The families of American personnel killed in the suicide attack on Kabul airport say they want a second Pentagon review of the bombing to finally get to the bottom of what went wrong and who was to blame for the deaths during the final chaotic days of the Afghan evacuations.
Some 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans died when a lone suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the Abbey Gate of the airport in August 2021.
An investigation published in 2022 concluded the deaths were not preventable. But other service personnel came forward to claim that the bomber had been identified and could have been stopped.
This week U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said a supplemental review, which included additional witnesses, had been concluded and families were being informed of the findings.
Darin Hoover, whose son Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover was killed in the blast, said he wanted transparency, accountability and an admission that the attack could have been prevented.
How the bomb attack on Kabul airport unfolded. 13 US personnel were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his deadly payload on 26 August, 2021, in the final days of the withdrawal
The Americans killed in the blast were: (left to right, starting with top row) Cpl. Daegan W. Page – Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo – Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover – Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza – Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum – Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui – Cpl. Hunter Lopez – Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz – Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss – Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez – Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak – Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola – Sgt. Nicole L. Gee
He said he wanted ‘heads to roll.’
‘Nobody slapped down their stars. Nobody threatened to quit. Nobody’s been fired over it,’ he said, before adding that he wanted Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to accept responsibility.
‘I want Blinken and Austin gone. I want them to lose their jobs.’
The supplementary review was announced in September soon after family members expressed their fury at what they saw as a lack of accountability for the messy withdrawal.
In particular, they wanted to know how the first investigation was not preventable when Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews testified before Congress that he spotted a person matching descriptions of a suicide bomber just before the attack.
He said his superiors were not interested in his warnings and that his testimony was not sought afterwards.
‘Plain and simple, we were ignored. Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety,’ Vargas-Andrews said.
A book published last year also concluded that commanders twice missed chances to take out the ISIS-K cell behind the attack.
On one occasion the Taliban, who by then controlled Kabul, refused a request to raid a hotel that was a known staging post for the rival terror group, according to the authors of ‘Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End.’
Darin Hoover said he wanted ‘heads to roll’ and that the new report should acknowledge that the attack was preventable
The blast was outside The Baron Hotel, at the Abbey Gate of Kabul airport. Westerners were staying in the hotel before their evacuation flights
And officers vetoed a plan for a drone strike elsewhere because of the ‘negative response’ of the Taliban to such a raid.
A spokesperson for CENTCOM said the supplemental review was now complete and that relatives were being informed.
‘Over five months, a team of 13 service members from the Army and Marine Corps interviewed more than 50 service members who were present during the attack, including 12 service members who were not previously interviewed due to medical evacuation or treatment,’ said the spokesperson.
‘These interviews sought to determine whether those service members possessed any new information surrounding the attack, and, if so, whether that information would affect the findings of the initial Abbey Gate investigation, completed in November 2021.’
Several relatives contacted said they had been told they would be briefed on the reports findings next month.
Christy Shamblin, whose daughter-in-law Marine Sergeant Nicole Gee died, said she hoped the second review would prevent any repeat.
Slides shown during a Pentagon briefing show how the US dead and wounded were close to the canal where the bomber detonated his explosives, and had clustered together to search potential evacuees. The worst hit were standing on a wall overlooking the canal
Pictures show the haphazard conditions at the airport before the attack
Christy Shamblin, whose daughter-in-law Marine Sergeant Nicole Gee died in the attack, was a guest of Rep. Michael McCaul at last week’s State of the Union address to Congress
‘My hope is we can learn from the findings and make the next evacuation casualty free,’ she said.
‘If we can make an impact of casualty free evacuations and never have another avoidable mass casualty it would be a legacy I could be happy with.’
In the meantime, the Biden administration has insisted it did everything it could.
A review by the White House National Security Council blamed the Trump administration for setting up the conditions for a chaotic withdrawal.
And the Pentagon has repeatedly said senior officers did everything they could to protect troops at the airport.
‘Based on our investigation at the tactical level, this was not preventable and the leaders on the ground followed the proper measures, and any time there was an imminent threat warning they followed the proper procedures: they lowered their profile, they sought cover, and at times, they even ceased operations at the gate,’ said Brig. Gen. Lance Curtis, the lead investigator, in February 2022.
Hoover said that did not reflect information that had come to light in the weeks and months after the investigation was published.
‘We’ve gotten information that the bomber was in a hotel down the street making ready for all of this,’ he said.
‘And it could have been stopped at that point. It wasn’t. And I want to know why. There’s so many questions right now that I want answered.’
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