Crandall, while recognized for his heroism, will be best remembered for the “warmth of his wit, the depth of his humility and the fierce loyalty he gave to the people and communities he loved,” according to a Congressional Medal of Honor Society release.

Born in February 1933, Olympia, Washington, the All-American athlete had dreams of being drafted by the New York Yankees and earned a scholarship to the University of Washington. That dream was deferred, however, when Crandall was drafted by the U.S. Army in 1953.

Crandall would subsequently receive the nation’s highest honor for valor during the Nov. 14, 1965, Battle of Ia Drang — the first major clash of the Vietnam War, made famous by the book We Were Soldiers Once … and Young: Ia Drang–The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam and the subsequent movie of the same name.

On that day, Crandall led 16 helicopters carrying soldiers into Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, but as the fighting intensified, orders came down for follow-on aircraft to abort their mission, meaning all medevac assistance had been cut off to the men of the 1/7 Cav.

“The medevac pilots were all great pilots, but they weren’t allowed to land on a landing zone until it was ‘green’ for a period of five minutes,” meaning it wasn’t being relentlessly attacked, Crandall later recalled.

Crandall recognized that the men he had shuttled into Ia Drang were trapped, in desperate need of ammunition and, for some, medical evacuation.

Contacted on the radio by Col. Ramon Antonio “Tony” Nadal, Crandall recalled that Nadal was yelling, “I got to have — get my wounded out of here. I’ve got 12 guys that are — and they’re collected, and I have a hole where a helicopter can get in, but they won’t come.”

In response, Crandall refueled, kicked off his door gunner and weaponry to lighten his load.

“If you have infantry on the ground, you can’t shoot up their backside,” Crandall said, calling the M60 guns “worthless.”

Ignoring the heavy enemy fire, Crandall, alongside his friend Maj. Ed Freeman, voluntarily flew 22 missions into the valley to deliver ammunition and evacuate some 70 wounded soldiers.

“While medical evacuation was not his mission,” reads his Medal of Honor citation, “he immediately sought volunteers and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, led the two aircraft to Landing Zone X-Ray. Despite the fact that the landing zone was still under relentless enemy fire, Major Crandall landed and proceeded to supervise the loading of seriously wounded soldiers aboard the aircraft.

“Major Crandall’s voluntary decision to land under the most extreme fire instilled in the other pilots the will and spirit to continue to land their own aircraft, and in the ground forces the realization that they would be resupplied and that friendly wounded would be promptly evacuated,” the citation continues. “This greatly enhanced morale and the will to fight at a critical time.”

Crandall would ultimately fly nearly 1,000 combat missions and was further commended for rescuing 12 wounded soldiers during a dense jungle operation in January 1966, according to the Department of Defense.

In 1968, four months into his second tour in Vietnam flying Huey gunships in support of the 1st Cavalry Division, Crandall’s helicopter crashed, breaking the pilot’s back among other severe injuries that left him hospitalized for five months.

The broken back didn’t deter Crandall from flying, but a subsequent stroke in the early 1970s ended his flying career. He retired from the Army in 1977.

Crandall, who initially received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions at Ia Drang, was awarded the Medal of Honor on Feb. 26, 2007, by President George W. Bush.

With Crandall’s passing there are now only 63 living Medal of Honor recipients.

Staff Sgt. Johnny “Joey” Jones, a Fox News contributor, reenlisted in the Corps on Wednesday in a ceremony held by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, according to the Department of Defense.

“A lot of work went into saying, ‘Hey, this is the kind of American we want back in uniform,’” Hegseth said in the ceremony. “Not just because of what he did and what he’s done in uniform but because of how he represents the fighting men and women of our country.”

Jones enlisted in 2005 as a radio technician before deploying to Iraq in 2007 as a machine gunner, per a Pentagon release. He then requested to change his MOS to Explosive Ordnance Disposal and later deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, according to the Sentinels of Freedom, a veterans scholarship and support program that Jones joined in 2012.

During his time in Afghanistan, Jones disabled over 85 improvised explosive devices. In August 2010, however, Jones stepped on an IED, resulting in the loss of both legs above the knee.

Starting in 2019, Jones became a Fox contributor “wingman” for Hegseth and spoke on military analysis and veterans’ services.

“How Joey talks about [service] on television [is] so that the American people understand it and connect to it in a visceral way,” Hegseth said at the ceremony. “You could talk about it academically, you could talk about it from a detached perspective or you can talk about having lived it the way he has.”

In his remarks at the ceremony, Hegseth highlighted last year’s Marine Corps record recruiting numbers, saying he hopes Jones’ reenlistment motivates younger Americans to join the military.

