreement, it was very clear that if
the metric was not met, the agreement was not met, that we were
not obligated to remove everyone. Is that correct?
Colonel Krummrich. That's my understanding.
Mr. Mills. And that also prior to President Trump leaving
office when he was advised by his generals that we should not
go to a zero sum game of just pulling out everyone and we need
to leave advisors behind so that our Afghan partners can be
ready to repel because as we have pointed out they started
getting better, then he actually changed the decision to leave
military in country to ensure that it happens, correct?
Colonel Krummrich. That is correct.
Mr. Mills. So it sounds to me like President Trump listened
to the generals, listened to his advisers, had an actual
withdrawal plan that was based on a conditions-based agreement.
But yet the Biden Administration continues to say that all
these failures is as a result of the Trump Administration. You
know, they did not have any problem removing things like the
remain in Mexico agreement. They do not have any problem
removing other Trump policies. But this one thing they were
just absolutely hamstrung.
Now, as all of you have led many men have you ever been
when you take command held to say that, I cannot do what I'm
supposed to do to make changes for my command?
Colonel Krummrich. When I'm in command I'm in command.
Mr. Mills. Colonel Colitis?
Colonel Kolenda. Kolenda, Mr. Mills.
Mr. Mills. Kolenda. Sorry.
Colonel Kolenda. Well, of course, when you're in command
you're in command. You've got constraints and limitations on
you all the time that you deal with but, you know, the buck
stops with you and that's why it's unfortunate that we do not
have anybody in charge of our wars on the ground because the
buck does not--there's nobody to hold accountable.
So you've got the three of us here instead of the senior
official who should have been on the ground in charge of this
evacuation and withdrawal.
Mr. Mills. You're exactly right.
Command Sergeant Major?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, I was taught from a very young
age as an NCO that you're responsible for everything your
soldiers do or fail to do.
Mr. Mills. Gentlemen, I could not agree more with the
testimoneys that I've heard so far today and I just want to ask
a quick spitfire question, if I may, and this is to you,
Colonel Krummrich.
If we held on to Bagram could we have better protected the
country from the Taliban takeover?
Colonel Krummrich. Bagram would have been my personal
choice. I think it would have given us a better opportunity.
Mr. Mills. Would you agree that if we held Bagram that we
could have also have had two simultaneous runways running to
help with our NEO and our evacuation as opposed to taking over
just HKIA and giving up Bagram?
Colonel Krummrich. Well, I also would build on that and say
it's really about the plan. When you decided to make your plan
all about the embassy and all about HKIA you've limited
yourself and you've taken away any last ability to be able to
enforce the Doha agreement and you threaten everything that we
tried to build and all the hope that we put in that country was
going to get washed away based on that decision.
Mr. Mills. I completely agree with you and I would also
note that the Biden Administration not only tries to push this
on Trump with regards to the actual withdrawal but when the
U.S. Government takes over HKIA, which is a commercial airway,
then all the people who were told November 11th is this magical
date that we're going to go on who had booked their flights on
August 26th, who had booked their flights on August 30th, who
had booked their flights on September 1st, through Emirates,
through Kan Air, through Ariana, through the other providers,
the minute the U.S. Government takes control over that airport
all those commercial flights got canceled, which is single
handedly responsible for the entrapment of the Americans that
were actually left behind.
And my last question, which I just have because all of you,
especially you, Colonel, who was in charge of SOCOM, other
nations, including the U.K.'s Special Forces was actually out
there rescuing their citizens to ensure they got out. Yet the
U.S. never did. Why was U.S. SOF not allowed to rescue
Americans?
Colonel Krummrich. This is an unclassified setting. I know
that U.S. SOF was highly engaged and highly active. My personal
opinion is the scope of what was being asked was so vast and
the time that was allowed for that to happen made it an
impossibility for us to be able to thoroughly be able to
execute exactly what you're talking about.
Mr. Mills. Thank you so much. Again, it goes back to the
original point, which is that not only were these 13 heroes--
their death preventable with proper planning, with proper
military strategy, with ensuring that if the metric and
conditions-based agreement was not adhered to that we weren't
just going to fall apart in withdrawal and give everything over
to the Taliban after 20-plus years of sacrifices, trillions of
dollars, and thousands of lives, this was a planning failure on
the Biden Administration and that's who needs to be held
accountable here and I can promise you that is who will be held
accountable here.
With that, I'd like to recognize my good friend from Texas,
Mr. Moran, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to each
of the witnesses for being here today to share your testimony.
Thank you, in particular, for putting National Security
policy and foreign affairs policy ahead of politics. I
appreciate that. Your commitment to improving our future
behavior by evaluating our past decisions is underscored by
your presence here and the testimony you've given and I deeply
appreciate that.
Colonel Krummrich, I want to start with you. You mentioned
that--in your testimony that the Administration's timing and,
quote, ``selective intelligence blindness'' were two of the
three fundamental flaws that directly threatened the military
plan and mission execution. That was from your testimony.
I'd like to know, in your opinion what is one of the most
grievous or egregious examples of, quote, ``selective
intelligence blindness'' attributable to the Biden
Administration during the Afghan withdrawal process?
Colonel Krummrich. There's a number to choose from. I think
the key piece is when you have over a hundred years of
experience between those three four-star generals and they're
telling you based on all of this experience that we need to
hold off on the withdrawal until the conditions are met and
these are the reasons why operationally and based on the entire
intelligence community telling you that this is--needs to
follow the conditions, when that was not followed and the
decision was to go to this diplomatic island in Kabul, at that
point it was the biggest mistake made by the Administration.
They should have listened to those that had been living it,
those that had to endure the losses there, and failure to do so
was catastrophic.
Mr. Moran. And the reason why we put those conditions in
such agreements is because if they're not followed then the
obligation for our activity then goes away. It's a basic
principle of law in any contract. There's conditions preceding.
If those are not fulfilled then the other party does not
have to fulfill its commitment or obligations and in this case
you're saying we just ignored the fact that they did not
fulfill their conditions preceding. Isn't that true?
Colonel Krummrich. That is correct. That is correct.
Mr. Moran. You also said it is well known that between May
and October is Afghanistan fighting season and the Taliban are
at their strongest. In the strategic plans for withdrawal that
were offered to the Administration was this a well known
reality related to the Administration?
Colonel Krummrich. Absolutely. There's 20 years of
experience of the Afghan fighting season. Everyone was aware of
it.
Mr. Moran. But it seems like in their execution of plans
they ignored that reality. Would you agree with that?
Colonel Krummrich. Absolutely.
Mr. Moran. How high would you rank timing as a means for a
successful mission when considering the Taliban's season of
aggression that was well known for decades?
Colonel Krummrich. It's extremely important. Some people
focus on courses of action but I would always argue that the
timing of your operation absolutely matters just as much.
Mr. Moran. One more question for you and then--and then
I'll move over the dais. But to the best of your knowledge what
agreements, if any, did the U.S. make with the Taliban after
Kabul fell?
Colonel Krummrich. I'm not privy to that answer.
Mr. Moran. Does anybody at the dais have an answer to that
question?
