it was the unanimous recommendation of the joint cheechs that we not maintain a military presence beyond august 31st. we heard testimony to that effect today as well. when was that unanimous recommendation sought and presented to the president? are you talking about the 31 august yes, the 31 august deadline. onta 25 august i was asked t provide military assessment and military advice my time is limited. you gave the answer i needed to hear. august 25th? correct. kabul fell on august 15th. that s correct. you were not asked before august 25 snth. on august 25th i was asked for my best military assessment whether we should keep military forces past the 31st. secretary austin, was anybody asked before august 25th if we should keep troops at the kabul airport? this is the president asked us to provide an
withdrew, that it was a likely outcome of a collapse of the military and a collapse of the government. most of those intelligence assessments indicated that would occur late fall, perhaps early winter. kabul might hold until next spring. depends when the intel assessment was written. the assessments that you would see general collapse of the government and the military. while we were there, though, up through 31 august, i don t there is no intel assessment that says the government will collapse and military will collapse in 11 days that i m aware of. i think i ve read pretty much all of them. even as late as the 3rd of august, another one on the 8th of august they re still talking weeks, perhaps months, etc. general mckenzie can talk to his on views on the same topic. he gave his assessments at the same time and although general miller did in many, many
31 august, and probably into the october time frame, maybe thanksgiving and that is about more or less where many of the intel assessments he said he was the dissenter on the intel assessment. that s right. he didn t put any of those qualifiers on his testimony to us. so are you saying he shifted his testimony, general milley? no. i m saying what he told me it was likely in the october time frame. the intel assessments of centering around november, thanksgiving at the latest. christmas. some went into the next year. here s my point. the intel assessments had two basic things in my view. was the scale and scope, plus the speed. all the intel assessments, all of us, got that wrong. there s no question about it. that was a swing and a miss on the intel assessment of 11 day theres august. there s nobody that called that. my time is about i appreciate it. you made these points. my time is about to expire.
0 there s no doubt in my mind that our efforts prevented an attack on the homeland from afghanistan which was our core original mission. and everyone who served in that war should be proud. your service mattered. beginning in 2011, we steadily drew down our troop numbers, consolidated and closed bases and retrograded equipment from afghanistan. at the peak in 2011, we had 97,000 u.s. troops alongside 41,000 nato troops in afghanistan. ten years later, when the ambassador signed the doha agreement lton 29 february 2020 the united states had 12,600 troops with 8,000 nato and 10,500 contractors. this has been a ten-year multi-administration drawdown, not a 19-month or 19-day one. under the doha agreement, the u.s. would begin to withdraw forces contingent upon taliban meeting certain conditions, which would lead to a political agreement between the taliban and the government of afghanistan. there were seven conditions applicable to the taliban and eight conditions applicable to the united
0 to work, to come out of bagram. no way to keep bagram and go to effective zero in well, thinking of what we have may have gained or may have lost as we leave. we think about countering adversaries, so again, general mckenzie what is your assessment of the foreign influence in afghanistan, the wake of our - hosted what we called the conference. we all adversaries from filling the we talk about that region after the fall of afghanistan. generally what they want is they want assurance. they want to continue to have ties with the united states because they want alternatives to russia and they want alternatives to china. unfortunately because of the geographic location, they ll always have to deal with russia and china. our partners in the region want a message that the united states is not going to turn our back on them even though we left afghanistan. we had a productive conference based on those themes. i couldn t agree more. it makes us more vulnerable if we allow anybody else t