Jones said during the ceremony that he had more to give after medically retiring 14 years ago. He called it a “debt,” highlighting that he was able to be on TV while other service members continued to give to the country, “shy of their life and maybe a couple legs,” he said.

“The last job I had in uniform, my job was to get better. It was to heal. It’s a very selfish thing,” Jones said. “The Marine Corps paid me to get better, and then I retired, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it was unfinished business.”

Jones said he strives to change the perspective that society has of the men and women who got injured in combat and saw the worst of war. He said there’s more to give — if not through reenlisting, then by serving the community.

He remembers former Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos telling him, “Once a Marine, always a Marine,” not knowing that he would “cash that check” almost 20 years later.

“If there’s an opportunity for me to serve, there’s no reason why a no-legged 40-year-old staff sergeant [should not] be able to put the uniform on, other than these men believed it,” Jones said. “The goal here is to open that door for anyone else that has something left to give.”

That’s a core contention of the Afghanistan War Commission, a congressionally created bipartisan entity tasked with making a useful accounting of America’s sprawling “Forever War.” The commission is now about halfway through its two-year mandate and expects to publish an interim report at its official midpoint in August.

On June 23 the commission held a multipanel hearing on what for many is a defining point of the war: the surge in which the U.S. aggressively recommitted to the faltering conflict and began to implement the counterinsurgency efforts that would stagger on for more than a decade.

Ahead of that hearing, the two co-chairs of the commission, Shamila Chaudhary and Colin Jackson, sat down with military veterans who’d served in the surge period to understand the period from their perspective.

Chaudhary, who worked at the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council and focused on Pakistan and Afghanistan during the surge period, said talking with these veterans showed “just where strategy and policy met reality.”

She cited, in particular, an exchange with a veteran who’d been tasked with driving trucks over the Pakistan border into Afghanistan to deliver materiel and supplies to troops.

“I told him, ‘I have thought about someone like you this whole time,’ because the policy discussions we had in Washington were all about, when the routes closed, what happens to our folks in the field,” Chaudhary said in an interview with Military Times. “And here was this person who was experiencing it for many months at a time, and so it brought forth this reality that I think needs to be reflected in the report. And having these sessions with them really allows us to get that ground truth.”

The commission has involved veterans from the start, launching a portal where vets could share their stories and questions they wanted answered. (It has since moved to a new web page.)

Some of the commission’s findings, from veterans and experts, align with conclusions previously drawn: in particular, that the length and frequency of deployments to Afghanistan were detrimental to troop morale and stability as well as the continuity of the war itself.

“We talked to a three-star general in one meeting who said, ‘All my father wants to know is why I had to go there nine times,” Jackson, an Afghanistan veteran himself and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, said.

Other findings, the commission chairs said, have concerned security force assistance and how the U.S. went about it, how successful the Pentagon’s model of working with Afghan troops was, whether serious security force assistance efforts were begun early enough and whether another framework would have produced better results.

Amid reflections on the pressure from Washington to turn a meaningful corner of the war, and the efforts of troops and commanders on the ground confronting the operational realities and sometimes absurdities of trying to establish elements of Western-style democracy in Afghanistan, one common refrain emerges: “We were just trying to do the best we could,” Chaudhary said.

“So that is a real kind of unifying theme, I would argue, because it actually is very different than the infighting that we saw during the course of the war, where you saw a lot of blame going to one part of the U.S. government versus others. Now it’s becoming much more of a shared kind of experience, of, we were all trying to figure it out,” she said. “We haven’t reached a verdict yet on that, but we are seeing that there’s a lot of overlap in the thinking of all the different government entities out there. Like, being far too ambitious in a place that required less.”

To date, the commission has conducted 114 interviews and held multiple public hearings and private sessions. The length of the final report, due in August 2026, will be similar to the 9/11 Commission report, which was nearly 600 pages, Chaudhary said.

The most significant obstacle to the project remains its scope. Unlike the recently announced Defense Department review of Afghanistan and the previous House Foreign Affairs Committee investigation — both intended to focus narrowly on assigning blame for the disastrous and costly pullout in 2021 — the Afghanistan War Commission’s investigation seeks to take in Afghanistan from all sides, engaging agencies across government and international partners and highlighting positive learning and successes as well as failures.

To help organize the project, the chairs said, they’re dividing the war into about eight significant eras, including, for example, the initial invasion and the surge.

The commission, Jackson said, remains committed to producing a report that will be accessible not only to planners and strategists in Washington but also to the veterans who served in Afghanistan over the decades. How they’ll do that is still a work in progress.