Colonel Kolenda, do you--do you know as well or----
Colonel Kolenda. I do not.
Mr. Moran. Command Sergeant Major?
Sergeant Major Smith. I do not either.
Mr. Moran. All right. Colonel Kolenda, I want to--I want to
come to you and thank you for your testimony. You got about a
minute and a half but I want to give you just the opportunity
to talk about anything that you've not been able to emphasize
today that we need to take away as a lesson from this botched
withdrawal as to what we need to do differently in the future.
What lessons can we learn that we haven't discussed today?
Colonel Kolenda. We need to take a yes and approach to
these disasters. We need to, of course, look at the immediate
disaster of the withdrawal and evacuation. Also what got us
there, because if we do not we're going to wind up in another
war that ends up in disaster.
So I offered, you know, three of the immediate causes of
the collapse and these rhyme across Vietnam and Afghanistan. I
mean, the first one is the Afghan government never bothered to
gain the buy-in of the Afghan people.
As Colonel Krummrich said, they became a predatory
kleptocracy government of thieves where positions were for sale
for exorbitant amounts of money. A police chief in a big
province might go for as much as $3 million U.S. dollars and in
exchange for that buying their position they were able to use
the position to make the money back through land theft,
kidnapping for ransom, extorting our aid and development
dollars, et cetera, and all these actions pushed Afghans into
the arms of insurgents who were targeting and killing our
soldiers.
A second--you know, a second major reason is that, as
Colonel Krummrich said, the Taliban were much more innovative.
We got very complacent over 20 years, believing--you know, we
and the Afghan government believing that we could do the same
thing over and over again and expect similar results.
But when the Taliban are innovating militarily,
politically, diplomatically, eventually by the summer of 2021
they had the upper hand and, sadly, many Afghans saw the
Taliban as the lesser of two evils.
And, third and finally, is we have got to create some sort
of doctrine that helps us build developing world militaries
much more effectively. We cannot afford to make them in our own
image and likeness. It does not work.
There are other models that would have made the Afghan
military more sustainable, able to--able to stand on its own
and not simply collapse like a house of cards. That's our fault
and we should fix that.
Mr. Moran. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Chairman, I yield
back.
Mr. Mills. Thank you so much, and myself and the ranking
member were just agreeing on the fact that you're right, we
cannot continue to model everything as if it's the U.S. model
and then expect that to go forward.
So thank you for that. That was a great layout and you're
right, military doctrine drives it.
At this time I'd like to recognize the gentleman from
Georgia for 5 minutes, Mr. McCormick.
Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the
witnesses. Thank you for your service. As I listen to the--not
just the testimony but the people asking the questions, a lot
of us have served overseas. A lot of us have a lot of joint
service.
Right around here I'm looking at Air Force, Navy, Marine,
Army literally right in a row people--your brothers in arms
asking you questions, understanding that you guys were there
and you did that and we appreciate your service and appreciate
your testimony today.
A lot of us, when we talk about the withdrawal, for
example, when I--I remember when the withdrawal was happening.
It was probably one of the worst adult experiences I've had in
my life. That may sound overdramatic.
You know, I wasn't even there. But yet anybody who's served
and understands the people we have lost, the friends, we
visited the grave sites, the time we spent away from our
family, the months and years even that we spent away from our
families, all of us--the traumatic brain injuries, the limbs
lost, 2,461 deaths, trillions of dollars, 20 years of
investment, to give it back to the people who now are
harboring, I think, what, 27 bases that are training terrorists
now, that hurts and I'm not over it yet and I do not think any
of us are.
And so when I hear people talk about, well, we just need to
learn lessons you're right, we do need to learn lessons and
that's what this is about. You've already talked--Colonel, I
really appreciate--Krummrich--you talking about some of the
different things that we have made mistakes on--the timing, the
manning, the location all of the witnesses have talked about.
One of the things that we haven't really totally addressed,
in my opinion, was the command climate and this goes all the
way at the top. I'm an ER doctor. I'm also a military pilot.
Military ER doctor, as a matter of fact. Both in the ER and
in the cockpit when things start going wrong I've empowered
everybody in the room to stop me. I do not like to land here. I
do not feel comfortable. There's something wrong with this, the
way we're approaching. There's something wrong with the way
we're doing our mission.
In the ER if I'm giving the wrong drug or giving the wrong
command anybody in the room can question me at the time. That's
a command climate which keeps me from making mistakes.
The question is as you commanders or boots on the ground
were executing the mission as you saw it but you were giving
feedback, I assume, in the same command climate, I do not feel
comfortable with this, do you feel like you were empowered and
had been heard and acknowledged and your concerns?
I'll start with the colonels.
Colonel Krummrich. Within the military structure and the
plan there is a lot of transparency on the options that we
presented and then the directive that we--and the orders that
we received that we needed to execute.
As I had remarked earlier, there was some shock or there's
a lot of shock. There's some cynicism because a lot of us had a
really bad feeling of what was going to happen. However, I will
say that the military leaders--General McKenzie, General
Milley--you know, they do what we do in the military. They
followed orders. They did the best that they could with this
and we executed the best that we had the ability to do it.
And there were some tough days. You know, having to watch,
you know, McKenzie get on TV and talk about Abbey Gate was
really, really difficult and he had a serious burden to carry
on his shoulders.
And I think what gets you through that is knowing that
we're doing the best that we can in the military. We executed
the best that we could. But the pill that is impossible to
swallow is that it was all wrapped up and washed away with
failure to include all the hope for the Afghanis.
Colonel Kolenda. One hundred percent. When you are in
charge you have got to listen to feedback from people and your
subordinates have to believe that--have to have the
psychological confidence that they can go to you and they can
say, boss, I think this is wrong and here's the reasons why.
Here's what I think we ought to do instead.
I'm not privy to the inner workings of those conversations
in this particular incident. I do know that historically it's a
good thing that Lincoln did not listen to McClellan, for
instance.
FDR disagreed with Marshall about going to--he wanted--
Marshall wanted to go right into France in 1942 and FDR said,
no, we're going to go into North Africa. Truman disagreed with
MacArthur about the atomic bomb.
So it's not unusual for leaders to take all that in because
they have to look at a wider aperture and maybe make an
unpopular decision.
So I'm just speaking historically.
Mr. McCormick. So let's get into that real quick, if I may,
because we're running short on time. But it's interesting.
You're right, and when we make the right decision we're all
hailed for it but when we make the wrong decision the only way
to learn from it is to say, I made the wrong decision.
The problem is in this case--and sorry, Command Sergeant
Major, I know that you would look at the board, your command--
your command structure all the way to the very top. Who's at
the top of your chain of command?
Sergeant Major Smith. That's the President of the United
States.
Mr. McCormick. President of the United States, commander in
chief. Now, we can say when McClellan and Lincoln disagreed. We
can say when Ike or anybody else disagree.
We can talk about when generals are relieved and we can
learn from those lessons. But we cannot learn from a lesson
when it's an abject failure and no admission of any mistakes.
We talk about learning. When my friends across the aisles
say we just need to learn from this--we need--stop playing
politics with it, but we cannot learn if we do not admit
mistakes and that's the problem I'm talking about--the command
climate.
