During the Trump administration, the U.S. diplomatic footprint was reduced alongside the U.S. military footprint in accordance with recommendations from State Department and Defense Department officials. It was understood that, as U.S. troops left the country, the security situation would diminish and threaten the safety of the U.S. personnel and other American citizens who remained. Unfortunately, the committee’s investigation has revealed the same was not true during the Biden-Harris administration.

Instead, there was a dogmatic insistence to keep a large diplomatic footprint in Afghanistan across all levels of the Biden-Harris NSC and State Department. The committee’s investigation has uncovered that the size of the U.S. Embassy Kabul instead grew during the retrograde, even after the State Department implemented an ordered departure status. Testimony obtained by the committee points squarely at Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ambassador Ross Wilson being behind this expansion. Ambassador Wilson vehemently opposed the military’s advice to scale back the embassy along with the troops, and fought against the ordered departure status, playing shell games with staff and forcing embassy personnel to return after R&R leave. Secretary Blinken advised the president that Embassy Kabul should remain open irrespective of a military withdrawal. In the summer of 2021, even under the ordered departure, U.S. Embassy Kabul was one of the largest U.S. embassies in the world. According to General McKenzie, the administration’s insistence at keeping the embassy open and fully operational was the “fatal flaw that created what happened in August.”

That obstinance continued throughout the retrograde, even with the deteriorating security situation. According to then-Deputy Assistant Secretary and Assistant Director for High Threat Programs Greg Sherman, State Department leaders created “pressure to get to yes” so the embassy remained open despite the Taliban’s rapid gains in 2021. The committee’s investigation uncovered State Department officials went so far as to water down or even completely rewrite reports from Diplomatic Security and the Defense Department that warned of threats. In one instance, a Diplomatic Security officer was told to change his report assessing “provincial capitals failing was imminent and that the ANDSF would fail.” When he refused, a different, “watered-down timeline was eventually pushed out.”