by Jerry Dunleavy
The Pentagon under Biden repeatedly claimed that the Abbey Gate bombing was not preventable, even if they had not allowed the bomber to be released. But a host of facts indicate that the deadly bombing may not have had to happen.
President Biden's Pentagon has argued that the Abbey Gate attack was not preventable — going so far as to claim that the attack still would have occurred even if the bomber had remained behind bars rather than being freed by the Taliban — despite a host of evidence indicating that the ISIS-K attack at Kabul airport did not have to happen the way it did.
An ISIS-K suicide bomber named Abdul Rahman al-Logari — who had been freed by the Taliban from a prison at Bagram Air Base in mid-August 2021 mere weeks after the U.S. abandoned the base — has been identified by CENTCOM as having carried out the suicide attack at Abbey Gate, killing 13 U.S. service members and an estimated 170 Afghan civilians while wounding dozens of other U.S. troops and scores of Afghans in the crowd on August 26, 2021.
There are other facts in evidence which suggest the Abbey Gate bombing was not inevitable.
The Taliban forces purportedly providing security outside of Kabul airport included the Haqqani Taliban’s Badri 313 suicide units. CENTCOM'S General Kenneth McKenzie admitted on TV, in congressional testimony, and in his memoir that the Taliban repeatedly refused to search or raid potential ISIS-K locations during the evacuation. A U.S. military investigation also concluded the Taliban failed to do all it could to prevent the Abbey Gate attack.
McKenzie arranged a deal with Taliban
Just the News previously reported that less than two weeks before the Abbey Gate bombing, McKenzie held a mid-August 2021 meeting with Taliban leader Mullah Baradar in Doha, Qatar which would end with the Taliban taking control of Kabul and the U.S. relying upon the goodwill of Taliban fighters to provide security at the Kabul airport during the evacuation.
During that meeting, Baradar said the Taliban was willing to withdraw its forces from in and around Kabul and would let the U.S. send in as many troops as it wanted to secure the Afghan capital and conduct the U.S. evacuation free from Taliban interference, but McKenzie admits that he turned the offer down on the spot.
A U.S. military investigation also found that the U.S. military had not done all it could to properly secure Kabul airport against threats ahead of the evacuation. The U.S. military also did not conduct constant surveillance of Abbey Gate during the evacuation, despite the ISIS-K threats against the airport and against that gate. The U.S. military also did not carry out any strikes against ISIS-K until after the Abbey Gate bombing.
HFAC’s report also did not place responsibility on the Pentagon for its air strike in Kabul which killed Afghan civilians.
McKenzie is currently listed as the Executive Director for the Global and National Security Institute at the University of Southern Florida. The general did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to him through his email at the school. Nor did he respond to requests for comment for prior Just the News reporting about him.
As for criticism of the HFAC report, "Chairman McCaul stands by his comprehensive report, the culmination of 18 transcribed interviews, seven public hearings, and 20,000 pages of documents obtained under subpoena from the State Department,” Emily Cassil, a spokesperson for former HFAC Chairman Michael McCaul, told Just the News.
It would later turn out that the deal McKenzie made would allow the Taliban's notorious suicide unit, called the Badri 313 to be responsible for securing the airport. Taliban commander Abdul Hadi Hamdan later said in an HBO documentary that “when I came to Kabul I was put in charge of the airport. We surrounded it with a thousand suicide bombers.”
Pentagon claims bomb attack "unavoidable"
Army Brigadier General Lance Curtis insisted in 2022 that “this was not preventable." A defense official asserted in a Defense Department news article in 2024 that ISIS-K would have simply used a different bomber and thus the Abbey Gate attack still would have happened even if Abbey Gate terrorist Abdul Rahman al-Logari had remained behind bars at Bagram Air Base. HFAC's report last year did not mention this claim.
An unnamed GOP majority staff aide from HFAC told the Washington Times last year that the committee did not agree that the Abbey Gate bombing was unavoidable, and that Logari wouldn’t have been able to attack Abbey Gate if President Biden hadn’t abandoned Bagram Air Base and allowed the Taliban to free the ISIS-K prisoners, including Logari.
Indeed, part of why ISIS-K may have had multiple suicide bombers available was because the Taliban had freed potentially more than a thousand of these terrorists from the prisons around Bagram — which would likely not have happened if the U.S. had still controlled Bagram in August 2021.
U.S. relied upon Taliban to provide security at HKIA
The U.S. relied upon the Taliban for security at HKIA throughout the evacuation. This happened because of a mix of decisions by President Biden and choices made by key military leaders.