I cannot learn if my patient dies on the table and nobody
can tell me that I did anything wrong in the ER. I cannot
learn, certainly, if I crash my helicopter and anybody dies
from my mistake.
In this case I feel like we crashed and learn nothing
because we cannot even admit the mistakes that we made from the
very top and that's my concern because if we're going to go
into this--look, we even have a problem right now.
We continue policy--and we do not talk about this very much
but we're continuing to spend billions of dollars. Now, this
does not have to do with the withdrawal directly. This has to
do with what's happening right now. The American people need to
know.
The Afghan Fund, which has basically subsequently been
transferred $3.5 billion in seized assets from the fund with
the purpose of stabilizing the Afghan central banking system.
Of course, the Taliban basically takes that and uses it for
whatever they want to.
We're supporting a terrorist organization, essentially, and
the idea that we're doing something right this is continued
failed policy because we haven't learned from our mistakes.
This is what drives me crazy.
We have a command climate inside of our own government that
does not listen to our military leaders who know what they're
doing, does not listen to Congress or anybody else because they
think they know best, and they continue to screw it up.
That's a bad command climate. I do not care if we're
talking politics or military or anything else, and that's what
we have to learn from. That's what we're here for today.
And with that, I thank you, Mr. Chair, and I yield.
Mr. Mills. I now recognize Mr. Perry for 5 minutes.
Mr. Perry. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thanks for your
service. Thanks for coming. I'm over here.
Look, I will tell you I still haven't gotten over the
withdrawal from Iraq and the 4,500-plus lives lost there for
what seems to be nothing and what to say to those families.
Of course, Afghanistan is right up there and, you know, I
was around watching as a young man or a young boy the Huey
leaving the top of the embassy in Hanoi and I remember the
rhetoric this time where it was not going to be like that. It
was not going to be like leaving Vietnam.
We weren't going to see that scene and we did not see that
scene, right? It was a Chinook flying with the mountains in the
background or a C-17 with Afghans hanging off the bottom of it
and falling to their death.
It is unimaginable to people like me and, I imagine, to
folks like you who wore the uniform. And, you know, look, we
all know the mantra. Ours is not to question why. Ours is just
to do and die, and we get that, right. We all get that. We
signed up for that.
But at the same time, the American people demand
accountability for their lost--for the blood that's lost, for
their family members that are never coming back, for the
equipping of the largest terrorist organization on the planet,
you know, at the heel of the American taxpayer.
And so we got to do our job here. We understand that you're
carrying out orders and they're imperfect and you do not know
what the answer is and policymakers sometimes do not know what
the answer is. We get that, right. Nobody's perfect. We all
fall short of the grace of God.
But when we make mistakes we have got to learn from them so
we do not continue the same failed policy. It is our job to get
accountability, not just to assign blame, but so that we do not
make the same dumb mistakes again because lives are precious.
And nobody's going to join the service--nobody's going to
join uniform service if they know that no one here gives a damn
whether they live or die, right. We all love our country. We
all want to do the right things.
Sergeant Major, I'm just so--I was at the time and I still
remain concerned about using HKIA as opposed to--as opposed to
Bagram or--yes, Bagram.
Was there a preexisting backup plan? Do you know? Or was it
always that plan? And I know that you had to collapse but still
stay operable, but you couldn't collapse to the extent that you
had to and stay operable.
Plus, you were also required to secure the embassy, which
is not on the same location, knowing that you did not have the
forces available to secure both or probably either one. Was
there a plan?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, So there was a preexisting NEO
plan. That NEO plan, I'm not sure when it was penned exactly. I
want to say it was around 2012. But in that plan the plan was
to conduct a NEO out of Bagram.
Mr. Perry. And when was it to be--was there--was it just a
backup that there was going to be a choice of either location
or was it we're going to use this one and if this one fail
we're going to go to that one?
Do you know the determination? What was the determining
factor of which one you used? Because everything was set up for
Bagram but nothing was set up for HKIA.
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, the plan for Bagram, you know,
being it was written in 2012 we couldn't predict what was going
to happen in the future.
Mr. Perry. Right. The enemy always gets a vote, right? No
plan survives first contact.
Sergeant Major Smith. Correct. So what the exact triggers
were in that plan it never--from my recollection of that plan
it was about an 800-page document--I do not recall what the
triggers specifically were to launch a NEO.
Mr. Perry. Well, it just seems--you know, none of us here
want to Monday morning quarterback, especially if you weren't
there, even those of us who have worn the uniform. But in
retrospect--well, as it was happening all of us, I think, that
have worn the uniform were scratching our heads, saying that
was the hard point--that was the place where we were most
prepared to make a stand and evacuate from.
That's where we were operating out of. That's where
everything was located. That's where we're familiar. Why in the
hell did we not do that. And, look, there was a lot of lives
lost.
We do not want to focus solely on the ones that were lost
in the final days when it seems like it's for nothing
absolutely because every single one of them is precious.
In my remaining time, Mr. Krummrich, I think you mentioned
the concept of selective intelligence and the issues that it
posed on the mission.
If you know now after the fact, what was not mentioned?
What was, if you know, exactly ignored through the selective
intelligence blindness? What can we learn from that?
Colonel Krummrich. The plan that was ordered to the
military to execute goes back to the first objective of the
withdrawal and the post withdrawal, which was having that
diplomatic base set in Kabul and that looked like the embassy
and then about four miles over to HKIA.
The problem with that is it ignored all of the Taliban
threat, which we have described here today, which had only been
getting steadily more refined and more dangerous over 20 years.
And so when you pick that plan but you choose to not
acknowledge or protect against this red storm that's coming it
just leaves you flabbergasted of how did you think this was
going to go.
Mr. Perry. And my time has expired and there are good
people that have been waiting to ask a question. I just got a
followup with one quick one based on that because that's what
everyone else sees.
Why did that--why did we just ignore and why and who--who
made the decision to ignore if you can pinpoint it and--look,
we cannot ascribe motives. But what do you pretend or what do
you suppose is the motive to ignore it?
Colonel Krummrich. I was not in the room. I know what was
recommended as the course of action and I know what was given
back to us to execute, and what was given back to us to execute
was not what we recommended.
So someone above the four-star level is the one who made
the decision to do it. Ultimately, it resides with the
President. So somewhere in there would be the person that
you're trying to identify.
Mr. Perry. Roger. God bless you. Thank you.
Mr. Mills. Thank you, Mr. Perry. We're now going to go to
Mr. Crane for 5 minutes.
Mr. Crane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to join
the dais today. Thank you, everyone, who's shown up here as
witnesses and I also want to thank the--especially thank the
families--the Gold Star families that are here today.
I want to agree with a couple of my colleagues that have
spoke already on this topic, Congressman Mills and Congressman
Waltz, who have talked about this argument on the other side of
the aisle that's complete garbage, that this Administration had
no choice because they were basically just tracking with what
the Administration prior had been leading up to.
And I also want to double tap on some of the things that
they said because clearly this Administration did not continue
the policies of the previous Administration when it came to our
border, energy, economics, and so many other things.
