A new Pentagon review of the events leading up to the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. soldiers at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, confirmed earlier findings that U.S. troops could not have prevented the deadly violence.
The review’s conclusions focus on the final days and hours at Abbey Gate before the attack, which also killed up to 170 civilians. The review provides new details about the Islamic State bomber who carried out the suicide mission, including how he slipped through crowds trying to evacuate the capital’s airport moments before detonating explosives.
Some Marines at the gate said they recognized the suspected bomber – known to investigators as “Bald in Black” – in the crowd hours before the attack, but were twice denied permission by their superiors to shoot him. But the review, based on earlier research released in February 2022, rejected those accusations.
The narrative of missed opportunities to avert the tragedy has gained momentum over the past year among conservatives and has contributed to broader Republican criticism of the withdrawal and evacuation of the Biden administration’s troops from Kabul in August 2021.
The bombing was a terrifying experience for the army after 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Thirteen flag-draped caskets were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and successive funerals were held across the country for the service members, most of whom were under the age of 25.
Military officials had stood by the conclusions of the previous investigation that a lone Islamic State suicide bomber carried out the attack and there were no accomplices firing into the crowd.
But under mounting political pressure to address disparities in the previous review and the Marines’ portal accounts — which also included reports that the Islamic State had conducted a test of the bombing — a team of Army and Marine Corps officers interviewed more than 50 people who were not interviewed the first time.
One of the key issues was the identity of the bomber. Almost immediately after the attack, the Islamic State identified him as Abdul Rahman Al-Logari. American and other Western intelligence analysts later gathered evidence that led them to the same conclusion.
US officials said at the time that Mr Logari was a former engineering student who was one of many thousands of militants freed from at least two maximum-security prisons after the Taliban seized Kabul on August 15, 2021. The Taliban vacated the facilities indiscriminately, freeing not only their own imprisoned members but also fighters from ISIS Khorasan or ISIS-K, the terrorist organization’s Afghanistan branch and enemy of the Taliban.
Mr. Logari was not unknown to the Americans. In 2017, the CIA tipped off Indian agents that it was planning a suicide bombing in New Delhi, US officials said. Indian authorities foiled the attack and handed Mr. Logari over to the CIA, which sent him to Afghanistan to serve time in Parwan Prison at Bagram Air Base. He remained there until he was freed in the chaos after the fall of Kabul.
At the airport, investigators said, the bomber detonated a 20-pound explosive, likely carried in a backpack or vest, spraying 5mm ball bearings in a terrifying explosion captured in grainy video images shown to Pentagon reporters.
All of this was known to Marine Corps and Army officials as they began their supplemental review last September. But they were tasked with answering the lingering questions.
On the day of the bombing, Marines at the gate were tipped off to be on the lookout for a man with disheveled hair, wearing baggy clothes and carrying a black bag of explosives. The review team determined, after additional interviews and evaluation of security camera footage and other photographs of the chaotic scene, that the description was not specific enough to meaningfully narrow the search.
But Marines at the gate later came forward to say that at about 7 a.m., they saw a person matching the description of the suicide bomber. The Marines said the man had been behaving suspiciously and that they had sent urgent warnings to leaders asking for permission to shoot. Twice their request was denied, they said.
The review team concluded that the Marines had combined the intelligence reports with an earlier sighting of a man wearing beige clothing and carrying a black bag. The team also reviewed a photo of the suspect from one of the sniper team’s cameras.
The man in question did not actually match the description, the review team concluded. He was bald, wearing black clothes and not carrying a black bag. In addition, photos of Mr. Logaris while in US custody did not match the suspect’s photos, even after using facial recognition software.
“Al-Logari and the ‘Fald Man in Black’ received the strongest negative result,” concluded a slide of the supplemental review team’s findings briefed to reporters.
Furthermore, the review team concluded, Mr Logari did not arrive at Abbey Gate on August 26 until “immediately before” the attack, minimizing his chances of being spotted by the Marines.
The review team went through a similar process to reject sightings of specific individuals the Marines suspected of conducting a dry run on the potential attack.
Members of the review team did not question the motivations or dedication of the Marines who asked the troubling questions. But in the end, the review team concluded, the Marines were wrong.
Traumatic as the bombing was, it is perhaps not surprising that the recollections and conclusions of the Marines and soldiers that day, however honest, were not supported by subsequent research.
The findings of the military’s initial investigation, in February 2022, contradicted initial reports by senior US commanders that militants had fired into crowds of people at the airport trying to leave the Afghan capital and caused some of the casualties.
Accounts of what unfolded immediately after the attack—from the Pentagon and people on the ground—changed several times. Defense Department officials initially said nearby fighters from the Islamic State Khorasan began firing weapons. This turned out not to be true.
Some people near the scene said the Marines fired indiscriminately into the crowd, apparently believing they were being fired upon. And this, according to the data of the army’s Central Command, turned out not to be true, although investigators said that British and American forces had fired warning shots into the air.