The Pentagon is preparing to declassify a trove of previously restricted documents from Biden administration investigations into the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, reopening scrutiny of the decisions that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members at Abbey Gate.
Pentagon adviser Stu Scheller, who leads the new review, told Fox News Digital that all source documents will be made public when the report is released.
“We plan to declassify all of the documents that we source in this investigation — all the interview transcripts, all the previous investigations that the Biden administration did that have been overclassified,” Scheller said. “We’re going to declassify all of it so that everyone can make assessments for themselves.”
The review is the most expansive examination of the withdrawal to date. Unlike prior investigations that cataloged failures but stopped short of identifying who specifically made the decisions that led to the chaos, this effort is conducting interviews with both senior military leaders and rank-and-file service members.
“We’ve talked to many people, all the key generals… and we also interviewed thousands of young service members,” Scheller said. “One of the things they said was that they didn’t feel like their experiences were validated.”
“There will be accountability,” he added.
Scheller’s appointment to lead the review is itself remarkable. He was the Marine lieutenant who posted a viral video in uniform in August 2021 demanding accountability from senior leaders over the withdrawal’s failures. He was relieved of command, placed in pretrial confinement, and later pleaded guilty at a court-martial.
“I just felt like there wasn’t another voice that was going to advocate for the emperor’s not wearing clothes,” Scheller said. “I didn’t do it haphazardly.”
“God was with me on that one. I got through it. Here I am influencing the changes I originally pointed out.”
The review’s early focus has been on Marines stationed at Abbey Gate, where at least seven service members were nominated for higher valor awards that were later downgraded under the Biden administration. Scheller’s team found the original paperwork for all seven nominations.
“They had actually submitted awards that were downgraded. So we didn’t create these awards out of nothing,” Scheller said. “All seven of these awards were submitted and we had the formal paperwork from the original write-up.”
The upgrades now include Marines from Company G, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. In at least one case, a Bronze Star was upgraded to recognize combat heroism.
The August 26, 2021 bombing at Abbey Gate killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghans. It was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in years.
A Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee investigation previously found the State Department had no evacuation plan despite repeated intelligence warnings that Kabul could fall. That same investigation found U.S. officials had credible threat intelligence pointing to a potential ISIS-K attack at the airport in the days before the bombing, yet gate operations continued unchanged.