So I want to debunk and fact check that false claim right
now because that's exactly what it is. I also want to
acknowledge that this Administration did not listen to the
leaders on the ground, the generals that were recommending
against their plan.
Many of the witnesses have testified so far that that's one
of the main mistakes we have made in previous wars where people
in suits back in Washington do not listen to commanders on the
ground.
I also want to acknowledge that we left behind $7 billion
in equipment and gear, 40,000 vehicles, 300,000 weapons, all
comms equipment--and this is the thing that scares me the most
as somebody who's served in the SEAL teams--nearly all night
vision equipment.
And anybody who's ever done special operations in modern
warfare knows how dangerous this is going to be to the next
group of Americans or next group of allies that goes in there
to deal with some unfriendly individuals, all biometric
equipment which is now being used to hunt down our allies.
I cannot even believe that that--when I read that report I
was like, oh, my God, even for this Administration that's
appalling.
Now I want to point out something that bothers me severely.
When John Kirby, the White House spokesman, on April 6th, 2023,
made the quote in a press conference, ``All this talk of chaos
I just did not see it,'' Colonel Krummrich, did you hear John
Kirby say that?
Colonel Krummrich. I did not hear him say that. But I
wildly disagree with that statement.
Mr. Crane. Colonel Kolenda, did you hear him say that? Did
you watch that on TV?
Colonel Kolenda. I did not see it on TV but that sentiment
makes me sick to my stomach.
Mr. Crane. Yes. Thirteen dead soldiers. Let me ask you guys
something. Do the soldiers that have lost their lives and these
families, these Gold Star families, especially the ones in the
room today, do they deserve that this Administration and our
leaders take ownership of the leadership failures that led to
this catastrophe?
Colonel Krummrich, I'll start with you.
Colonel Krummrich. The sacrifice by the Gold Star families
and the loss of the 13 service members is something that haunts
all of us. You know, I had a chance to talk to them before we
came in here and I did tell them the story of General Latiff
and his family, who they saved and are now living in the United
States and are a success story for what happens when you bring
these folks out.
But their loss is something that I'll never accept.
Mr. Crane. Thank you. That is not what I asked you, sir. I
asked you if they deserve that our leaders who were in charge
of this debacle take ownership.
Colonel Krummrich. Absolutely.
Mr. Crane. How about you, Colonel Kolenda?
Colonel Kolenda. In terms of ownership there's both
accepting responsibility for decisions and also determining
cause for why these disasters----
Mr. Crane. Right.
Colonel Kolenda [continuing]. This particular disaster
happened and why they keep happening, and that's where I'd like
to see the accountability.
Mr. Crane. Sergeant Major, do these families and these
Marines and the soldiers deserve that leadership take
accountability?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, I have a son and a daughter. If
something were to happen to them in this same regard I would
want answers. Absolutely.
Mr. Crane. Mr. Chairman, I've got two more questions. I'll
make them quick.
To the families sitting behind you that are still clearly
mourning, by a nod your head yes or no, do you feel like this
Administration has taken ownership and accountability? Yes or
no. I did not think so. Neither do the American people.
The last thing I want to ask you gentlemen is this. Colonel
Krummrich, are you worried about this current chain of
command's response--that is responsible for this disaster? Are
you worried about them being able to be successful in the war
that we are now careening toward in Ukraine?
Are you worried about their ability to be successful in
that war? Because we have talked a lot today about avoiding
past mistakes. We have seen what they're capable of. Are you
guys concerned about it?
Colonel Krummrich. I am concerned about the
Administration's ability to do it. I am not concerned about the
military leaders that we have because they're the finest cut of
the American fabric.
Mr. Crane. Thank you, sir. What about you, Colonel Kolenda?
Colonel Kolenda. I'm not an expert on the Ukraine fight so
I cannot give you a good answer.
Mr. Crane. OK. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Mills. Thank you very much. We are now going to move to
Mr. Gonzales for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gonzales. Thank you, Chairman Mast, for hosting this
event. Thank you, witnesses, for coming up.
Many of the people that have spent time in this room today
is what I call part of the warrior class and the warrior class
is built on fighting and winning wars that our Nation's fought.
Part of that is honoring the fallen and I want to start by
mentioning all 13 names. We do not mention the 13 soldiers,
sailors that were killed about a year ago.
So Corpsman Maxton Soviak, 22 years old from Berlin
Heights, Ohio; Staff Sergeant Darin Hoover, 31 years old, from
Salt Lake City, Utah; Sergeant Johanny Pichardo, 25, from
Lawrence, Massachusetts; Sergeant Nicole Gee, 23, from
Sacramento, California; Corporal Hunter Lopez, 22, from Indio,
California; Corporal Daegan Page, 23, from Omaha, Nebraska;
Corporal Humberto Sanchez, 22, from Logansport, Indiana; Marine
Lance Corporal Espinoza from Rio Bravo, Texas; Lance Corporal
Schmidt, 20, from St. Charles, Missouri; Lance Corporal
McCullum, 20 years old, from Jackson, Wyoming; Lance Corporal
Miliola from Rancho Cucamonga, California; Lance Corporal
Careen Nguyen from Norco, California; Staff Sergeant Ryan
Knauss, 23, from Corryton, Tennessee.
So we honor our dead. We honor those that have fallen for
our country. We also, as leaders, make sure we do not have to
read names at a hearing and part of that is I'm concerned
with--I'm concerned with what happened, no doubt. I spent 20
years in the military.
I'm a retired Navy Master Chief. I spent 5 years in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Like many of us in this room, Afghanistan is
very personal to us. I grew up there, like a lot of us who
spent time there.
But I'm also a Navy Master Chief. I do not believe in
excuses. I believe in results and I'm focused--it's an absolute
tragic tragedy what happened. We also have soldiers, sailors,
airmen, and Marines in Syria, in Iraq, and throughout the
world. We're going to continue to fight these wars. There are
going to be times when we have withdrawals. It's the way the
world works.
So we have to learn from what happened to make sure that we
do not read more names when we withdraw from pick a place. Part
of that is you, gentlemen. Please continue to tell your story.
Continue to be an advocacy in this group in this sphere so
that way we can prevent future incidents from occurring. It's
also on us as legislators to do our part and make sure those
are held accountable and we are prepared in every form or
fashion.
So I just wanted to spend my time honoring those that have
fallen and also mention it is our responsibility to make sure
that that--the next conflict, the current conflict, that we do
not have the same debacles that we have.
The fact that we--I had to read 13 names clearly shows that
there's an issue there. But, once again, less about--less about
excuses, more about results and it's going to be the warrior
class that determines that we fight through the politics in
this all.
Thank you, gentlemen, and I yield back. Chairman, I yield
back.
Mr. Mast [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Gonzales. We're now
going to yield to Mr. Nunn for 5 minutes.
Mr. Nunn. Appreciate that, Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for the families who are here, first
and foremost. To those of you who were the final safeguard in
the breach, if you will, that stood the line and helped
evacuate as many Americans, our allies, and our friends who had
spent decades serving with us this Nation owes you a debt of
gratitude.
