a private company that operates without a dime of government money. and like many media organizations, we have been impacted by cord cutting. this summer we are asking for you to help support our unbiased political coverage with a donation. here is the good news. 100% of your contribution directly supports c-span operations. and best of all, an anonymous donor has pledged to match your donation dollar for dollar. you can find out more at c-span.org/donate. help ensure that c-span's unique, longform coverage of politics is here to stay. visit c-span.org/donate. thank you for watching and thanks so much for your support. ♪ >> we are live this evening here in the nation's capital, waiting for former president donald

trump, who is scuttled to take place in a fire -- scheduled to take place in a fireside chat with the group moms for liberty. they are running a few minutes behind. the former president expected to start his remarks at 8:30 eastern. author and former congressional investigator who wrote the following in a column this week and the washington examiner. "the republican-led congressional committee tasked with seeking answers and candidly for americans in the where fecund has instead let the generals who lost the war off the hook." how do you know that to be true? guest: because i was a senior investigator on the house foreign affairs committee that was tasked with investigating this. unfortunately, chairman mccall, the leader of the committee deliberately by design chose to absolve generals like the

chairman of the joint chiefs of staff mark milley and commander of central command frank mckenzie off the hook. i was in a meeting with chairman mccall, milley and mackenzie on the phone ricky told him chairman mccall did not believe they were responsible with what had gone wrong in afghanistan in 2021. previewed the questions they were going to be posed and even provided one of the generals with potential answers to wriggle out of the tough questions. that hearing with the two generals who -- while they had advised president biden not to do his go to zero order, they do

deserve some credit there. on the other hand, the generals did make their own mistakes in 2021 with milley misjudging the speed of the taliban's advances, getting the size of the afghan military police completely wrong, inflating it will beyond what was, and general mckenzie turning down an offer from the taliban on august 15 that potentially would have allowed the united states to secure kabul on her own rather than letting the tell event walk into the city in the united states having to run an evacuation at of justin airport with the taliban right outside the gates. chairman mccall made a decision to absolve the two generals of responsibility. let them off the hook. it was delivered the way the hearing was designed. it was deliberate what he told the generals. that was one of many things

wrong with the investigation that spurred me to come forward. i thought the abby gate gold star families need to know. the veterans of the war needed to know. the american people needed to know the investigation that should have been holding everyone accountable, from the president, vice president, state department, intelligence community and military, should have held them all accountable but he was choosing to let some of them sly. host: this was a republican-led foreign affairs committee. how long were you in investigator and did you bring the concerns up to chairman mccall before blowing the whistle in the form of resigning from the committee and writing the story in the washington examiner? guest: i was an investigative reporter for a number of years. i cover the withdrawal and disastrous withdrawal and evacuation from afghanistan. i wrote a book on the disastrous withdrawal from afghanistan and the committee staff reached out to me and asked if i would like

to join the committee last summer. i worked on the committee for a little over a year. i raised my concerns about the way the investigation was run with chairman mccall and repeatedly with senior staff, the chief investigator on the committee in-person, repeatedly in writing raising concerns about state department when this is refusing to bring in, the key military witnesses we were refusing to bring in, the documents we needed to be getting in work, the tough questions we needed to be posing to agencies, and then raising concerns about the way we were letting witnesses like -- off the hook and letting the two generals off the hook. host: what to you believe the purpose of letting milita --

the military off the hook served? guest: it is tough to say. it is hard for me to get inside someone's head. i can speak to what i saw and what i know. chairman mccall is friendly with chairman milley. he likes him personally. that may have been a factor. the real factor here i think was a desire to simplify the narrative. it is true that ultimate responsibility for what happened in 2021 lies with president biden, his inner circle, buys president harris, blinken, sullivan, austin. it is true the state department screwed up pretty much everything you could possibly could. the intelligence community failed but it's true the military, especially the commanders in generals failed as

well and did not see this coming. they did not properly prepare for it. they were not ready for the evacuation that needed to be conducted. they made mistakes. there was a deliberate decision made by chairman mccaul to semper fi the narrative such that simplify the narrative such that the president is at fault in the state department is at fault, which is true, but the military commanders were not. that piece of it is a significant omission that i think is dangerous and problematic for not getting answers and accountability. it's also dangerous if the military commanders and generals are not forced to learn the lessons they needed to learn from the war. host: in the wake of your resignation letter that you posted on x, this was from a spokeswoman for mccaul and republicans on the foreign relations committee. she said chairman mccaul pours his heart and soul into getting answers for our goldstar families in afghanistan