“We’ve got a balancing act here. It can’t be 100% a Bob Woodward — Obama’s Wars — level of analysis, Washington on Washington, but it also can’t be 100% Restrepo,” Jackson said, referencing a gritty 2010 war documentary. “And so the question is, what’s the right balance to convey an understanding of decisions, their impact and their shortcomings? And that’s, I think, among the more difficult challenges we face in producing a final report.”

The partisan review lays out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed America’s fundamentalist Taliban enemy to sweep through and conquer all of the country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on Aug. 30, 2021. The chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists and others at risk from the Taliban.

But House Republicans’ report breaks little new ground as the withdrawal has been exhaustively litigated through several independent reviews. Previous investigations and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Biden and Trump share the heaviest blame.

Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who led the investigation as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the GOP review reveals that the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”

“At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security,” he said in a statement.

McCaul earlier in the day denied that the timing of the report’s release ahead of the presidential election was political, or that Republicans ignored Trump’s mistakes in the U.S. withdrawal.

A White House spokesperson, Sharon Yang, said the Republican report was based on “cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and preexisting biases.”

“Because of the bad deal former President Trump cut with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan by May of 2021, President Biden inherited an untenable position,” either ramp up the U.S. war against a strengthened Taliban, or end it, Yang said in a statement.

House Democrats in a statement said the report by their Republican colleagues ignored facts about Trump’s role.

The more than 18-month investigation by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee zeroed in on the months leading up to the removal of U.S. troops, saying that Biden and his administration undermined high-ranking officials and ignored warnings as the Taliban seized key cities far faster than most U.S. officials had expected or prepared for.

“I called their advance ‘the Red Blob,’” retired Col. Seth Krummrich said of the Taliban, telling the committee that at the special operations’ central command where he was chief of staff, ”we tracked the Taliban advance daily, looking like a red blob gobbling up terrain.”

“I don’t think we ever thought — you know, nobody ever talked about, ‘Well, what’s going to happen when the Taliban come over the wall?’” Carol Perez, the State Department’s acting undersecretary for management at the time of the withdrawal, said of what House Republicans said was minimal State Department planning before abandoning the embassy in mid-August 2021 when the Taliban swept into Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

The withdrawal ended a nearly two-decade occupation by U.S. and allied forces begun to rout out the al-Qaida militants responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Taliban had allowed al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, to shelter in Afghanistan. Committee staffers noted reports since the U.S. withdrawal of the group rebuilding in Afghanistan, such as a U.N. report of up to eight al-Qaida training camps there.

The Taliban overthrew an Afghan government and military that the U.S. had spent nearly 20 years and trillions of dollars building in hopes of keeping the country from again becoming a base for anti-Western extremists.

A 2023 report by the U.S. government watchdog for the U.S. in Afghanistan singles out Trump’s February 2020 deal with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw all American forces and military contractors by the spring of the next year, and both Trump’s and Biden’s determination to keep pulling out U.S. forces despite the Taliban breaking key commitments in the withdrawal deal.

House Republicans’ more than 350-page document is the product of hours of testimony — including with retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs chairman, and retired Marine Corps. Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of U.S. Central Command, and others who were senior officials at the time — seven public hearings and round-tables, as well as more than 20,000 pages of State Department documents reviewed by the committees.

With Biden no longer running for reelection, Trump and his GOP allies have tried to elevate the withdrawal as a campaign issue against Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential race.

The report by House Republican cites Harris’ overall responsibility as an adviser to Biden, but doesn’t point to specific counsel or action by Harris that contributed to the many failures.

Some highlights of the report:

Decision to withdraw

Republicans point to testimony and records that claim the Biden administration’s reliance on input from military and civilian leaders on the ground in Afghanistan in the months before the withdrawal was “severely limited,” with most of the decision-making taking place by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan without consultation with key stakeholders.

Yang, the White House spokesperson, denied that, saying the administration had sought input from officials in Kabul and others across the U.S. government.

The report says Biden proceeded with the withdrawal even though the Taliban was failing to keep some of its agreements under the deal, including breaking its promise to enter talks with the then-U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Former State Department spokesperson Ned Price testified to the committee that adherence to the Doha Agreement was “immaterial” to Biden’s decision to withdraw, according to the report.

Earlier reviews have said Trump also carried out his early steps of the withdrawal deal, cutting the U.S. troop presence from about 13,000 to an eventual 2,500 despite early Taliban noncompliance with some parts of the deal, and despite the Taliban escalating attacks on Afghan forces.

The House report faults a longtime U.S. diplomat for Afghanistan, former Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, not Trump, for Trump administration actions in its negotiations with the Taliban. The new report says that Trump was following recommendations of American military leaders in making sharp cuts in U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan after the signing.