I've flown more missions over Iraq and Afghanistan than I
care to remember. But the reality is is that whether you're the
command pilot or whether you're that first term airman who's
just operating a SIGINT box on the back of a recon plane, when
you land you all do an after action and you're all equals. You
all have the opportunity to decide what worked and what did not
work.
Today, you are the front line and perhaps the only that
we're hearing out of the Administration on what that after
action looks like for the withdrawal of Afghanistan.
I do not think any of us should have to look back and think
that what happened in August should ever happen to any of our
sons, daughters, brothers, or combat allies ever again.
When President Biden said this will be no Afghanistan or
this will be no Vietnam, this will be no helicopters lifting
off buildings he was absolutely correct. It was far worse.
We had an Afghan government caught completely by surprised
by the lack of information provided. We had a U.S. Government
that chose, as you've highlighted today, selective intelligence
to share not only with our allies, not only with our Five Eyes,
our closest partners, but the men and women who were on the
front line, men and women like Corporal Daegan Page from my
district, a young Marine, one of 13, whose family now stands as
Gold Star families because he gave the ultimate sacrifice,
charged with defending Abbey Gate and deciding who got to live
and who got left behind.
He was provided critical intel gaps, arguably, selectively
by an Administration who wanted to drive a time line based on a
calendar date, not by facts on the ground.
He gave his life. His family is proud. We are honored, and
so many Americans live today because of his sacrifice and the
sacrifice of so many other families like that. To you we can
never salute you enough. But we stand here in the breach so
this does not happen again.
Friends, when the helicopters left Afghanistan it saved
maybe their president. But so many more Afghan allies fell off
the tread tires of C-17s leaving HKIA, something that arguably
could have been avoided.
And so in today's testimony I'd like to go into detail here
on how we got to a point where we abandoned Bagram Air Force
Base.
Colonel, I'm going to start with you. Do you believe the
top Pentagon brass such as Austin, Milley, Miller, McKenzie
could have and should have done more to push back against
President Biden after he rejected their advice to leave a
residual troop presence of 2,500 in Afghanistan primarily
protecting Bagram?
Colonel Krummrich. I've thought a lot about this question
and I've gone back and forth on it. They--I can speak for the
military leadership. They were in a very difficult position
where they gave the president their best course of action
recommendation and it was not chosen, and they have a decision
at that point. Do you continue to follow what the President
said or do you step away?
I commend them for holding the line because we would have
still done it and they were in the best position to try to do
it as responsibly as we can in the very strict guardrails that
were put on that course of action and they had to be the face
of it, which I do not think was fair.
But they were man enough to stand up there and look right
down the barrel of the camera as things fell apart and give
some responsibility for something they did not recommend.
Mr. Nunn. Understood. So let me ask the next question. What
would have been the impact if the United States had been able
to keep Bagram and not been committed to an artificial deadline
but shared the intelligence on the ground of the real threat
and been able to get more Americans, more allies, and
ultimately protect Bagram Air Force Base so that we could have
the evacuation that could have resulted in success rather than
failure?
Colonel, for you.
Colonel Krummrich. I can only guess because that's not what
happened. But I know that we would have had more space and time
to be able to try to set the conditions for Afghan allies to
get their feet set for what was coming. It wouldn't have been
this immediate rip out that left them looking where did we go
in the middle of the fighting season.
They would have had a chance. I'm not saying the outcome
would have changed. I do not know that. There's no way that I
could read the tea leaves of the future if it had gone the
other way.
But we--when we did not give them a chance then we damned
them to exactly what happened.
Mr. Nunn. Command Sergeant Major Smith, I understand that
you have delayed your deployment to CENTCOM so that you could
be here today. It is both admirable and greatly appreciated.
You highlighted the fact that by transitioning out of
Bagram we left a well defended base with thousands of troops to
be able to support and defend a rearguard action in the face of
what was known to be an insurgent Taliban force that any day
could march on the capital.
But instead you and your team were part of, as you noted,
just over a hundred infantrymen and Marines defending an
international airport under siege from all sides.
In your testimony you cited that the site selection team by
U.S. State Department raised a personal comfort as a
consideration of whether to use Bagram. Could you please
elaborate on that?
Specifically, did State Department give the impression that
they were reluctant to move embassy officials there because the
space was, let's say, less comfortable at a military base like
Bagram?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, that's a correct indication.
Yes.
Mr. Nunn. Is it your further belief that State Department
made choices that were most convenient for State Department
officials rather than mission essential items, evacuating U.S.
personnel, the destruction of classified information and
sensitive items going forward?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, as I'm not privy to the
decisionmaking process that occurred at the embassy I cannot
fully answer that question.
Mr. Nunn. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I would like to just end with an appreciation
for those who have served, including those who continue to
serve.
As so many on this committee have stood up to be able to
stand in the breach with you, including our own team task force
Argo that evacuated over 3,000 Americans and our allies by
civilian airline with no help from the U.S. State Department.
This after action is the only insight we have into what's
happening, and while I praise you for being here there are men
far above your station that should be in this room justifying
their actions today so they can never happen again.
With that, Mr. Chair, I thank you, and I cede my time back.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Nunn, for your service. Thank you
for your questions.
I would just say right now I see something happening that
I've actually never seen here before and it makes me proud and
it is--I have colleagues that are sitting down there with our
service members and with Gold Star families, just to let them
know that they're not sitting above them.
They're not detached from them but that they are with them
and they were part of the same fight and chewed the same dirt,
in a sense, and showing that connectivity and, honestly, I've
never seen it before in my time in Congress and it makes me
proud to see that. I'll say that very, very truly. It makes me
proud to see it.
We have one other--two more individuals, Mr. Van Orden and
then I have myself yet.
But, Mr. Van Orden, I yield you 5 minutes.
Mr. Van Orden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all
you guys to be here--for being here. I appreciate it, Command
Sergeant Major. Rock on, dude. Take care of the boys when you
get overseas, and girls. I appreciate your efforts.
My personal history with Afghanistan, I did not get there
until 2003 for my first tour. I held one of my friend's hands
as he died in the old cache when it was a tent. We had a
satellite phone next to his ear listening to his wife cry out
to him and to God because she knew that she'd never see her
husband alive again.
When this started happening I could not sleep. My wife told
me just to go back to Afghanistan. So I linked up with one of
the groups you referred to in your testimony and I wound up in
Abu Dhabi in Dubai processing people that--civilians extracted
with the help of a foreign government because our government
willfully and knowingly abandoned American citizens and our
allies to terrorists.
So I got a couple of questions for you guys. Was there a
written plan for this exfiltration, Colonel?
Colonel Krummrich. I did not see a written plan for the
exfiltration for this specific mission. I am sure there were
orders given, though.
Mr. Van Orden. So reading--right. Reading through here you
were planning and--you were building an airplane flight. OK. We
had X amount of years to figure this out. Everybody from the
Biden Administration says their hands were tied because of the
Doha agreement so they should have known that something was
happening.
