Biden team withheld vital information about Afghan situation
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The Pentagon maintains that the Afghan government wanted to classify the data and that it recommended against it but “abided by the decision of the original classification authority.” Overall, the department says it has cooperated with SIGAR since the office was created by Congress.
The State Department, meanwhile, wrote to Sopko shortly after U.S.-backed Afghan forces were routed by the Taliban terrorist group as the U.S. moved to fully withdraw from the country.
“Shortly after the fall of Kabul, the State Department wrote to me and other oversight agencies requesting to ‘temporarily suspend access’ to all ‘audit, inspection, and financial audit … reports’ on our website because the Department was afraid that information included in those reports could put Afghan allies at risk,” Sopko said.
While the watchdog believes Afghans at risk should be protected, the State Department was never able to describe any specific threats nor could they explain how removing the reports “could possibly protect anyone since many were years old and already extensively disseminated worldwide.”
Sopko complied reluctantly with the request but became more puzzled when the agency reached out asking for redacting roughly 2,400 items in the reports, including the name of former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. A review found all but four requests “without merit.”
“In my opinion, the full picture of what happened in August—and all the warning signs that could have predicted the outcome—will only be revealed if the information that the Departments of Defense and State have already restricted from public release is made available,” said Sopko.
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I suspect they were trying to cover up their own screw-ups that led to the debacle and the politicians responsible for those screw-ups. Since the Afghan government no longer exists what sense does it make to withhold the information that led to its demise?
See, also:
Special inspector general for Afghanistan warns the Pentagon is classifying documents to cover up failures and demands secret reports on how country collapsed are published now
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