Thread by @DanLamothe

EXCLUSIVE: Documents obtained by the @washingtonpost detail deep frustration from senior U.S. military commanders with the White House and State Department during the chaotic, deadly evacuation from Afghanistan.

washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Late last week, as the U.S. military wrapped up a Pentagon briefing about the Aug. 26 bombing in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. troops and about 170 Afghans, @washingtonpost received a response to a FOIA request about the investigation.

It marked a rarity: 2,000 pages of timely documents about the operation, the explosion and how planning behind the scenes went.

There are witness statements from dozens of people, including Rear Adm. Vasely, Maj. Gen. Donahue and Brig. Gen. Sullivan.

. @alexhorton and I combed through them for hours over the weekend. I was at it until after midnight Friday and Saturday night. Even as people who covered this 80 hours per week last August, jaws dropped repeatedly.

Among the details reported:

Marines opened fire on the Taliban early in the evacuation, killing two Taliban fighters.

A few days later, an Afghan paramilitary unit working with the coalition opened fire on Marines. The Marines returned fire, killing one and wounding six.

A Marine platoon leader also reported to investigators that a U.S. flash-bang grenade killed a civilian. Commanders recommended a separate look into that.

Four Afghan civilians were crushed in the crowds outside in other tragedies, U.S. troops said.

Still, the part that will likely turn the most heads in Washington are the unvarnished recollections of senior military commanders. While Pentagon and State Department officials in Washington spoke often during the crisis, the commanders on the ground were swamped and did not.

Brig. Gen. Farrell Sullivan, the senior Marine officer on the ground, expressed frustration that the embassy didn’t come around on planning a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) more quickly. The NSC also lacked a sense of urgency, in his view.

Sullivan also says he advised it would be wise to involve civilian airlines through the Civilian Air Reserve Fleet after being surprised by how many Afghan strike unit members and families had been promised a flight out. The number was more than 38K, not 6K, as initially thought.

Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the senior commander in Afghanistan in August, said U.S. forces would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly NEO if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.”

Gen. Frank McKenzie, chief of Central Command, is traveling with @karoun today. He said he was "not surprised" to hear of the commanders' observations.

"There are profound frustrations; commanders, particularly subordinate commanders, they see very clearly the advantages of other courses of action. However, we had a decision, and we had an allocation of forces. You proceed based on that," McKenzie told @washingtonpost.

@washingtonpost Deep appreciation to @adegrandpre from editing this one. We were at it until near midnight last night after numerous check-ins through the weekend.