‘We were still in planning’ when Kabul fell

The report also goes into the vulnerability of U.S. embassy staff in Kabul as the Biden administration planned its exit. Republicans claim there was a “dogmatic insistence” by the Biden administration to maintain a large diplomatic footprint despite concerns about the lack of security afforded to personnel once U.S. forces left.

McKenzie, who was one of the two U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation, told lawmakers that the administration’s insistence at keeping the embassy open and fully operational was the “fatal flaw that created what happened in August,” according to the report.

The committee report claims that State Department officials went as far as watering down or “even completely rewriting reports” from heads of diplomatic security and the Department of Defense that had warned of the threats to U.S. personnel as the withdrawal date got closer.

“We were still in planning” when Kabul fell, Perez, the senior U.S. diplomat, testified to the committee.

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

Sharp had deployed to Hamid Karzai International Airport with the 183rd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, a unit belonging to the 172nd Airlift Wing of the Mississippi Air National Guard. He was there to assist with the U.S. withdrawal after decades of conflict, a pullout that was becoming more unhinged and chaotic by the hour.

As an aeromedical evacuation officer, Sharp arrived expecting to treat sprains, heat exhaustion or even a local’s pregnancy as desperate Afghans thronged the airport where U.S. troops were struggling to maintain order.

Sharp soon felt the tension hanging in the air.

Eight days later, on Aug. 26, an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated at the airport’s Abbey Gate, killing 11 Marines, a soldier and a Navy corpsman, along with roughly 170 Afghans.

“Mass cal’ rang out over the intercom,” Sharp told Military Times, using a shorthand for “mass casualty.”

Sharp’s mission changed in a flash. He leapt into action, helping to evacuate 38 badly injured civilians and fellow service members.

For his actions during the chaotic evacuation, Sharp received the Bronze Star.

“His remarkable performance and selfless commitment to his fellow comrades-in-arms and the local populace saved countless lives,” according to the award citation, which was presented to Sharp this month.

Flight nurses like Sharp do not typically provide medical care on the ground. When the explosion rang out, he left the safety of his medical facility to treat and triage casualties.

Sharp’s efforts saved the lives of multiple Marines, including one whose carotid artery was severed after being shot in the face and neck, according to the citation.

Sharp provided medical attention while exposing himself to the threat of additional attacks as well, the citation said.

At the airport medical facility, Sharp witnessed the 13 deceased troops come through the door. He then worked around the clock to treat others, hoping to prevent further carnage.

The unity and selflessness of his medical comrades that day have stayed with Sharp, but so has the jarring trauma of Abbey Gate.

Coming home proved difficult. Sharp said he felt irrevocably changed. Large crowds were suddenly intolerable. Each day was spent living on a short fuse.

It wasn’t just the chaos and lives lost, he said, but fearing for his own life as well.

“What bothered me the most was the emotional part of [thinking] this could be the end,” Sharp said.

The threat level was so high on the day of the Abbey Gate bombing that at one point Sharp’s superior walked by and told everyone, “If you’re not right with the lord, you need to get right,” he recalled.

In those moments, Sharp wondered how his family would be able to deal with his passing. How would his wife, kids and grandkids handle life without him?

Such thoughts had to be set aside at times, like when he treated an Afghan boy he said must have been his grandson’s age.

“I have a grandson that’s four years old now and when that baby came up it reminded me so much of my grandson,” he said. “Just the haircut and the size.”

Sharp and his team performed CPR on the child, resuscitated him and put him on a ventilator. The boy was evacuated but later died of a brain bleed, Sharp said.

It’s an image that still haunts him. Service members make decisions to put themselves in harm’s way, he said, but the child did not have a choice. The boy’s parents were desperately trying to get him to a country where he could live a better life. In that process, the child lost his life.

The events surrounding the attack feel like yesterday for Sharp. It’s been three years, but he says he is only just now returning to some semblance of normality.

There was no way to train for that experience, he said. It was just something those on the ground had to find a way to deal with.

Sharp credits his family and friends — including his fellow personnel — for helping him through the tough times.

“I don’t know how to thank the 183rd and 172nd enough,” Sharp said.

During the aftermath of the attack, Sharp received a box with 50 units of blood. His team was critically low on supply. It was delivered from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, he said, and the chief nurse there was a forward-deployed member he knew from the 183rd.

Sharp, who is a lover of Mexican food, opened the box to find a Mexican food MRE sitting on top with his name written across it in Sharpie.

The small gesture amid the horror brought a smile to his face. Curious colleagues inquired about the package.

“I’ll tell you later,” he said.

And they went back to work.