As Just the News previously reported, the U.S. military had numerous meetings with the Taliban, with the U.S. relying upon the Taliban to provide security at the Kabul airport. The Taliban’s liaison with the U.S. military was Mawlawi Hamdullah Mukhlis, also known as Mawlawi Hamdullah Rahmani, who was photographed sitting in the Afghan president’s chair in the Afghan presidential palace when the Taliban took it over on August 15, 2021.
McKenzie said in September 2021 that “yes, we do” know which Taliban forces were providing security at HKIA, and admitted that the Taliban’s Haqqani-linked Badri 313 Unit "specializes in suicide bombing attacks,“ under questioning from Rep. Mike Gallagher, R., Wis.
Then-Major General Chris Donahue told investigators that “we met with the Taliban” and “we told them which areas we would be in charge of and which areas they would need to control.” Donahue said that “our general breakdown was that if it was tactical, I would deal with the Taliban. If it was above that, Rear Admiral [Pete] Vasely would deal with it. If we met with them together, same thing.”
One U.S. military officer whose name was redacted, involved in planning for the NEO said that “the Taliban did give General McKenzie a POC [point of contact] for the ground commander in Kabul.” The contact was Hamdullah. The U.S. military officer said the Taliban told McKenzie that this Taliban ground commander would "give you anything you need.”
Second-guessing bad judgment
McKenzie wrote in his memoir, The Melting Point, that “I am confident that using the Taliban reduced attacks on our forces” but that “I am also sure that it reduced by some number — and perhaps a significant number — the Afghans that we wanted to get out. To mitigate this problem, the Department of State provided examples of travel documents to the Taliban and also names and lists of Afghans that we wanted to evacuate. In some cases this helped; in others it did not. I would make the same decision today.”
McKenzie told Politico in August 2022 that “by and large, the Taliban were helpful in our departure. They did not oppose us. They did do some external security work. There was a downside of that external security work, and it probably prevented some Afghans from getting to Kabul airport as we would have liked. But that was a risk that I was willing to run.”
Unmentioned were the Americans who were blocked by the Taliban and the Afghans who were murdered by them as the evacuees tried to escape during the NEO.
McKenzie insisted that “we did not rely on the Taliban for our security” but that “we used them as one tool among many to beef up our defensive posture.”
Despite McKenzie’s claims, the Pentagon inspector general emphasized in 2021, just after the NEO, that the U.S. had relied upon the Taliban for security at HKIA: “DoD officials met with Taliban representatives and agreed to cooperate on security at HKIA, with the Taliban forming an external security cordon that U.S. forces inside the facility incorporated into their force protection operations.”
Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on August 17, 2021 that “we are in contact with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of people to the airport” and that “the Taliban have informed us that they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport, and we intend to hold them to that commitment.”
The Taliban would inflict violence against Americans and even murder Afghans attempting to escape the country, with no consequences. No U.S. generals were blamed by HFAC for the debacle.
Taliban did not fulfill promises to McKenzie, failed to hunt for ISIS-K
The U.S. military repeatedly asked the Taliban to search or raid suspected ISIS-K locations near the Kabul airport, according to McKenzie, and sometimes the Taliban would agree to help, but other times the Taliban refused to do so.
Biden claimed on August 20, 2021 that ISIS-K was “the sworn enemy of the Taliban.” He repeated this multiple times during the evacuation. Sworn enemy or not, the Taliban repeatedly refused to help the U.S. against the ISIS-K threat during the evacuation.
One U.S. military officer who was present for the evacuation at Kabul airport and whose name was redacted told investigators that “intelligence officers at HKIA knew that ISIS-K was staging at a hotel 2-3 kilometers west of HKIA, and D2 [Donahue] asked the TB [Taliban] to conduct an assault on the hotel, but they never did.”
McKenzie told the media in 2023 that “there were a variety of targets that we passed to the Taliban to take a look at — more than ten. Some they did. Some they didn’t action.” Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher confirmed that month “we did ask the Taliban to raid or search several areas” and that the Taliban “searched some and did not search others.”
Of his agreement with the Taliban, McKenzie said, “So yes, we shared a common purpose. I don’t trust the Taliban, I don’t like the Taliban, it was a highly transactional agreement. But it was designed to let us get out. And I will tell you that we certainly did not outsource our security to the Taliban, but I am confident that we would’ve had more Abbey Gate attacks had we not negotiated these limited agreements with the Taliban for some of the external security that they provided.”
