[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                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                            
                     
                      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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