Cmdr. Jeromy Pittmann, 53, a civil engineer corps officer who deployed to Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015 with NATO Special Operations Command, received thousands of dollars for drafting, submitting, and falsely verifying bogus letters of recommendation for Afghan nationals seeking a Special Immigrant Visa that would allow them to live in the U.S., according to the Department of Justice.

The State Department issues a limited number of Special Immigrant Visas to Afghans who assisted U.S. troops and diplomats during the War in Afghanistan and served as translators.

In more than 20 letters, Pittmann claimed that he personally knew and oversaw the Afghan national visa applicants, and asserted they had served as interpreters for the U.S. military and NATO troops. These letters also claimed that these applicant’s lives were endangered by the Taliban, and affirmed his belief that they were not a national security threat to the U.S.

“In reality, Pittmann did not know the applicants and had no basis for recommending them for SIVs,” the Department of Justice said in a news release. “In exchange, Pittmann received several thousands of dollars in bribes.”

“To avoid detection, Pittmann received the bribe money through an intermediary and created false invoices purporting to show that he was receiving the money for legitimate work unrelated to his military service,” the Department of Justice said.

Pittmann commissioned in 2003, and is a civil engineer corps officer, according to service records obtained by Navy Times.

Pittman first appeared in federal court in March 2022 on charges of accepting bribes and conspiring to commit visa fraud. Court documents alleged Pittmann worked with an unnamed co-conspirator in Kabul who solicited Pittmann’s assistance back in February 2018. The documents indicate Pittmann and the co-conspirator met during Pittmann’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015.

The money was wired to Pittmann through a Bank of America account in Hayward, California, and to an account with USAA in Pensacola, Fla., under the label “family support,” according to court documents.

“I got it today. Thank you and thank your friend for sending it,” Pittmann said in an email after receiving a payment in 2018, according to court documents. “I just wish the money would keep coming. Ha. Maybe one day we will get a business started. It would be nice to pay off my debts.”

Pittmann ultimately was convicted of conspiracy to commit bribery and false writing, bribery, false writing, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, the Justice Department said.

Pittmann’s sentencing is slated for Oct. 21, and he faces up to 45 years behind bars.

The findings. released Monday, refute assertions by some service members who believed they had a chance to take out the would-be bomber but did not get approval. And, for the first time, the U.S. military is confirming that the bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State militant who had been in an Afghan prison but was released by the Taliban as the group took control of the country that summer.

The Abbey Gate bombing during the final chaotic days of the Afghanistan withdrawal killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans, and wounded scores more. It triggered widespread debate and congressional criticism, fueled by emotional testimony from a Marine injured in the blast, who said snipers believe they saw the possible bomber but couldn’t get approval to take him out.

Former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last March that Marines and others aiding in the evacuation were given descriptions of men believed to be plotting an attack. Vargas-Andrews, who was injured in the blast but not interviewed in the initial investigation, said he and others saw a man matching the description and might have been able to stop the attack, but requests to take action were denied.

In a detailed briefing to a small number of reporters, members of the team that did the review released photos of the bald man identified by military snipers as a potential threat and compared it with photos of al-Logari. The team members, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public, described facial recognition and other analysis they used that they said confirmed those were not the same man.

“For the past two years, some service members have claimed that they had the bomber in their sights and they could have prevented the attack. We now know that is not correct,” said a team member.

They said they also showed the photo of the bald man to service members during the latest interviews, and that the troops again confirmed that was the suspicious man they had targeted.

The review notes that the bald man was first seen around 7 a.m. and that troops lost sight of him by 10 a.m. The bombing was more than seven hours later, and the U.S. says al-Logari didn’t get to Abbey Gate until “very shortly” before the blast took place. They declined to be more specific about the timing, saying details are classified.

Family members of those killed in the blast received similar briefings over the past two weekends and some are still unconvinced.

“For me, personally, we are still not clear. I believe Tyler saw what Tyler saw and he knows what he saw. And it was not the guy that they were claiming was the man in black,” Jim McCollum, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, told The Associated Press.

He said the team went into “pretty good detail, not trying to discredit Tyler, but effectively saying he was wrong. However, that ended up being as clear as mud to us.”

And Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, questioned the photo itself.

“They kept saying this is who Tyler Vargas-Andrews was looking at and we were thinking to ourselves, ‘well, that’s interesting. Why is this a picture of a picture from a Canon camera?’” he said. “To me it felt like they were trying to find the guy in those cameras that may have come close to looking like somebody of interest that they can try to sell to us.”

The families, however, also said they were relieved to get more details about their loved ones’ deaths, saying the initial briefings were not as good.

Schmitz said that Army Gen. Eric Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, was part of the latest briefing and apologized for how the families were treated during the initial probe. This time around officials were able to share with Schmitz for the first time exactly where his son was when the bomb went off and that he was unconscious almost immediately, and therefore did not feel the impact of the shrapnel that went through his left torso, hitting a primary artery.