veterans. she points to the publication in september of the final report looking at the decision-making surrounding the u.s. pullout. what do you know about what will be in that document? what do you know about who is to blame here or whose fault this was? guest: chairman mccaul, his claim that he pours his heart and soul into getting answers for the abby gate goldstar families, he's made that sort of public promise. he made that promise in private as well. unfortunately, the rhetoric does not match the actions. he did not meet his promises to do everything in his power to get answers about the abby gate bombing, about the disastrous withdrawal, about the problems with the evacuation. he chose to let military commanders off the hook, refused to go after key officials that we should've interviewed, failed

to post tough questions about their own investigation and the investigation into the abby gate bombing that i think in many ways attempted to whitewash what had happened. as for the report, i hope by coming forward the way i have it applies public pressure on them to make the report as honest and hard-hitting as it should be. my guess is it probably will be more honest and hard-hitting that it would have been if i had not come forward. the problem with any report like this is that a report is often only to be as good as the investigation. this investigation by choice has giant gaps. because of that the report is going to have big gaps in it. host: we will have viewers ask questions in a second. in reference to the centcom

investigation, this is what you are referring to. the department of defense concluded when it comes to the abby gate attack where 13 service americans -- american servicemembers it was not preventable at a tactical level. from your investigations being on the committee and the reporting for your book you agree with that conclusion? guest: i don't agree. i think the abby gate bombing was potentially preventable and i can give some quick examples. part of the result of mckenzie turning down the taliban's offered to let the united states secure kabul meant the taliban took over the entire city and all the u.s. had was the little airport and a small secret cia base in kabul. that is all we had. the u.s. was relying on the taliban to provide security outside kabul airport.

that was obviously very troubling in a bad decision. there were multiple instances where the u.s. military asked the taliban to search isis locations in kabul during evacuation. the taliban multiple times refused to do so. i think that potentially could have changed the game. the taliban, the first thing they did and they took over the airbase around august 15, which we abandon a month and a half earlier, the first thing they did was they threw open the gates of the prison, freed thousands of taliban prisoners, dozens of al qaeda prisoners in over 1000 isis k prisoners. one of those went on to become the abbey gate bomber. centcom is now saying that they expanded their definition of nonpreventable to even saying it didn't matter whether the abbey gate bomber was behind bars or

running free. even if he had been locked up, never freed by the television, isis wouldk have used another bomber. i find that to be extremely fatalistic. i find that to be absurd. i think anyone with common sense would know if you can go back in time and stop the person to carried out an attack from being able to carry it out, that makes it less likely the attack is going to occur. that gives you a sense of how centcom is approaching this. they are not willing to expand that into some pretty absurd conclusions. host: monday was the third anniversary of the abbey gate bombing. 183 died. hundreds wounded. 13 american servicemembers, 11 marines, one army operations specialist and one navy corpsman. your calls with jerry dunleavy. he has written a book about it,

former investigator for the house foreign affairs committee working on the topic. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independenta, (202) 748-8002. a special live for afghan war veterans. (202) 748-8003. we have you for about the next half-hour today phone calls. this is david from bradenton, florida. independent. you are on with jerry dunleavy. caller: your guest is not talking about the trump administration negotiated with the taliban for over a year. they had a whole year to get this thing right. the problem is the biden administration, the mistake they made was following trump owes plan -- trump's plan. to secretary of defense. they should've never followed

that crummy plan. that is one of the problems. the only head 2700 troops left in afghanistan who were not even fighting. all the fighting was done by the afghanistan army. maybe we should have never left. there were no american casualties. so from the beginning the plan was a bad plan apparently. the biden administration should have never followed that plan. they should have started a new plan. it was done and signed by the president at the time. host: that is david in florida. the u.s. number of deaths during the afghanistan war, 2465 deaths, including the 13 at abbey gate.

wounded in action, 20,769. what would you say to the caller? guest: i'm glad you brought up the total casualty numbers. this was a 20-year where we are thousands of americans died. there were mistakes made. my task was largely focused on the end but there were 20 years of mistakes. the doha agreement was one of them, absolutely. a flawed agreement to be sure. i would never say or imply otherwise. the doha agreement was flawed. it had some conditions. the taliban met none of those conditions. when president biden took office, one of the things he did was got rid of a host of trump policies. he got rid of a host of trump officials. he could have just one of the doha agreement. he probably should have but he did not do that. he could have gotten rid of the argument -- architect of the doha agreement.