And when I say the Biden Administration I mean Secretary
Blinken, General Austin, now SecDef, and General Milley. They
are all culpable in the deaths of all of these people because
they are incapable of doing their jobs.
Everybody--I'm a retired Navy SEAL. Sorry, should have
thrown that out there. So I understand that NEOs are the
purview of the State Department, and they waited so long to
turn this NEO authority over to the DoD to activate it they're
responsible for all these people's deaths. That is a fact.
Have any of you in your vast military experience ever heard
of a plan where you would intentionally withdraw all the
military forces that are protecting civilians out before you
would pull the civilians out? Anybody?
Colonel Krummrich. No.
Mr. Van Orden. Colonel--other colonel, rather?
Colonel Kolenda. Douglas MacArthur said that every military
disaster can be described in two words--too late.
Mr. Van Orden. Very well. Command Sergeant Major?
Sergeant Major Smith. No, sir.
Mr. Van Orden. OK. Why did the Biden Administration, in
your opinion--Command Sergeant Major, I will not ask you this
question--why, in your opinion, did the Biden Administration
continue to lie about the number of American citizens that they
willfully abandoned to terrorists in Afghanistan?
Colonel Kolenda. I couldn't even begin to speculate.
Mr. Van Orden. Are you willing to accept the fact that the
Biden Administration kept moving the ball and lying about the
amount of American citizens they abandoned to terrorists in
Afghanistan knowingly and willingly?
Colonel Krummrich. I'll say that the statements that came
out from the Administration did not match the facts that we
were clearly seeing on the ground.
Mr. Van Orden. OK. Colonel?
Colonel Kolenda. I was very troubled that, I believe, 90
percent of the evacuees were not people who had served,
worked--were not Afghans who had worked for the U.S. Government
or the U.S. military.
Mr. Van Orden. I'm getting there.
Colonel Kolenda. I've got interpreters who are still on the
ground that were trying to get their SIVs, trying to get them
out, and the fact that this withdrawal often was the withdrawal
of the well connected and not the people who are SIV holders I
think deserves serious examination.
Mr. Van Orden. Very well. Thank you, Colonel.
How many of our NATO allies that have been fighting this
fight for a long time since 2003 when the Lithuanians were
trying to get into NATO--how many of our NATO allies wanted to
follow this time line and get out of Afghanistan on the
arbitrary time line that the Biden Administration set? How many
of our NATO allies wanted to go on that time line, to the best
of your knowledge, Colonel?
Colonel Krummrich. None that I know of.
Mr. Van Orden. Colonel?
Colonel Kolenda. I'm not privy to that.
Mr. Van Orden. OK. I am. The answer is zero. Nobody wanted
to leave from NATO. This has been a NATO fight for a very long
period of time and you guys did not even address this.
So this would have fractured NATO. It's unbelievably
irresponsible that the Biden Administration would completely
blow off all of our NATO allies. None of them wanted to leave.
And then everybody quotes that we'd have 2,500 U.S. forces in
the country--that's not enough.
That's not true. There would have been 10,000 to 12,000
forces, a multi--excuse me, a multi--it would have been an MND
again.
So the combined joint special operations task force that I
was with we would have had the same thing. CJTF 180, all the
guys of your 10th Mountain, it would have been the same type of
thing. So they're lying.
And here's the most important question I can ask anybody
here. Who has been fired for this?
Colonel Krummrich. No one.
Mr. Van Orden. Colonel, to your knowledge?
Colonel Kolenda. No one that I know of.
Mr. Van Orden. OK. So this is the most disgraceful thing
that I can think of that the U.S. Government has ever done in
our entire history and zero people have been held accountable
from the Biden Administration.
Zero, right? How about the military writ large? Zero. Who
was the ground force commander? What's he doing now? Do you
guys know? Do you? Do you know who it was?
Colonel Krummrich. Yes. Admiral Vasely and then it was
General Donahue. I will say in their defense they were given an
impossible situation and they showed extraordinary leadership
when every single aspect of what was going on turned into total
chaos for things that were outside of their control.
Mr. Van Orden. I get it.
Senator Tom Cotton, when he was questioning General Milley,
asked him one thing. He said, why have you not resigned yet.
And General Milley said he thought it would be a profoundly
political statement. I wish that my friend, Tom Cotton, who I
respect greatly, did one more followup question.
General Milley, if intentionally abandoning American
citizens and our allies to terrorists, many of them to certain
death, is not worth making a political statement what in your
estimation, General Milley, is?
None of these people that are there and were given passes.
I'm not. These general officers and flag officers should have
resigned on the spot, gone on television, and said this is
wrong. You know what that takes? That takes courage.
We have so many things wrong with our military at the
senior levels and in the Biden Administration it's
embarrassing. These people--I'm calling for them to resign.
General Milley should not have a retirement. He should not.
General Austin should be--I do not know what the heck he should
be doing but he sure as hell should not be leading our
military. He's a disgrace.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you allowing me to speak my
piece here and I yield back.
Mr. Mast. Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Van Orden.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
I've heard a lot of things today. I appreciate every bit of
what I've heard and I appreciate you all offering us your
candor and your honesty, and I'd ask that you bear with me for
a couple more minutes of questioning.
I want to talk about the SIVs, the planning, the operations
as we have done in large. When I think about planning I think
about you come up with an objective that you want to meet and
after you have an objective that you want you come up with a
strategy and tactics by which you think you're going to
accomplish that objective.
And then you do something really important. You practice it
so you can see what goes right and what goes wrong, how things
play out when the metal hits the meat, as they say.
Let me start with a broad question. Colonel Krummrich, to
your knowledge what level of practice took place--this is a
very general question to the whole of the withdrawal--to your
knowledge what level of practice took place?
Colonel Krummrich. There was no time. When the order was
given to start withdrawing, when the announcement came out on
the 14th of April, 1 May we saw water rolling, basically being
sucked down the drain from all those out stations in
Afghanistan who were coming back to do an extraordinarily
difficult task.
There was no time to be able to go through a full
rehearsal. It had to happen now.
Mr. Mast. So let me ask some of the specifics on this. Was
it then not practiced if a suicide bomber, a person, a vehicle-
borne IED, something else, went off at one of the access
points?
Colonel Krummrich. Units have that already baked into what
they do for their battle drills, for their standing operating
procedures.
One of the reasons the speed was so important with the
withdrawal from a planning perspective was to try to limit the
exposure area for service members that would be, frankly,
vulnerable during the time period of withdrawal.
Mr. Mast. The reason I asked about practice for that--
Sergeant Major, you brought up that you were looking at the
level of services that were available at Bagram versus HKIA and
you mentioned that the level of service there was maybe a level
two hospital.
In your opinion did it matter that it was a level two
medical facility and not a level three medical facility?
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, if one of my soldiers were to
get wounded I would want a level three there.
Mr. Mast. Why?
Sergeant Major Smith. For the greater lifesaving ability.
Mr. Mast. Let me ask some more planning and practice
questions.
Was it ever practiced that there would be thousands
evacuated on civilian flights that pulled cash out of their
wallets and flew halfway around the world to get people out of
what was effectively a--still a standing war zone?
Colonel Krummrich?
