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On August 26, 2021, a suicide bomber murdered 13 American service members outside Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan. The bomber was from an ISIS faction known as ISIS-K. In the two years since, the Biden administration has denied responsibility and repeatedly described the attack as unpreventable. As we detail in our new book, that narrative is false.
For starters, the suicide bomber — an ISIS-K operative named Abdul Rahman al-Logari who was captured in a joint operation by Indian intelligence and the CIA in 2017 — had been imprisoned at Bagram Air Base for years.
The Taliban freed Logari when it overran Bagram shortly after President Joe Biden abandoned the base despite vocal objections from military commanders. If Biden hadn’t rejected military leaders’ advice, Logari would still have been behind bars on August 26, instead of outside Abbey Gate.
MORE THAN 200 AFGHAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, SECURITY FORCES KILLED FOLLOWING TALIBAN TAKEOVER: UN
Moreover, three different officers told Pentagon investigators that the military and intelligence community were tracking the ISIS-K cells likely connected to the bombing in the days leading up to the attack. Crucially, they also described multiple opportunities to conduct a preemptive strike against those ISIS-K operatives.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, flag-draped transfer cases line the inside of a C-17 Globemaster II Aug. 29, 2021, prior to a dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. The fallen service members died while supporting non-combat operations in Kabul. (Jason Minto/U.S. Air Force via Getty Images)
The officers’ statements are memorialized in interview transcripts and sworn statements from two separate Pentagon reports about the Abbey Gate attack and the botched drone strike that killed civilians in Kabul three days later.
A senior officer interviewed during the drone strike investigation stated that he "conducted a targeting effort on ISIS-K threats leading into Kabul" and submitted a targeting package for a "deliberate strike" against an ISIS-K location days before the bombing. (At that time, it appears such requests were routed through Major General Chris Donahue and Rear Admiral Peter Vasely, to CENTCOM Commander General Frank McKenzie for approval.)
Donahue and Vasely, however, "determined conducting a strike was infeasible due to the negative response from [the] Taliban," according to that senior officer.
A second officer provided further context in a separate interview. He stated that his team submitted "a targeting packet and a request to strike only a few days prior" to the Abbey Gate attack, but the request was denied. The interview indicates that the target of the strike was an ISIS-K safehouse in Nangarhar Province that the miliary ultimately struck on the 27th — the day after the attack.
One of the ISIS-K operatives killed in that strike was Kabir Aidi, a terrorist who was involved in "attack planning," distributed "explosives and suicide vests," and was "directly connected to threat streams in Kabul" throughout the evacuation.
Aidi was "connected to the ISIS-K leaders that coordinated" the Abbey Gate bombing. McKenzie said the Nangarhar strike "had an effect on quieting down" ISIS-K and "disrupted some of their plans" for follow-on attacks — raising the important question of whether the strike might have disrupted the August 26 attack, too.
Taken together, the statements from both officers indicate that the military identified the location of an ISIS-K operative who facilitated the Abbey Gate attack, but they declined to strike his location days before the bombing, apparently to avoid angering the Taliban.
Similarly, an officer interviewed as part of the Abbey Gate investigation stated that "intelligence officers at HKIA knew that ISIS-K was staging in a hotel 2-3 kilometers west of HKIA, and [General Donahue] asked the [Taliban] to conduct an assault on the hotel, but they never did."
In this image from video provided by Omar Haidari and taken on Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021, which shows a baby being lifted across a wall at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan by US soldiers. (Omar Haidari via AP)
This officer was responsible for briefing unit-level military intelligence officers about potential threats and thus would have had firsthand knowledge of the actionable intelligence known to U.S. forces.
The statements of those three officers are consistent with Marine Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews’s recent testimony to Congress that his sniper team was warned about an impending ISIS-K attack at Abbey Gate and received a detailed description of the suspected bomber.
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Vargas-Andrews also testified that, "around 2 am, [intelligence officers] confirmed the suicide bomber in the vicinity" of Abbey Gate. Later that afternoon, the sniper team identified a man who matched the description and profile of the suspected bomber, and an Army PSYOPS team provided secondary confirmation.
When they asked for permission to shoot, however, their battalion commander replied that he did not have "engagement authority" and that he didn’t know who did. The suspected bomber disappeared into the crowd, and carnage ensued soon after.
The White House has never accounted for these facts, perhaps because no explanation is sufficient. It has never publicly identified Logari as the bomber — doing so would invite uncomfortable questions about who he was and where he came from.
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It has never discussed the intelligence it received before the attack, even though it publicly warned about an impending ISIS-K bombing for days beforehand. And it has never responded to Vargas-Andrews’s claims. Worst of all, Biden has never publicly spoken the names of the 13 Americans killed in the attack.
The White House wants the public to forget about its deadly incompetence and move on without demands for accountability. But the Gold Star Families and the American public deserve the truth.
James Hasson is co-author of "Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End." He is an attorney and Afghanistan veteran who received a Bronze Star.