Top General In Focus As Hegseth Probes Afghan Debacle

On the anniversary of the deadly bombing at Abbey Gate that killed 13 U.S. troops, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his team are working quickly to accomplish what Congress did not: holding top military generals accountable for their specific failures during the catastrophically bungled withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan four years ago.

“On behalf of this beautiful group, on behalf of these families, on behalf of your loved ones who fought for our nation, America deserves answers as far as what happened in Afghanistan. The military needs to answer for what happened in Afghanistan,” Hegseth told those soldiers’ families gathered by President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday.

Hegseth’s exercise is poised to delve into the decisions and miscalculations of then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who promised Afghanistan would not end like Saigon but whose assurances on the strength of Afghanistan’s own forces and their ability to hold the country from an advancing Taliban proved faulty.

First, though, a word about this author. I co-authored a book — KABUL — on the withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan, and prior to joining Just the News, 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 the investigation was run and what was edited out of the drafts I wrote before the final report entitled “Willful Blindness: An Assessment of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Chaos that Followed” was published last September.

This story is not an effort to rehash those disputes.

In full disclosure, I have also been serving as an independent factfinder in Hegseth’s ongoing review, 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 a better understanding what led to such a disaster.

Just the News reached out to Chairman McCaul’s office for comment, and his spokeswoman provided a statement defending the work of the committee and its findings while acknowledging there may be outstanding questions still to be answered.

“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 McCaul, told Just the News.

“As he said upon releasing his report, ‘there are still unanswered questions, and more information must be gathered.’ However, as Mr. Dunleavy is well aware, any outstanding questions regarding current or former Department of Defense employees must be handled by the committees of jurisdiction — not the House Foreign Affairs Committee. We hope that this investigation continues until all questions are answered,” she added.

Milley did not respond to requests for comment sent to him through Princeton University, where he was named a visiting professor last year, and through JPMorgan Chase, where he has been a senior adviser since 2024