“That to me was, first and foremost, the best news I could have gotten,” Schmitz said. “That gave me a little bit of closure that my son didn’t suffer, which made me feel really good.”

Team members said they also are planning to speak with the troops who were interviewed this time, to share the results of the report.

They said the review also could not completely rule out claims that militants did a test run of the bombing several days earlier. But after reviewing photos and other intelligence, the team concluded it was unlikely that three men seen carrying a large bag — which troops deemed suspicious — were doing a trial run.

More broadly, the team said the review brought some new details to light, including more discussion about the possible bombing test run. But they said overall it confirmed the findings of U.S. Central Command’s initial investigation into the bombing: that it was not preventable and that reports of threats prior to the bombing were too vague.

As an example, the new review noted that threat reports talked about a possible bomber with groomed hair, wearing loose clothes, and carrying a black bag. That description, the review said, could have matched anyone in the enormous crowd desperately trying to get into the airport.

The team said they conducted 52 interviews for the review — adding up to a total of 190 when the previous investigation is included. Service members were asked about 64 questions, and the sessions lasted between one hour and seven hours long.

A number of those questioned weren’t included in the original investigation, many because they were severely wounded in the attack. The new review was ordered last September by Kurilla, largely due to criticism of the initial investigation and assertions that the deadly assault could have been stopped.

Members of the team said the Islamic State group put out the bomber’s name on social media, but U.S. intelligence was later able to independently confirm that report.

U.S. Central Command’s initial investigation concluded in November 2021 that given the worsening security situation at the airport’s Abbey Gate as Afghans became increasingly desperate to flee, ” the attack was not preventable at the tactical level without degrading the mission to maximize the number of evacuees.”

Critics have slammed the Biden administration for the catastrophic evacuation, and they’ve complained that no one was held accountable for it. And while the U.S. was able to get more than 130,000 civilians out of the country during the panic after the Taliban took control of the government, there were horrifying images of desperate Afghans clinging to military aircraft as they lifted off.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, more than a dozen Republican and Democratic senators said Congress needs to raise the limit on the number of special immigrant visas the U.S. can process for Afghans. They said an additional 20,000 are needed before the end of the fiscal year in September.

“This critical program has already saved the lives of thousands of Afghans who served with bravery and honor alongside United States troops and diplomats in support of the mission in Afghanistan,” the lawmakers, led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, wrote in the letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “We must now uphold our commitment to these individuals and ensure that those qualified applicants are able to find safety in the United States.”

The Biden administration has also called on Congress to act swiftly. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that “even though our war in Afghanistan ended, our commitment to Afghans and our commitment to those who helped us in that war has not ended.”

Senators included an increase in the annual cap of visas in a funding bill last year, but it’s unclear whether that provision will make it into the final package lawmakers are racing to finish by the March 22 government funding deadline.

The special immigrant visa, or SIV, program allows eligible Afghans who helped Americans despite great personal risk to themselves and their loved ones to apply for entry into America with their families. Eligible Afghans include interpreters for the U.S. military as well as individuals integral to the American embassy in Kabul.

While the program has existed since 2009, the number of applicants skyrocketed after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. With the Taliban now back in power, advocates say Afghans who helped the U.S. are often living in hiding and facing torture and death if they’re found.

Shaheen and her fellow Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware have been focused on this issue since the withdrawal, working closely with advocates — so far with no success — to tailor legislation to the varying needs of allies. In a statement to the AP, Coons pointed to the urgency of the issue, saying that “every day that passes without Congress taking action, we risk the lives of Afghan partners who deserve our thanks.”

Since the program’s inception, tens of thousands of visas have been issued to eligible Afghans, according to the State Department, with more than 30% of the total applications processed just since the withdrawal. A similar U.S. program exists for Iraqis, but both programs have come under criticism from lawmakers and advocates who say that cases move much too slowly, leaving applicants in a dangerous limbo.

“Congress’ inaction to honor our commitments not only undermines our national conscience but erodes the very principles America claims to stand for,” said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and head of #AfghanEvac, a coalition supporting Afghan resettlement efforts. “It’s high time Congress proves its integrity is more than just lip service; our Afghan allies deserve nothing less.”

It’s up to Congress to set the cap on the number of visas available under the program. But when that cap is reached, lawmakers have had to go back periodically to increase the number of visas available.

Andrew Sullivan, the director of advocacy for No One Left Behind, which advocates for SIV applicants, said they’re down to roughly 7,000 visas left and if the State Department keeps approving visas at the current rate, they could run out of visas by the end of summer.

