Pentagon to Release Afghanistan Withdrawal Findings

War Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel report will be made public soon, following a series of interviews with senior military and civilian leaders.

Rachel Acenas

Published: 4/25/2026, 11:59:45 PM EDT

Pentagon to Release Afghanistan Withdrawal Findings — Abbey Gate in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 26, 2021, a week before the suicide bomber blast that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians. (U.S. Central Command via AP)

A detailed assessment of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is nearly complete and its findings are expected in the coming months, according to the Pentagon on Friday.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel report will be made public soon, following a series of interviews with senior military and civilian leaders.

"That review will come later this summer, and I think you'll find it to be probably the most comprehensive review this department has ever done about a single series of events,” Hegseth told reporters at a press briefing on Friday.

Hegseth created the special panel under the direction of President Donald Trump to investigate the August 2021 withdrawal.

The pullout of American troops from Afghanistan ended America's longest war. The full U.S. military pullout from the country saw tens of thousands of Afghans, who feared a return of Taliban rule, desperate to flee the country. A suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport during the evacuation killed 13 American service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians.

Hegseth said that there had never been a "real deep dive" into what happened and why.

“So we have, over the course of months, reviewed what happened leading up to and including the events at Abbey Gate and the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan,” Hegseth said. “There's never actually been a full accounting in this department of the decisions that were made.”

The Trump administration has blamed the deadly withdrawal on the Biden administration.

Department of War spokesman Sean Parnell, who chairs the panel, described the Biden administration's investigation as limited in scope, further stating that his panel has reviewed more than 9 million documents throughout its investigation so far.

"By contrast, the previous Department-wide review commissioned under former Secretary Lloyd Austin examined around 3,000 documents and was significantly narrower in scope," Parnell said. "The Secretary Austin-led effort was also over-classified at the highest levels, which effectively kept the most critical and relevant information from public scrutiny."

The Biden administration previously released a summary of classified reports and mostly blamed the pullout on Trump for failing to plan for the withdrawal he had agreed on with the Taliban.

"President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor," a summary of the decisions and challenges of the withdrawal released by the Biden administration in April 2023 stated. "The outgoing administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans or Afghan allies."

The 20-year war in Afghanistan first began under George W. Bush and then continued under the Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies.

Reuters contributed to this report.