Pentagon plans to declassify Afghanistan withdrawal documents

SPECIAL: A new Pentagon review of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will declassify material previously restricted in previous investigations and reopen a review of key decisions made during the Biden administration’s botched exit from the country in 2021.

According to Pentagon adviser Stu Scheller, the review will include meeting transcripts, internal documents and previous findings that officials say are overly classified.

“We plan to declassify all the documents we sourced in this investigation—all interview transcripts, all previous investigations by the Biden administration that were overclassified,” Scheller told Fox News Digital. “We will declassify them all so everyone can judge for themselves.”

Unlike previous reviews that cataloged failures but stopped short of establishing individual responsibility, this Pentagon effort examines a broader array of records and conducts extensive interviews with both senior military leaders and rank-and-file troops; That coverage, officials say, could reopen unanswered questions about who makes key decisions during the 2021 retreat.

“There will be accountability,” Scheller said.

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“We talked to a lot of people, all the major generals… and we also interviewed thousands of young soldiers,” Scheller told Fox News Digital about the report. “One of the things they said was that they didn’t feel their experiences were validated.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the previous Biden administration for the Abbey Gate tragedy that killed 13 U.S. troops, calling the 2021 withdrawal “a Biden disaster” and the “lowest point in the country’s history.” In May 2025, the administration ordered a new Pentagon review as part of what officials described as an accountability effort.

Scheller’s role in the review marks a striking reversal for a Marine officer who was previously punished after publicly criticizing the military’s withdrawal process.

Scheller, a lieutenant who later commanded an infantry training unit at Camp Lejeune, came to national attention in August 2021 after posting a viral video in uniform demanding accountability from senior leaders. He was relieved of command, imprisoned pre-trial, and later pleaded guilty at court-martial.

“I felt that there was no other voice to advocate that the emperor not wear clothes,” Scheller said. “I didn’t do this by accident.”

“God was with me through this. I got through it. Here I am effecting the changes I mentioned at the beginning.”

British and American security forces maintain order among evacuated Afghans at Abbey Gate in Kabul during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 25, 2021. (Marcus Lam/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)

Previous investigations by Congress, the Pentagon and federal monitors had found a number of failures in planning and executing the withdrawal, including gaps in evacuation efforts, intelligence assessments and high-level decision-making processes.

The report from the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee found that the State Department failed to develop a plan to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies despite growing warnings that Kabul might fall, and that evacuation efforts were delayed until the Taliban entered the capital.

The report also noted that U.S. officials followed up on credible threats of suicide attacks in the days before the Abbey Gate bombing (including intelligence pointing to a potential ISIS-K attack at the airport), but operations at the gate continued.

Those circumstances, including how the Marines’ actions in the field were recognized, are now being re-examined as part of the Pentagon’s review.

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Scheller said his team focused early on the unit at Abbey Gate, where many Marines were nominated for higher awards but were later downgraded during the approval process.

“They actually offered awards that were downgraded. So we didn’t create these awards out of thin air,” Scheller said. “All seven of these awards were presented and we had the official paperwork from my original manuscript.”

Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 23. (Sgt. Isaiah Campbell/U.S. Marine Corps)

The upgrades affected Marines in G Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines; This includes cases where commendation medals were upgraded to include valor devices and, in one example, a Bronze Star was upgraded to reflect combat heroism.

The bombing at Abbey Gate killed 13 US soldiers and more than 150 Afghans; This was the deadliest day for US forces in Afghanistan in years.

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The Biden administration has defended its stance on the withdrawal, arguing that the decision ended America’s longest war and prevented further US losses, and accused critics of politicizing the issue.

A spokesman for former President Joe Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.