“It’s massive. It fundamentally amounts to a death knell for the program” if Congress doesn’t approve more visas, Sullivan said. “You’re going to have tens of thousands of people who are left behind through no fault of their own.”

Advocates have previously complained about the slow pace of processing visas, but in recent months the numbers have been climbing and could hit 1,000 this month after the State Department streamlined the process for considering applications. The improvements have resulted in Afghans who helped the U.S. reaching safe harbor more quickly.

But if lawmakers fail to authorize any more visas, hundreds of thousands of Afghan allies would remain in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has labeled them and their families as traitors. Sullivan said his nonprofit has identified more than 100 people who were killed by the ruling militant group and were either SIV applicants or were likely eligible for the visa program.

Failure to approve more visas would be another disappointment for Afghans as they wait for more concrete action from Congress. A bipartisan effort to permanently provide a pathway to citizenship for Afghan allies fell apart last month, thwarted by larger disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over border policy.

“For two decades, the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan relied on trusted Afghan allies who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with American troops,” Shaheen, the New Hampshire senator, said in a statement. “We promised to protect them — just as they did for us, yet they are now at grave risk as the Taliban continue to hunt for them.”

That’s according to new data presented to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by the veteran-led nonprofit organization No One Left Behind, which called on Congress Wednesday to break the backlog by creating new pathways to safety, push for more visa slots, and better partner with the array of all-volunteer veteran groups and coalitions created to advocate for allies in danger.

Representatives from eight such organizations testified before Foreign Affairs’ Oversight and Accountability subcommittee, painting horrifying pictures of torture and brutalism in Taliban reprisals following U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

Subcommittee chairman Brian Mast, a Florida Republican and former Army Ranger who lost both legs to an improvised explosive device while fighting in Afghanistan, had a message to the veteran witnesses and any other veterans who might have been watching: “You’re justified in your rage” about the Afghans left behind.

“This roundtable is not group therapy to get over a war that is, to some, over,” Mast said. “The war is clearly not over for the veterans who are fighting internal battles, and for our allies who depend on us.”

Elizabeth Lynn, a veteran of the Air Force and Navy Reserves who deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 relayed accounts of targeted public executions, documented on cellphone videos in which men identified as U.S. allies were dragged through the streets, beaten to death with rocks and forced to drink acid.

“The Special Operations veteran who received these videos, and who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, describes this retaliation as the most horrific carnage he has seen in his life,” Lynn told the subcommittee. “What will this veteran tell his children when they ask him if they should follow in his footsteps and join the military?”

In an interview ahead of the hearing, Lynn told Military Times she was still in daily contact with her former interpreter, who she said received chief of mission approval for a special immigrant visa more than a year ago, but continues to await final background checks. Special immigrant visas were created as a special, fast-track visa category for interpreters and U.S. military augments in Iraq and Afghanistan, but have nonetheless been bogged down with bureaucratic process and quota limitations.

Of the 7,000 visa applications ― including special immigrant visas and other available pathways ― that Lynn said she’s tracking from former Afghan allies through her organization Operation Recovery, only 1% have been approved.

Thomas Kasza, a Green Beret and National Guardsman who worked in Afghanistan with the elite local partners who made up the Defense Department-contracted National Mine Reduction Group, said he was aware of six men who fought alongside the Green Berets against the Taliban and have been killed while awaiting a way out of Afghanistan. Kasza said he’d trusted these team members implicitly and recalled in particular an incident in which National Mine Reduction Group members had faced down Taliban fighters inside a dark subterranean tunnel.

“These guys undertook some tasks, which as an American would have been Silver Star, Medal of Honor, that kind of stuff,” Kasza told Military Times in an interview. “They just don’t get recognized for what they really did.”

Accounts like Lynn’s and Kasza’s, lawmakers said, refuted testimony from acting Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in October 2023 that officials hadn’t “seen a consistent pattern of those Afghans who worked and supported our efforts in Afghanistan being murdered by the Taliban.”

Andrew Sullivan, advocacy director at No One Left Behind, brought sobering statistics: When the organization surveyed 13,600 Afghans in December 2022 about their knowledge of reprisal killings among special immigrant visa candidates, it received 242 accounts. In one case he described, an interpreter who had successfully completed his visa interview in the Kabul embassy and was only waiting to pick it up was shot in front of his two children while shopping.

The single piece of legislation passed since August 2021, which authorized an additional 4,000 special immigration visas, did little, Sullivan said, to offset these Afghans’ feelings of abandonment.

Committee members, many of whom were military veterans who’d served in Afghanistan also addressed the high personal cost to the veterans in the room of their commitment to the cause of helping those left behind. Kasza told Military Times he’d taken his preliminary exam and been set to enroll in medical school when Kabul fell; he put those ambitions aside to found his organization, the 1208 foundation.