Colonel Krummrich. No.
Mr. Mast. Was it practiced that an airfield could be
overrun by a thousand people?
Colonel Krummrich. No, not in this situation.
Mr. Mast. To anybody's knowledge? Or overrun by 10,000
people.
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, I can speak on behalf of Bagram.
Mr. Mast. Please.
Sergeant Major Smith. That was practiced on Bagram. That
was a scenario that was exercised continually. We----
Mr. Mast. Have you offered analysis based on you practiced
this at Bagram but what with HKIA?
Sergeant Major Smith. So I am not privy to what happened at
HKIA. I was not there. But I can say that these contingencies
were very well rehearsed and planned for in Bagram.
Mr. Mast. How many air strips at Bagram? How many runways?
Sergeant Major Smith. There are two main runways that you
can take off from that I am aware of.
Mr. Mast. Was it practiced that they may be down to one
runway at HKIA?
Sergeant Major Smith. I do not know that it was.
Mr. Mast. There's a lot of these questions that we can ask
about what was practiced, what was planned for, what was
prepared for, and as I think about the hundreds of those that I
can ask, largely, the answer comes back to it wasn't thought
about.
Whether it was because there wasn't given the time to think
about it or if somebody thought about it, somebody did not want
to hear about it, they wanted--maybe they wanted a plausible
deniability. I won't pretend to put myself into somebody else's
mind.
But there was a willful ignorance that took place with this
withdrawal cost the lives of service members. It looked like
you had a comment on that before I finish up. I'm happy to hear
you out, Mr. Colonel.
I thought I saw your hands go up.
You know, it appeared to me as though there was a willful
ignorance. I think the facts bear that out, and I cannot say
anything more than what my colleagues have already said on
this.
Other than that, it cost unnecessarily the lives of our
service members and it leaves those that are still serving and
those that are still mourning with the question of what has
changed, and I cannot come away after several hours of
questioning with you all and tell them this is what has
changed--this is who learned the lesson and who would say yes,
I would absolutely do that differently.
And that's not what I want to be left with. That's all I
can say on that for now. In that, I'm going to--we did have
somebody else join us? Very good.
Mr. Banks, I recognize you for 5 minutes.
Mr. Banks. I thank the chairman for holding this hearing.
It's so important, and to this point no one has yet been held
accountable for the disastrous, deadly, embarrassing withdrawal
from Afghanistan.
In fact, last year, General Frank McKenzie, then general--
retired general in charge of CENTCOM said he himself had many
regrets about what happened in Afghanistan.
In March of this year I asked Secretary Austin before the
House Armed Services Committee, sir, do you have any regrets?
General McKenzie has regrets. General Austin, Secretary of
Defense for the United States of America overseeing this
withdrawal, do you have any regrets? He said, I have no
regrets.
And I wonder from each of you how does that make you feel
when you hear the top leader of our Pentagon, of our military,
say he has no regrets about what happened in Afghanistan?
Colonel, we'll start with you.
Colonel Krummrich. Extremely frustrated and let down.
Colonel Kolenda. I lost six soldiers from my unit in
Afghanistan in 2007 and the fact that there has not been a
examination of why these failures--Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan--
why these failures keep happening is very frustrating to me
because it seems that the next time we get into one of these
interventions we're going to make the same basic mistakes and
it's going to heighten the risk of another disaster and that I
find unacceptable.
Sergeant Major Smith. Sir, this is my current leadership
and I am not in a position to speak on the matter of this
question.
Mr. Banks. Understood. Hopefully, 1 day you'll be able to
tell us what you really think.
Colonel, respond to Secretary Austin, though. I mean, the
arrogance to say that--I mean, the families behind you that
have--who lost loved ones, the heroes that we lost that deadly
day and other deadly days in Afghanistan, to say that you have
no regrets me, to me, it was--as a veteran of the war in
Afghanistan who served with others who--heroes that we lost, to
say I have no regrets, respond to that, Colonel.
Colonel Krummrich. All combat veterans have regrets. You
know, I've been very fortunate where the VA has been able to
help me and I've got a support team that helps me work through
that every day.
But I find that comment tone deaf and not tethered to
reality. You have to have regrets. You should. It looks like
September 10th, 2001, there now. It's only getting worse.
There's nothing but regret and pain and struggle there. So
I find that statement to be wildly painful for everyone who's
had to put in blood, sweat, and tears. For the families that
lost their family members--I mean, it's got me absolutely
livid. I do not know what I would say to him but I strongly
disagree on every level.
Mr. Banks. Yes. Could you unpack more about what happened
leading up to the withdrawal? There's been a lot of discussion
today about the decision to close down Bagram and rely on the
very public airport in Kabul to withdrawal.
But can you tell us more about--for someone--for General
Austin, who led troops in Afghanistan to say he has no regrets,
can you talk more about that decision to close down Bagram that
led to the deadly--the devastation that happened in Kabul? How
could he say he has no regrets when, obviously, those were
terrible decisions that were made?
Colonel Krummrich. I cannot speak for Secretary Austin. I
can explain why that happened from a planner's perspective
because this idea and this concept that we would be able to run
this diplomatic island in perpetuity in Kabul was something
that the Administration decided that's what was going to happen
and they forgot that the enemy gets a vote and that they wished
away a lot of these other issues that clearly came to pass that
everybody was warning. Not just the military leadership but
also the interagency and the intelligence community was just
telegraphing this every day.
I find it--I just cannot figure out the decisionmaking. I
know why they picked HKIA, because it was close to the embassy,
and they just fell in love with their plan.
Mr. Banks. I spent a lot of time in both places, Bagram and
the north KIA throughout Kabul. It's a decision that will never
make sense to me and I hope 1 day we can unpack it more.
I want to finish with one quick question. My time is almost
expired. Representative Mills dug into this question. President
Trump led us down a path to withdraw from Afghanistan but to
keep a light footprint of Special Operation Forces there in
place and I wonder, Colonel, if we would have adopted that
plan, that course of action, would those lives likely have been
saved that day?
Colonel Krummrich. Speaking as a retired Green Beret
myself, I have no doubt in my mind that if we had Green Berets,
SEALs, Air Force Special Operations, MARSOC, out holding the
picket line with our Afghan--especially the Afghan SOF that
were there, we would have stood a much, much greater chance to
build time and space to work on all the things that needed to
be worked on in Kabul.
Mr. Banks. Yes. I Thank you for that answer. To the
families who are here, I will spend the rest of my time in
Congress fighting for accountability for those who made these
ridiculous and stupid decisions that led to the loss of your
loved ones. I promise you that.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, my friend.
I'm now going to recognize Mr. Crow for 5 minutes for a
closing statement.
Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to all the
witnesses for coming in today. There was a lot of ground
covered. I appreciate your candor and in your testimony and
your work.
And, again, I want to recognize the Gold Star families for
being here. I cannot imagine how challenging it is to listen to
this and to rehash this and to see some of those videos, which,
of course, we needed to see, right, the American people, and we
all need to see that. We cannot shy away from the reality. But
for being here today I'm grateful.