McKenzie wrote in his memoir that the U.S. military “shared eighteen imminent threat warnings” with the Taliban, but admitted that “our success in this effort was mixed.” McKenzie said that the Taliban “sometimes … responded and looked at areas we felt held ISIS-K members” but that “sometimes they did not.”
When asked if the Taliban ever declined or refused to search or raid some suspected ISIS-K locations, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan reconciliation, replied in testimony to the HFAC, “No, not that I'm aware of. General McKenzie on the record said he hates the Taliban, but the Talibs did everything — his word, not mine — that we asked them to do during that period. You'd have to ask him. There was a partnership between the — I mean, the word is not like that, I'm sure, by everyone — between them, our security people, and the Taliban, during that period in Kabul.”
But as McKenzie and others admitted, the Taliban had repeatedly declined to assist the U.S. in defending HKIA against the ISIS-K threat during the NEO. McKenzie said on August 26, 2021, shortly after the bombing, that “the Taliban have conducted searches before they get to that point” at the airport gates, but admitted that “sometimes those searches have been good and sometimes not.”
Biden insisted after the blast that “no, I don’t” feel like it was a mistake to depend upon the Taliban to secure the perimeter of the Kabul airport.
Taliban failed to stop Abbey Gate attack, but denies having had responsibility given by McKenzie
U.S. Forces - Afghanistan (USFOR-A) provided a submission during the military’s after-action review concluding that the successful ISIS-K attack at Abbey Gate demonstrated the problem with relying upon the Taliban for security at HKIA, with the investigation concluding that the Taliban failed to fulfill its obligations, in particular, “the 26 August ISIS-K attack reflects the risk of reliance on TB [Taliban] as they failed to ensure checkpoints were in place to screen personnel approaching the gates.”
Vasely told investigators that “clearly the 26th was a lapse in security on the TB's part.” Vasely said it was only after the Abbey Gate bombing, but not before it, that the Taliban began securing the area around Kabul airport: “The TB then took actions to shut down traffic leading to gates, which they hadn't done that previously. From that point forward, the TB took a concerted effort on crowd control, security, and locking down traffic coming towards HKIA.”
Taliban official Habibi Samangani said that “just because we have an agreement not to attack the Americans until they complete their pullout doesn’t mean that we have cooperation with them or provide security for them.” The Taliban tried to say that it was the fault of the U.S. that ISIS-K was able to conduct the bombing, arguing that the night before the bombing it had "warned the foreign forces the repercussions of the large gathering at Kabul airport.”
Additionally, while some U.S. service members said the Taliban’s response to the attack was one of shock and surprise, other troops on the ground said the Taliban responded with glee.
A member of the Marine sniper team whose name was redacted said that just after the bomb went off, “I was sighted in on the Taliban and saw they were sitting in lawn chairs and laughing at us.” Another Marine sniper in the tower said, “I remember when I was pulling security by the vehicle outside the gate, I was looking at the Taliban by the chevron through my sights. I saw a dude in a lawn chair pointing and laughing. I wanted them to do something stupid, I would have taken them out.”
Lt. Col. Brad Whited also said that, after the bombing, “as I looked over, I saw that the Taliban were laughing.” The quotes from service members about the Taliban laughing after the bombing did not appear in the HFAC report.
Missing video surveillance of Abbey Gate bombing
CENTCOM’s “Abbey Gate Attack Narrative” said that only before and after footage exists of the blast. The ARCENT investigation in 2024 also contained testimony revealing the alleged absence of U.S. video surveillance, surveillance cameras, and drone feeds pointed at the location of the Abbey Gate bombing when the attack occurred.
McKenzie said in a 2022 briefing on the Abbey Gate attack that “an MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle” [a Reaper drone] “began observing the scene about three minutes after the attack.” Major Brad Hannon displayed videos during the briefing which were from “an overhead platform” with the video beginning “three minutes and eight seconds after the attack.” Hannon described how the drone pilot came to point his camera at Abbey Gate only after the blast.
Curtis said in 2022 that a Marine's GoPro video was “the only known footage of the blast itself.” The video took place 48 meters from the blast and, in it, “a single individual dressed in all black steps forward from the crowd” and detonates his bomb.
A member of the U.S. military's “targeting cell” tracking ISIS-K during the NEO told investigators that “we did not have FMV [full-motion video] sensors observing Abbey Gate at the time of the explosion.” A member of the 82nd Airborne described the advanced Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) cameras which had been placed around HKIA, and revealed that he did not believe any cameras were pointed at Abbey Gate at the time of the blast.
