Pentagon claims to have found ‘hidden’ files on final days of the Afghanistan war

Pentagon officials on Wednesday claimed they have uncovered classified documents that were "hidden away in safes where they would not be found" that shed new light on the chaotic end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan five years ago — but declined to offer public details of the revelations.

The claim comes hours before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to participate in a Pentagon ceremony to upgrade the valor awards for service members who served at the Kabul International Airport during the final days of the conflict.

The end of the war — and the final days of the U.S. occupation, when 13 American service members were killed guarding the airport — have been a focal point of Republican criticism of former President Joe Biden's foreign policy decisions while in office.

GOP lawmakers have accused Biden of too abruptly ending military operations in Afghanistan, endangering American troops and handing over control of the country to the Taliban. Democratic supporters argue Biden's move brought to an end two decades of open-ended military missions that did little to improve national security.

The White House has labeled the final days of the war "one of the most shameful and heartbreaking moments in our nation's collective memory." Pentagon leaders established a new Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel to examine the decisions leading up to the American exit from Kabul and determine who deserves blame for the U.S. deaths there.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, chair of the panel, in April announced plans to upgrade valor awards given to troops serving at the airport in August 2021 to "more accurately reflect the extreme risk" the troops faced, claiming that the Biden administration had "inappropriately downgraded" earlier honors.

Parnell on Wednesday released a video message on social media claiming the ongoing review has uncovered more improprieties by the previous administration, although he did not provide any details.

"The deeper we look, the more there is to look at," he said in the message. "We are finding things that we did not expect.".

He added that his team had "recovered highly relevant classified documents, material that should have been disclosed, stashed, and hidden away in safes where they would not be found. And after the team reviewed these documents, it became clear why someone tried to hide them."

Parnell said that troops who served in Afghanistan "are owed the full picture of how and why those decisions were made, and we're going to give it to them." He did not provide any specifics on a timeline for clearer details on the new findings.

Democratic lawmakers have questioned the intentions of the reviews and criticized the slant of Republican-led hearings on Capitol Hill blaming the 20-year war largely on Democratic presidents.

House Republicans in recent years have accused Biden administration officials of ignoring intelligence reports in the days before the fatal terrorist bombing at the airport, a charge that military officials have rebuffed.