Pentagon docs raise questions about Kabul airport bombing

The U.S. has long maintained that the Kabul attack was unavoidable
New docs suggest the U.S. knew where the terrorists were stationed
Pentagon stands by its conclusion that the attack wasn't preventable

Updated: Aug 28, 2023 / 05:43 PM CDT

(NewsNation) — Two years have passed since the terrorist attack at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, which took the lives of 13 U.S. service members and around 170 Afghan civilians.

Throughout those two years, the Pentagon has asserted that the attack was unavoidable. But NewsNation has obtained Pentagon documents — including sworn statements from military members who were there — that suggest that the bombing may have been preventable.

The documents revealed that days before the attack, the Pentagon knew the exact location where the ISIS-K operatives expected to have played a role in the attack were stationed.

In one interview with a servicemember whose name is redacted, the servicemember said, “Intelligence officers at the Kabul Airport knew that ISIS-K was staging in a hotel 2-3 kilometers west of the airport.”

Per the documents, Lt. General Chris Donahue reached out to the Taliban to ask them to conduct an assault on the ISIS targets at the hotel, but the organization did not choose to engage.

Jerry Dunleavy, an investigator at the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the author of the book “Kabul,” explained the U.S. had to rely on the Taliban for security at that point.

“We were stuck with control over just an airport, nothing else. The Taliban controlling everything. So the US was put in a position where the decision was made we had to rely on the Taliban to provide security,” said Dunleavy. “Had the US hit ISIS-K before the Abbey Gate attack rather than after it, would that have disrupted the Abbey Gate bombing? I think it’s at least possible.”

The documents also show U.S. officials knew an attack was imminent. Additionally, servicemembers described at least one request from intel officers for American forces to strike the ISIS-K cell before the attack, but the request was denied.

In February, U.S. Central Command published a report which pentagon officials call exhaustive, having interviewed more than 100 people, concluding that the U.S. could not have prevented the bombing. General Lance Curtis of the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment said following the release of the report, “Based on our investigation at the tactical level, this was not preventable and the leaders on the ground followed the proper measures.”

NewsNation sent the Pentagon a list of questions, including why U.S. strike requests on the ISIS-K cell were denied and whether it was worth “degrading the mission” to save the lives of civilian Afghans and American servicemembers. We did not receive a direct response to those questions, but the Pentagon did send a lengthy response which reads in part:

“The Department of Defense expresses our deepest condolences to the Gold Star Families who lost loved ones during the tragic bombing at Abbey Gate. We are forever grateful for their service, sacrifice, and committed efforts during the evacuation operations.
U.S. military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan made the best decisions and provided their best military advice based off what was known at the time and leaders took appropriate action in response to reported threat streams. From the investigation at the tactical level, the Abbey Gate attack was not preventable”