Overnight Defense: Top general acknowledges intel missed speed of Afghan collapse

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Overnight Defense. I’m Rebecca Kheel, and here’s your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. CLICK HERE to subscribe to the newsletter.

THE TOPLINE: Since Kabul collapsed Sunday, lawmakers, current and former officials, experts and people who like to pretend they’re experts on Twitter have debated whether there was an intelligence failure. 

On Wednesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley made clear that while the intelligence showed a range of possibilities – including a Taliban takeover and “rapid” collapse of Afghan forces – it missed just how quickly the collapse could happen.

“There was nothing that I or any other of us saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,” Milley told reporters at the Pentagon.

Wide range: Among the possible outcomes Milley said the intelligence showed was a civil war, a negotiated settlement or an “outright Taliban takeover following a rapid collapse of the Afghan Security Forces and the government.” 

Time estimates for such a collapse ranged from weeks to months to years after U.S. forces withdrew, he added.

“I stood behind this podium and said that the Afghan security forces had the capacity, and by that I mean they had the training, the size, the capability to defend their country. This comes down to an issue of will and leadership. I did not nor did anyone else see a collapse of an army that size in 11 days,” Milley said.

Dive deeper: The Hill’s Morgan Chalfant and Rebecca Beitsch also took a look Wednesday at how the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan has put a spotlight on the intelligence community’s role in the largest foreign policy crisis of Joe Biden’s presidency. 

The collapse has been embarrassing to the White House, particularly since Biden on July 8 told the country that it would not see scenes echoing the U.S. retreat from Saigon in 1975.

That’s likely to mean tough questions internally for intelligence agencies. 

“He wouldn’t have said that unless the intelligence people were telling him that was extremely unlikely,” said Dennis Ross, former special assistant to then-President Obama. 

Some former officials and experts have defended the intelligence community, noting that officials warned of the potential for a Taliban takeover even if the timeline was not accurate. 

They say the blame should fall on policy decisions made by Biden and top officials. 

“We should not be blaming it on intelligence at all,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “I think it’s a pure policy mistake.”

COULD THE MISSION BE EXTENDED?

Amid the messy evacuations from Afghanistan, administration officials have repeatedly faced questions about whether they would stick to Biden’s Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline even if there are still Americans in the country.

On Wednesday, Biden finally made clear he will get all Americans who want to leave out, even if that means extending his deadline.

“If there’s American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out,” Biden told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview.

The president vowed that the government will do “everything in our power to get all Americans out and our allies out,” but acknowledged doing so by the end of the month would require significantly increasing the number of individuals evacuated on flights each day. 

“Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out is out?” Stephanopoulos asked. 

“Yes,” Biden responded.

Evacuation troubles continue: The interview’s release comes as reports continue to emerge of both Afghans and Americans having trouble making their way through Taliban checkpoints to get to the Kabul airport, despite administration assurances that the Taliban have agreed to allow evacuations proceed undisturbed.

On Wednesday, a security alert from the U.S. embassy warned that the “United States government cannot ensure safe passage to the Hamid Karzai International Airport.”

The Pentagon also made clear that it does not have enough troops in Afghanistan to go and pick up people to bring them to the airport. 

“We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a Pentagon briefing, defending the military’s decision to focus on securing the airport.

“We’re going to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we’re going to get everyone that we can possibly evacuate evacuated. And I’ll do that as long as we possibly can until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.”

CONGRESS GEARS UP FOR OVERSIGHT

The Biden administration is about to face a grilling from high-ranking Democrats in both the House and Senate over the bungled U.S. exit from Afghanistan.

Congress could kick off its efforts to question Biden’s team as soon as next week, when the House will briefly return from its weeks-long summer recess for a few days before heading back out of town until late September.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told KPIX, a San Francisco TV station, that the House Foreign Affairs Committee would hold a hearing next week with “the highest level officials in the Biden administration.”

“That will take place early next week, at least it will begin then,” Pelosi said. 

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has not publicly announced a timeline for when he might hold the first hearing, or suggested publicly that he’s looking at next week. But he said he had invited Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to testify.

What about HASC?: In addition to Meeks, the House Armed Services Committee is also “in the process of scheduling closed briefings for Members to receive most current information,” Monica Matoush, a spokesperson for the panel, told The Hill in an email Wednesday. 

Matoush added that Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) — who she said supports the “decisions made” and “rationale” from Biden — is “in contact with WH and DoD officials” and is urging administration officials “to do everything in their power to safely evacuate” U.S. personnel, Afghan nationals who aided the U.S. military and their family members as well as Afghans who could be targeted by the Taliban.

In the Senate: In addition to the two House panels, two Senate committee chairmen have said they will hold hearings into the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban and how the Biden administration miscalculated how quickly the Afghan government and military would fall.

Neither Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) nor Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) have scheduled the hearings or indicated who they would invite to testify. The Senate is scheduled to be out of town until mid-September.

Reed, in a statement, said he would hold hearings “at the appropriate time” on “what went wrong in Afghanistan and lessons learned to avoid repeating those mistakes.” 

Meanwhile, Menendez, who also had a foreign policy independent streak during the Obama administration, said his committee will hold a hearing on both the Trump administration’s “flawed negotiations” and the Biden administration’s “flawed execution” of the withdrawal.

A third Senate chairman, Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), said he would work with other committees to ask “tough but necessary questions.”

ON TAP FOR TOMORROW 

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) will speak about rescuing Afghan partners at Center for a New American Security event at 2:30 p.m. https://bit.ly/3swsDYl

ICYMI

— The Hill: GOP senator calls for Biden’s defense, foreign policy team to resign

— The Hill: Trump criticizes evacuation of Afghans, calls for prioritization of Americans

— The Hill: Biden discusses Afghanistan withdrawal with Merkel

— The Hill: ACLU: Pentagon still using Trump policy blocking service members’ path to citizenship

— The Hill: VA crisis hotline sees uptick in calls after Kabul collapse

— The Hill: Democrat unveils bill to redirect Pentagon spending toward global vaccination efforts

— The Hill: Opinion: Don’t blame veterans for Afghanistan withdrawal, and don’t forget about them

— The Hill: Opinion: After Afghanistan, where next? Biden must show resoluteness

— Associated Press: SD Guard chief says donation didn’t affect deployment plans

— Reuters: Three dead after anti-Taliban protests in Jalalabad-witnesses

— Military Times: COVID-19 suspected in death of Guardsman deployed at border