Rep. Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican and Green Beret who serves in the Army National Guard, recounted a story he’d heard about a veteran who exhausted his children’s education savings accounts and lost his marriage because he’d given so much to Afghans seeking help.

“But,” Waltz said, “He can’t not answer the phone.”

In addition to passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act, the widely supported legislation that would, among other things, expand special immigrant visa eligibility to more Afghans who helped Americans and require the Department of State to respond to congressional inquiries on special immigrant visa applications, the panelists advocated for greater transparency in the current processing system and changes, including perhaps more priority categories, which would allow applicants whose lives are at risk to flow through more quickly.

Panelists, including Amy Marden of the Moral Compass Federation, which helped to organize the event, urged the lawmakers to look for opportunities to lean on the expertise of organizations like theirs to assist in relocation and support of Afghani allies in some form of public-private partnership.

Kasza said the same was true for special immigrant visa vetting, where often, he said, endorsements from special operators who’d worked closely with the applicants for years seemed to be ignored.

“We can streamline this process,” he said, “If they actually listen to us and look at our bona fides.”

Salem for Refugees said it resettled Mohammad Hussain Musawi, 35, Mohammad Bashir Safdari, 35, and Ali Jan Ferdawsi, 29, in the Salem area last spring. The nonprofit provides financial aid to newly arrived refugees and helps them find housing and employment, among other support services. It said it was devastated by their deaths.

“In 2022, they sought refuge and new beginnings in Oregon, where their kindness, skills, and determination quickly touched the lives of those around them,” the group said on a GoFundMe page it created to help cover funeral expenses and support the pilots’ families.

The men lost their lives Saturday when a small plane that was piloted by Musawi and carrying Safdari and Ferdawsi as its only passengers crashed into power lines near Independence, a small city in the Willamette Valley about 12 miles (19 kilometers) southwest of Salem.

Darwaish Zakhil, co-founder and community advancement director of Afghan Support Network, a nonprofit based in Portland, described Musawi as committed and ambitious. He had spoken on the phone with him and met him in person, he said, and had also met Safdari and Ferdawsi at events.

They were all working toward their commercial pilot licenses and wanted to be reunited with their families.

“They were happy. They were hopeful for the future,” he said. “When you look back and see their work and their life, what they’ve been through, it’s so sad for all Afghans around the globe and especially here in the state of Oregon.”

Darin Chung, co-founder of the Afghan American Development group, a nonprofit that helps some 600 former Afghan military aviation personnel in the U.S. with refugee resettlement, job training and family reunification, said he also met Musawi — at the aviation hangar in Independence this past spring. Chung, who was a U.S. Marines pilot for 20 years and served in Afghanistan, described him as “terrifically respectful.”

“As a veteran myself, who spent time in combat, I consider these guys every bit of veteran as a U.S. citizen who spent time in the U.S. military in combat,” he said.

“They’re incredible people,” he said of the Afghans his nonprofit assists. “They have been under more stress than I ever have experienced.”

The pilots’ families have remained in Afghanistan while waiting to be able to come to the U.S., according to the group, which has also created a GoFundMe page. The men hadn’t seen their families since August 2021, when the Taliban swept back to power after seizing the Afghan capital Kabul.

As the Taliban advanced on Kabul, the pilots were among those who flew their aircraft, under fire, to the neighboring country of Tajikistan to prevent Air Force equipment from falling into the hands of the group’s fighters, said Russ Pritchard, the nonprofit’s CEO.

They came to the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome, Pritchard said. The program has helped resettle at least 90,000 Afghans since 2021, including those who worked for the U.S. government and military, according to the U.S. State Department.

“All three of those men were heroes, fought side by side with their American counterparts, participated in one last heroic act and were granted asylum,” Pritchard said. “They all dreamed of their children coming and being educated in the United States.”

Pritchard said most of the people that his group helps have been separated from their families for more than two years.

The small plane carrying Musawi, Safdari and Ferdawsi was traveling in heavy fog Saturday from McMinnville, Oregon, to the Independence State Airport, police said.

Authorities said the initial investigation found the collision with electrical power lines resulted in a small brush fire and a power outage in the community.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating with assistance from Independence police. A possible cause was not immediately released.

The nonprofits working to support the pilots’ families said the Afghan community was grieving the loss. Some 1,400 Afghans have resettled as refugees in Oregon since 2021, according to the state’s department of human services.

“These heroes will be deeply missed,” Salem for Refugees said. “Let’s unite in their honor and give their families the support they need during this unimaginable time.”