he kept him on. the vita administration praised his vital work. he remained the u.s.'s top negotiator with the taliban. biden should have torn up the agreement,. he could've chosen to enforce all the conditions of the agreement. he chose not to do so. he chose to carry out a conditional withdrawal, pulling all u.s. troops out which meant pulling contractors, logistics, advisors, air support. all that in rapid fashion within weeks and just a few months. it left the afghan military which had been built around all that support in an extreme the weakened state. already a precarious situation before that but now hung out to dry with the backbone of their support pulled out. predictable result of what president biden did and

culminated in a taliban offensive that began shortly after resident biden's border -- president biden's border and it resulted with them taking over the country in august. host: marlon, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you so much for being a whistleblower and having the courage to come on and say what you're saying. as a republican i want you to stick with your guns and stay without. president trump the other night said at one of these rallies his first day in office he wants the resignation of everyone that had anything to do with the disastrous withdrawal of afghanistan. he wants a resignation. general milley left already but maybe something can be done with

him. host: jerry dunleavy, i will let you pick up on that. guest: i appreciate the kind words. as for the label of courageous, the people who are courageous are the was service members who fought and often died in afghanistan for 20 years. i would say that my motivation here was to do the right thing. i felt compelled morally to speak out about this. that is kind of what my motivation was. in terms of president trump closing vow to hold military commanders accountable, chairman milley has retired and gone off to retirement. general mckenzie has gone off to his nice retirement. the committee i worked for, republican-let committee had the opportunity -- republican-led

committee have the opportunity to get answers out of them and make it clear the military commanders played a part in what went wrong in august of 2021. the committee failed to do that. host: general milley appeared before the committee. this is about two minutes from that hearing, the back-and-forth with chairman mccaul. i will let you fill in the gaps. [video] >> i want to thank you for your service and your courage for testifying before the committee. almost a year ago to the day. he was a sniper at abbey gate. he testified to us that he had the suicide bomber in his sights. was identified on the be on the lookout. he set the sniper photos and other related documents to his commanding officer for permission to engage the suicide

bomber. yet that warning was ignored. he never heard back. i and the chairman of the armed services committee after the testimony sent a letter to the department of defense requesting that these documents and sniper photos be delivered to the congress, produced to the congress by this document, this letter of request. to date that has been ignored. the department of defense has refused. we have also requested the testimonies of general chris donahue and admiral peter baisley who were the commander officers on the ground during the abbey gate disaster. to both of you, the general milley, do you think these documents should be turned over to the united states congress? do you think both general donahue and admiral vaisley

should testify before congress? >> i believe transparency. i believe you are entitled within the bonds of classification, absolutely. whatever documents are out there should be turned over to the opry jurisdiction and oversight. whatever witnesses are needed to establish truth and transparency, absolutely. that is why am here. host: retired general milley and chairman mccaul. explain what came from that meeting. to the committee ever get those documents? guest: pc chairman mccaul -- you can see chairman mccaul praising general milley's courage for appearing in front of congress. i don't think is anything courageous about a general appearing before congress. that is their duty and responsibility to the american people. it doesn't take courage to

testify when you're supposed to. that sort of praise is the sort of thing i found odd. general milley, general mckenzie played their part in why things went wrong in august of 2021. the committee should have been attempting to hold them accountable, not praising them in public and not telling them they weren't responsible for women wrong in private. in terms of some of the things that were raised there, the committee never seriously attempted to bring in general donahue, general sullivan, we're admiral peter vaisley, the top military commanders on the ground. some of them in the final days of the retrograde and evacuation, some during dust during the evacuation itself. these are the gentleman who would be able to speak to the

u.s.'s interaction with the taliban during the evacuation, the threat posed by isis k. they could answer by the taliban was refusing to assist in as states properly with going after isis k during the evacuation. they could answer why the united states did not carry out any airstrikes against isis k until after the abbey gate bombing rather than before it. the committee never made serious efforts to bring other military commanders in for transcribed interviews. they never attempted to do it. there was often good talk in public about what the committee was going to be doing but there was little follow-up in private. that was one of my big frustrations. the unwillingness of the committee to follow through on the things it was vowing in public. host: marilyn, this is steve on

