by Steven Richards and John Solomon
The Pentagon’s chief spokesman has long insisted there was no “chaos” during the bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but his own email correspondence shows senior officials were acutely aware that conditions in the country were chaotic and spiraling into deadly violence, according to newly obtained government documents.
These memos and emails chronicle political efforts by the Biden/Harris administration to soft-pedal the truth to the American people about its first major foreign crisis. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the nonprofit watchdog Functional Government Initiative.
The memos show, for instance, that while then-DOD Undersecretary of Communications John Kirby tried to jaw-bone reporters to portray the Afghan withdrawal as orderly like President Joe Biden had promised, he was receiving briefings from diplomats and military officials in theater who were frantic to stabilize a crisis, particularly at the Kabul airport were evacuations of Americans were taking place.
One State Department situation report emailed to Kirby on Aug. 16, 2021 — 10 days before a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. Marines — referred to “breaches” and “flightline insecurity” at the airport that resulted in the exchange of gunfire that killed five Afghans and may have wounded an American soldier. “The crowd was out of control, the firing was only done to defuse the chaos,” the email reported, citing an official U.S. statement released inside the country.
“Hundreds have flooded the flight line and in at least one case, have forced themselves onto at least one US mil (and other civilian) aircraft. Crowds continue to run alongside planes, including mil aircraft,” the report added. Several Afghans clinging to U.S. aircraft fell to their deaths.
Another email that same day from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s speechwriter urged Kirby to consider having the Pentagon chief use a public event with a foreign counterpart to provide a “serious topper on the Afghan chaos.”
A day after the Marines were killed by the suicide bomber, Kirby received an email from an Army Major trying to rescue his former Afghan-born interpreter. The email described a grisly crackdown by the Taliban, reporting they were “killing former interpreters” and those trying to escape were frustrated by disorganized U.S. efforts to evacuate them. “It seems up to the discretion of the Taliban and US service members on the line in the midst of the chaos,” the major wrote Kirby on Aug. 27, 2021.
In all, the internal Pentagon emails to Kirby used the words “chaos” or “chaotic” more than two dozen times and stand in stark contrast to the contemporaneous efforts by Kirby and then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki to downplay concerns that the administration had mishandled the withdrawal.
“Now, some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and, ‘Couldn’t this have been done in a more orderly manner?’” Kirby said following the pullout. “I respectfully disagree.”
“The bottom line,” he added, “is there is no evacuation from the end of a war that you can run without the kinds of complexities, challenges, threats we faced. None.”
Almost two years after the withdrawal, Kirby defended the administration’s record in the face of new after-action reports about the operation.
“The president is very proud about the manner in which the men and women of the military, the foreign service, the intelligence community and on and on and on conducted this withdrawal,” Kirby said at an April 2023 press conference, almost two years after the withdrawal. “I’ve been around operations my entire life and there’s not a single one that ever goes perfectly according to plan.”
“For all this talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it. Not from my perch,” Kirby added.
Kirby, now the National Security Communications Advisor for President Biden, did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.
The group that obtained Kirby’s emails said the documents expose a troubling gap between the Biden/Harris administration’s public pronouncements three years ago and the reality that was being reported to it on the ground.
“These documents are Mr. Kirby’s perch. They show what he saw–confusion, miscommunication, inadequate resources, tragic deaths. This situation showed an administration out of its depth and a military trying to salvage a near-impossible situation. But the American public didn’t need these emails to know the truth about the chaos. They saw the shameful episode unfold in real time on their TV screens,” said Peter McGinnis, a spokesperson for the Functional Government Initiative.
The emails show that as the administration dealt dishonestly with the public fallout of the withdrawal, Kirby was at the same time receiving messages from senior officials and staff highlighting the chaotic nature of the military action and the deteriorating situation.
In one example, a senior department speechwriter asked Kirby for advice on whether Secretary Lloyd Austin should deliver “warm words” in public at a bilateral meeting with the Qatari Ministry of Defense and acknowledged the chaotic situation unfolding on the ground.
“Unless you’re itching to get him to the podium, this could well be the first time the SD has been out in public since the collapse in Afghanistan,” speechwriter Warren Bass wrote in the Aug. 16, 2021 email. “At a minimum, he’d need to start with a serious topper on the Afghan chaos.”
“Warren—warm words are good. We’ll want to do a spray given the circumstances,” Kirby replied.
The same day, Kirby forwarded a email with a comprehensive assessment from the State Department about summarizing the withdrawal developments, including security breaches at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, individuals forcing themselves onto aircraft, and gunfire exchanges as the military attempted to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan allies.
“Good summary from State,” Kirby wrote, referencing the email below.
In another email, Kirby flagged the deteriorating security situation at the airport for senior Defense Department advisors.
“I’m sure you all are tracking. But see below. Things are not going well at HKIA,” he wrote. The attached email was a report from a captain whose name is redacted sharing that Marines had killed two armed individuals in the crowd who were “threatening their post” and details about the deaths of several civilians who attempted to cling to a C-17 trying to take off from the airport.
“It’s going to be a rough day. We are continuing to flow people in an are planning on pushing the perimeter to the south,” the captain concluded.
You can read the full FOIA production below:
Just weeks after some of Kirby’s internal emails, an attack by the ISIS-K terrorist group on the perimeter of Hamid Karzai airport killed 13 U.S. service members and injured more than 50 others. Over a dozen Afghan civilians, gathered in a large crowd around the airport’s Abbey Gate and attempting to flee the Taliban, were also killed. The deadly attack came just days before the final American aircraft left the embattled nation.
The Gold Star families of the soldiers killed in that attack have previously slammed President Biden for refusing to say their names out loud.
Biden would later gloss over the incident, claiming at the July presidential debate with former rival Donald Trump that no solider has died abroad on his watch. “The truth is, I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any this decade, any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did,” he said.
Then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also sought to publicly downplay the chaotic pullout and stick to the official narrative being peddled by the White House.
She testified in a closed-door hearing this summer that she did not “challenge the quality or veracity” of the information she was told to share with the American public, adding evidence to the claim that the Biden Administration was downplaying the disastrous withdrawal, the Washington Free Beacon reported Friday.
Christopher Miller, former Acting Secretary of Defense in the final months of the Trump Administration, said that deceit by senior officials is troubling, most importantly because sends a bad message to the younger generation who will become military leaders.
“So when, when, when you have the… spokesman or the spokesperson being deceitful, what message does that send to the young leaders that are in the military that had 30-40, soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, space guardians, Coast Guard people, whatever the case may be, under them, and those people are seeing their spokesperson being deceitful, what kind of message that send to the force?” Miller told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast.
“Because we always talk about, you know…it’s like lead by example, and to see the senior spokesperson, who, let’s be clear… speaking on behalf of the Secretary of Defense, the senior civilian leader of the military in the United States, I find that atrocious, troubling, and concerns me beyond anything I could ever say on your show or elsewhere, but you understand what I’m saying, the American people do, that’s not the tenets that we imbue into…those that volunteer to serve our country,” Miller added.
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Steven Richards is an investigative reporter at Just the News. John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News. Before founding Just the News, Solomon played key reporting and executive roles at some of America’s most important journalism institutions, such as The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast and The Hill.
Photo “Afghanistan Evacuation” by Sgt. Samuel Ruiz.
