A U.S. government watchdog on Friday accused the State Department and Pentagon of suppressing information that lawmakers and the public need to understand the collapse of Afghanistan's former government and military and the chaotic U.S. troop pullout.
John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), spoke out on Friday after it emerged that many of the routine documents had now been marked as classified.
'The full picture of what happened in August - and all the warning signs that could have predicted the outcome - will only be revealed if the information that the departments of Defense and State have already restricted from public release is made available,' said Sopko.
He published on Friday his latest report into the spending in Afghanistan, as requested by Congress who asked for an explanation of what went wrong.
Sopko said that it was time for transparency since the government of President Ashraf Ghani had collapsed.
'There is a lot of information that was classified or withheld from the American people over the years, particularly since 2015, to protect the Afghan government from embarrassment,' Sopko told NPR.
'And there is no Ghani government. There is no Afghan government anymore. So we think that information should be immediately released to SIGAR and to the American people and Congress in an unclassified format.'
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It is the shame and suffering of our society that such writings as "Brave New World, 1984, Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm" are no longer "Required Reading" in our High Schools. Once forgotten it must be relearned. When the Catholic Church destroyed the Libraries of Alexandria, the Western World suffered through its Dark Ages.
Lynn Bryant DeSpain
They are so evil
Of course they will try to cover it up - it's what they do! I keep saying the de"mock"rats can't get any lower, but keep being proven wrong!