The service member, whose name was redacted, said that “the cameras that we had access to and could control were not arrayed in a way that faced Abbey Gate.” He added: “I confirmed with the team that was with me on the ground today, and none of us recollect any RAID camera facing Abbey Gate. … The cameras did not face Abbey Gate.” He said that instead “most of the cameras were at the north and west of HKIA.” The soldier also said “no” when asked if he recalled any imagery of the attack, but he insisted that “it is not likely” that the “available [airborne] ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] would have identified a suspicious individual or item prior to the blast.”
One unidentified U.S. military officer said that, before August 15, 2021, “there were sixty RAID towers at HKIA, which were reduced down to three on August 26 because contractor support had departed, and systems were crashing.” The officer said that the Persistent Threat Detection System and the Scan Eagle unmanned aircraft systems that were at HKIA “had been destroyed via combat demilitarization during the emergency evacuation of the embassy.”
A Marine whose name was not revealed and worked in an operation center, admitted "that there was no camera on Abbey Gate, so we weren’t watching it 24 hours a day."
Another U.S. service member whose name was redacted and who was tracking ISIS-K during the NEO was asked if his team had any ISR collection of the attack, including full motion video or geospatial intelligence, but the service member said that “we didn’t have anything additional” from Counterterrorist Intelligence Center, the 82nd Airborne, or the Marines, adding that there was “no special ISR that they did not have.”
Another Marine, who worked in an operations center and whose name was redacted, told investigators that “I don't understand why we didn’t have a dedicated asset. [Redacted] been great to have dedicated for oversight and a visual. We didn’t have our [Redacted]. I had a hard time with asset allocation and control given our position and point of impact.”
Misdirection by referencing an unrelated U.S. air strike 200km from Kabul
The U.S. conducted an airstrike against ISIS-K on August 27, 2021, saying it had killed two ISIS-K terrorists in Nangarhar province after the bombing. CENTCOM spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement that day that “U.S. military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner.”
Major General Hank Taylor said on August 28, 2021 that two "high-profile ISIS targets were killed.” He said the strike was conducted against “an ISIS-K planner and facilitator.” Taylor wouldn’t directly answer whether the two ISIS-K terrorists had already been on the U.S. radar as high-profile people, saying only that “we had intelligence on the target set. That led us as we continued to work up that to conduct that strike.”
President Biden also said that day that “I said we would go after the group responsible for the attack on our troops and innocent civilians in Kabul, and we have. This strike was not the last. We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”
ARCENT's supplemental review assessment challenged the idea that striking the ISIS-K cell in Nangarhar potentially could have disrupted the ISIS-K attack at Abbey Gate: “In his interview, [Tyler Vargas-Andrews] referred to a ‘supposed airstrike or raid against an ISIS-K cell leader associated with attack planning against HKIA.’ Although this assertion is outside the scope of the Supplemental Review, a separate investigation into this matter showed the requested target was ISIS-K IVO [in the vicinity of] Jalalabad, which is over 200km away from Kabul. The strike was not directed against the ISIS-K cell in Kabul who planned and conducted the attack at HKIA. The strike intended to target a separate cell, in a different province of Afghanistan; it would not have prevented the attack at Abbey Gate.”
A service member, whose name was redacted, was part of a “targeting cell” and told investigators that he was carrying out targeting efforts against an ISIS-K cell in Jalalabad in Nangarhar province during the NEO. This targeting cell member said “yes” when asked if the ISIS-K cell in Nangarhar was connected to the ISIS-K cell in Kabul which he was tracking and which ended up conducting the Abbey Gate bombing.
The interviewer with the ARCENT team, whose name was also redacted, told the targeting cell member that “I have understood that the planning effort was from Jalalabad in order to direct threats around Kabul.” The service member was asked if he targeted the ISIS-K cell in Jalalabad, and he said that “prior to the [Abbey Gate] attack, we did not conduct any lethal action that I recall.”
Outside of one airstrike, Biden did not conduct any other airstrikes targeting ISIS-K in Afghanistan for the rest of his term.
The U.S. military later identified one of two ISIS-K members killed along with the civilians as Kabir Aidi, with CENTCOM saying in September 2021 that he “was an ISIS-K high-profile attack lethal aid facilitator involved in attack planning and magnetic IED production.” CENTCOM said Aidi “was directly connected to the ISIS-K leaders that coordinated the August 26 attack at HKIA.” CENTCOM also said Aidi was “directly connected to threat streams in Kabul throughout the non-combatant evacuation at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, to include the reported distribution of explosives and suicide vests.”