the line for democrats. you are on with jerry dunleavy. caller: we always promote to the level of our confidence. we have the ashcroft report from the senate, the legislative branch going on for years. he always referred to it as the groundhog's day because it was dumping money into an endless war. at the end they said it was costing us $50,000 a day. that seems cheap relative to you ukraine. that's our new 20-your afghan war -- 20-your afghanistan war. the parade we saw, the parade that c-span showed on the taliban and everybody driving around in our military equipment says everything about that. what a shame to give up a base. a landlocked space. we were in the backyard of russia and in the backyard of china. right there, right where we

needed to be right now in the backyard of china and russia. unfortunately, the senate -- it always comes back to the senate. they always talk about the senate. that is where all the incompetence lies, right in the senate. that is where all the hearings from biden to -- nothing ever seems to come of the hearings that we have and we are trying to hold people accountable in our federal government. host: jerry dunleavy, what we have been talking about is in the house. was there senate involvement? guest: there was limited involvement. the democrats currently control the senate. the democratic party is not particularly interested in doing oversight over the biden-harris, you know, disastrous withdrawal from afghanistan. the really has not been much oversight. he mentioned this important base

he was referring to. the united states did abandon bagram in 2021. a very bad decision. they would have been a safer place to do and evacuation from. bagram would have allowed the u.s. to assist the alcan military air force, continue to carry out airstrikes. if the was held on to bagram there is little chance that you have seen the taliban be able to advance to kabul the way it did in august of 2021. as he referred to, bagram was a strategic case regionally. they gave us the ability to keep an eye on pakistan and china. president biden did give that up in july of 2021. that was a strategic mistake. as i mentioned, it was the base that had the present added where

-- at it where the abbey gate bomber was behind bars until freed by the taliban. host: to california. rory in rancho santa margarita. caller: good morning. ok. the afghanistan withdrawal. don't ever have artificial lines or timetables. you should get the civilians out before you do the military. take out your equipment, or if you can't, destroy it. don't let the taliban uses to kill everybody else. the second part of this is biden. he's been found in confidence the local military leaders are becoming a little fiefdom of their own. they are worried that when harris gets defeated on november 5 and trump wins, the iranians will drop an atomic bomb on israel. only israel has an atomic bomb, drop it on iran -- and may drop

it on iran. that is the best way i can say it. host: what is the question? do you have a question, rory? caller: the local commanders are going to take charge. if this is happening, what is the present administration going to do? are they just going to twiddle their thumbs customer host: jerry dunleavy. guest: he mentioned the idea of not doing things on a timetable and bringing civilians out before you bring the military out. president biden on august 14, 2021, announced his go to zero order. he set the deadline for that full withdrawal, the end of the u.s. presence in afghanistan for the 20th anniversary of 9/11. that was extremely the following. i could say that based on the

afghan war veterans i talked to another's it was also extremity disheartening to pick the 20 anniversary of 9/11 for his withdrawal date -- 20th anniversary of 9/11. from what the committee investigation was able to find, it seems like that was just a date that president divide himself really wanted. he wanted to make his mark on the war in afghanistan by picking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 as a deadline. with the result of that was was that the television, the group that had -- taliban, that taliban which continues to protect al qaeda today, the group that carried out the 9/11 attacks, that taliban is now back in charge of afghanistan on the 20th anniversary. he also brought up the importance of bringing out civilians before the military. absolutely. the u.s. military was essentially gone from afghanistan outside of a small

force in kabul. the retrograde was completed between april and pretty much early july of 2021. when all the american citizens were still in afghanistan, tens of thousands of -- probably many tens of thousands of afghan allies were still in afghanistan. when the telemann swept through the country -- taliban swept to the country in a couple of months the evacuation conducted, u.s. forces had to be poured back in. now all the u.s. had a foothold on was that small airport. that meant to get out americans often had to make their way through taliban lines. the taliban would often turn americans away. there are instances of the taliban speeding up americans. they would beat up and kill afghans trying to escape. likely including many of our afghan allies.

the more i have learned about this and the more i have talked to people who were on the ground and were there, it does seem like the taliban executing afghans trying to escape happened in larger numbers than was originally admitted to. that was the result of the decisions that were made by president biden and his inner circle in april of 2021. host: the book which you have talked about in this program, "couple -- kabul: the untold story." you mentioned talking to veterans -- lest then 10 minute left. -- less than 10 minutes left. i want to talk about arlington national cemetery with the trump campaign staffer. what is your take on what we have heard from what happened there? guest: i will