I'm going to do two things. I first want to address some
issues that I think were incorrect that some of my colleagues
made--some statements--and then the second is I want to provide
some context about the time line and the situation as I see it.
No. 1, a lot of comments about the President's statement
classifying the withdrawals a success and criticism of that
statement. That statement, to be clear, was within the context
of him applauding the work of the military and our troops and
our soldiers, right, and applauding their sacrifice and their
service with the withdrawal, and that's the same type of
statement that I would make, that they worked hard under
extraordinarily difficult circumstances, under circumstances
that they, largely, shouldn't have had to address. But they did
their job and they did it well and they did it remarkably and
that's what the President was talking about.
Second, a couple of folks have mentioned, you know, that we
haven't had any testimony from officials involved in the
withdrawal or even active Administration officials that have
come before this committee.
That's because the majority hasn't called them, right. So
your testimony has been great and I've appreciated it at all.
But if the majority wants to hear from those folks it's the
majority that can call a panel of sitting officials. So I think
that criticism is a non sequitur as well.
Second is is you can disagree about the logistics and the
time line but there's also been a number of comments that have
outright said that Administration and certain officials,
including lifelong service members--people who have dedicated
their life to this country--accused them of lying, of covering
things up, of obfuscating the truth.
Listen, there's just no indication that anyone's acting in
bad faith and had lied. Now, I disagree with folks all the
time. I have my disagreement with uniform people.
I have my disagreement with the Administration sometimes on
a variety of issues whether it's Afghanistan or Ukraine because
I have an independent obligation as a Member of Congress to
uphold my views, right, and I'm not just going to rubber stamp
anybody.
But to be clear, I've never--I've never for an instant
thought that anyone's acting in bad faith or wanted U.S.
soldiers to be killed or put into a difficult situation or lied
about anything.
So let's just be real about that, right. I think we owe it
to folks to have disagreements and debate about the facts. But
accusing people of bad faith is just not appropriate.
So for my part, I did disagree with the time line. I was
very vocal in 2021 that the withdrawal and the evacuation
should have started earlier. I talked about it in the media. I
pressed folks for it.
I thought that as soon as the President announced in April
2021 that we were going to abide by the Doha agreement and
withdrawal that that withdrawal should have happened earlier
and we could have spread it out and could have done it in a
more methodical way.
So that's my disagreement and that's my view. But the
situation was a tough one and I do want to provide that
perspective.
Very quickly in the time that I have, President Trump
engaged his representatives in the Taliban to negotiate the
Doha agreement. The Doha agreement was agreed to and we started
our reduction of troops as a result of that.
And I want to enter into the record an open statement
before this committee in June 2021 by Deputy Special
Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Ambassador Molly
Phee, if I may, and in this statement, which is in the record--
I won't read the whole thing--it says very clear that there's
no indication that the prior Administration took into account
the Taliban's compliance with that agreement when they made the
unilateral decision to withdraw troops. This is the Ambassador
who was in the room said this--no indication that was going to
happen.
So we had a situation where the Taliban knew we were
pulling out. That pullout had already started. We were at the
lowest troop levels in years. The Taliban was advancing, taking
provinces, taking capitals, had the momentum, was on the march.
And in January 2021 when President Biden came into office
they had no transition because, by the way, the prior
Administration actually wasn't even recognizing this
Administration as the lawful president so they did not even--
they did not even transition with their people on noon on
January 20th, 2021.
So they walked in knowing nothing, having no transition,
having no briefings, no plans in place. They embarked on a 2-
month process. They tried to get their hands around the issue
and figure out what was going on. Then they made the decision
to abide by the agreement because we had very few troops there.
We were being told and the intelligence was showing that
the Taliban was going to start attacking us again if we did not
withdraw on time.
So the decision the President had to make was one of two
things: withdrawal under the time line and do it as quickly as
possible or stay there and fight and fight hard and fight
harder than we would have had to have fought for years and U.S.
soldiers would have been fighting and dying then, too. Tough
decisions.
So, yes, things could have been done differently--I'm very
clear about that--and there are lessons learned and we will
make sure with the chairman and working with my colleagues that
we learn these lessons and do it better. But there is a broader
context that was important and it's not as simple as some folks
would like you to believe it is.
I yield back.
Mr. Mast. I thank the ranking member for his closing
statement. I recognize myself for a closing statement. We tend
to go after each other from time to time but I do not think it
wanes on our recognition of each other's service. Proud to have
chewed the same dirt as you.
I hope that you would join me in an invitation to the
ultimate decisionmaker to sit before us and answer questions
about this. I would certainly offer that invitation.
I do disagree. I believe that there were people literally
working, I would say, speaking in bad faith and I say that--as
I was doing my preparation for this hearing--this did not just
take place in this week--I've done time line after time line
over the years but specifically in preparation for this
hearing.
I have probably a dozen pages at least of the comments, the
remarks from the White House from Jennifer Psaki, and I know
when I layer those on top of what was actually going on at the
time, what she was telling the American people in
representation of President Biden was not what was taking
place.
Day after day, daily, coming to the press pool, speaking,
saying something was happening or going to happen and then it
simply not being the reality of what the ultimate
decisionmakers knew what was really taking place.
And we know--I guess we could say we have testimony that
there was selective reading of the intelligence. As is always
the case intelligence comes in varying degrees of confidence
and we did not really get into the confidence of the
intelligence that was presented today. Maybe there's another
day that we'll get into it.
But in my personal opinion there was not an adequate amount
of planning that was done and there was not planning that was
done to take into account what was probable and what was
possible. It was planning at the smallest level to take into
account what was hoped for.
And I've said this before and I will say it again now as my
closing remarks. I'm well aware of the fact that sometimes in
war there is just bad luck. A bullet is an inch or two inches
to the left or right. If it could have gone the other way you
do not even know that something would have happened.
In RPG and a piece of fragmentation--a little piece of
aluminum fragmentation catches a person, a soldier, in the
wrong place. A mortar hits too close to someplace. You're too
close to a vehicle-borne IED. All the possible hazards that
exist in war sometimes it is bad luck.
In my assessment, what happened in the withdrawal of
Afghanistan was not bad luck. It was bad planning. It was bad
objectives. It was a failure to practice and it resulted in
incredibly bad results for some of our very best and for the
United States of America and our allies as a whole.
In that, I will conclude my closing remarks. I will thank
each of you witnesses for your testimoneys. I found it to be
frank, forthright, and I feel as though I am better informed
for having listened to you each of you today.
So I thank you for that. I thank our Gold Star families
for--again, for joining us as all of our colleagues have. Thank
you. Thank you, and rightly so. You have raised patriots, and
we have had an opportunity to speak about the pain that you've
gone through.
I wouldn't begin to say that I could understand it because
I couldn't put myself in that place. I do not even like to see
my boys or my little girl stub their toe. I couldn't imagine
what you deal with day in and day out.
But I know I'm thankful to you for what you shared with
this country--those that you love the most.
And then that--I will say whatever the formal part of this
tells me to say. Pursuant to Committee rules all members may
have 5 days to submit statements, questions, and extraneous
materials for the record, subject to the length of limitations.
Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:13 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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