A U.S. official told the media at the time that “we believe this terrorist was involved in planning future attacks in Kabul.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on August 28, 2021 that “the fact that two of these individuals are no longer walking on the face of the earth that's a good thing” and that “it's a good thing for the people of Afghanistan and it's a good thing for our troops and our forces at that airfield.” He said that the strike meant that ISIS-K had now “lost some capability to plan and to conduct missions.”
It was reported by Politico that day that “one of the [ISIS-K] targets was involved in running weapons and bombs into Kabul.” Sullivan said on August 29, 2021 that the ISIS-K targets in Nangarhar were “planning additional attacks, and we believe that, by taking them out, we have disrupted those attacks.”
Sullivan added that the terrorists were involved in the “production of explosive devices” and that the ISIS-K members were “part of the larger network of ISIS-K that is seeking to target” U.S. troops “at the airport.”
HFAC shifts blame for civilian-killing drone strike from Pentagon to Biden Administration
The HFAC's final report claimed that “The Defense Department, at the instruction of the [Biden] administration, killed ten innocent Afghan civilians, including Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime aid worker employed by Nutrition and Education International, and nine members of his family, including seven children.”
There is no evidence that this strike was carried out “at the instruction of the administration.” The HFAC report also stated that “the Biden-Harris administration presented this strike as a success.” The report made no mention of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley’s controversial claim that it was a “righteous strike.”
The final report also did not address facts demonstrating that top U.S. military leaders had seemingly misled about some aspects of the collateral killings.
According to The New York Times, some U.S. military witnesses who gave sworn statements in a Pentagon investigation said they learned of potential civilian casualties minutes after the strike while the drone video feed was being reviewed, while some other witnesses reportedly said they learned of potential Afghan civilian deaths only a few hours after the explosion.
But statements from CENTCOM that day and in the following days did not acknowledge any Afghan civilian deaths, and Milley declared it a “righteous strike” in early September 2021 despite acknowledging later that month that he had learned of civilian deaths within hours of the strike.
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki argued on August 30, 2021 that “the fact that we have had two successful strikes” — the strike against Kabir Aidi in Nangarhar and the strike against civilians in Kabul — “confirmed by CENTCOM tells you that our over-the-horizon capacity works and is working.”
Milley himself was asked on September 1, 2021 about whether numerous civilians had been killed in the airstrike, and he acknowledged that multiple people had been killed in the strike but did not admit they were civilians, saying, “At least one of those people that were killed was an ISIS facilitator. So were there others killed? Yes, there are others killed. Who they are, we don't know.”
McKenzie, Milley, and Defense Secretary Lloyd later acknowledged on September 29, 2021 that they knew within hours that the August 29, 2021, airstrike in Kabul killed innocent civilians, but McKenzie also claimed that CENTCOM had quickly admitted it — yet the Pentagon had repeatedly declined to confirm civilian casualties in the days after the strike.
Lieutenant General Sami Said, the U.S. Air Force Inspector General, was tasked to conduct a review and an investigation of the deadly strike, and he said at a press briefing that it was important to keep in mind the circumstances at the time of the strike: “The risk to forces at HKIA and the multiple threat streams that they were receiving of an imminent attack, mindful that, three days prior, such an attack took place, where we lost thirteen soldiers — or lost thirteen members and a lot of Afghan civilians.”
Milley would years later tell HFAC that “for several days, it was my impression that the procedures were executed correctly and that we struck a target that we thought was an enemy. There was a mistake made. It’s a tragic mistake of war.”
- Reporter's disclosure
A quick word about this author (a disclosure I shared in my prior pieces on Milley and McKenzie). I co-authored a book — KABUL — on the withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan and, prior to joining Just the News, I worked as the senior investigator on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC), specifically tasked with reviewing the bungled Afghan withdrawal.
I quit the committee in protest last August over disagreements with then-GOP Chairman Michael McCaul over how his investigation was run and over what was edited out of the drafts I wrote before HFAC’s final report was published last September.
In full disclosure, I have also been serving as an independent factfinder in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's ongoing review of the Pentagon’s failings during the Afghan withdrawal, but I am participating in that exercise solely as a journalist. I'm not paid by any government agency and my participation is solely to help provide Just the News readers and the American public with a better understanding of what led to such a disaster.
Jerry Dunleavy
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/security/pentagon-claimed-abbey-gate-still-wouldve-happened-even-if-isis-k-bomber-was
