War Department spokesperson Sean Parnell, who leads the Pentagon’s Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel, stated in a video message that the panel had recovered highly relevant classified documents concerning the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The announcement coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, in which a suicide bomber affiliated with ISIS-K killed 13 U.S. service members and approximately 170 Afghan civilians.
“The deeper we look, the more there is to look at. We are finding things that we did not expect. Recently, my team recovered highly relevant classified documents, material that should have been disclosed, stashed and hidden away in safes where they would not be found,” Parnell said. “And after the team reviewed these documents, it became clear why someone tried to hide them.”
Parnell did not provide any additional details on the contents of the documents, their exact location, the individuals involved in their storage, or any plans for public release or declassification.
The special review panel was established under War Secretary Pete Hegseth to examine decisions leading up to and during the U.S. military exit from Afghanistan in August 2021. Parnell indicated that the investigation has included interviews with military figures involved in the planning and execution of the withdrawal, as well as a review of approximately 9 million documents.
He has previously described an earlier probe as having been “over-classified at the highest levels, which effectively kept the most critical and relevant information from public scrutiny.”
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An update from Sean Parnell, Chairman of the Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel, on the Fifth Anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing pic.twitter.com/5pkbmuuyX0
— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellASW) August 26, 2026
In the same video statement, Parnell addressed the service members who participated in the withdrawal operations and vowed to provide clarity.“They are owed the full picture of how and why those decisions were made, and we’re going to give it to them,” he said. “I’m not going to give you a convenient version of the truth, nor will I give you a rushed one. Here is my commitment. We are following the evidence to wherever it leads and to whoever it touches.” He also noted that the team would not accept “incomplete or comfortable answers.”
The 2021 withdrawal followed the U.S.-Taliban agreement reached in 2020 and the subsequent decision by the Biden administration to complete the drawdown. It included the rapid collapse of the Afghan government, the handover of facilities such as Bagram Air Base, and a chaotic noncombatant evacuation operation centered on the Kabul airport.
Prior after-action reviews conducted by the Pentagon and other agencies examined aspects of the operation, with some materials remaining classified. The current panel’s work builds on efforts to review additional records and interviews.
