Afghanistan Gold Star Dad: ‘Tone-Deaf’ Pentagon Waited Until Friday to Decide to Interview Troops on Kabul Bombing

On Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports,” Darin Hoover — whose son, Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover Jr., was killed during the Kabul airport attack during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 — stated that the Pentagon’s announcement on Friday that it will finally conduct interviews with some soldiers who were in Kabul during the airport bombing but are not re-opening their investigation into the bombing is “tone-deaf” and noted that the Pentagon had two years to do these interviews and didn’t. Hoover also wondered if the Pentagon is only acting because they’re getting pressure from the Gold Star families and Congress.

Hoover stated, “It’s tone-deaf in a lot of it. They’ve had now two years in order to get [these] testimonies from these servicemembers, many of which are Marines, I found out this morning. But why now? What is the hurry-up now? Because we’re putting pressure on them, because Congress is putting pressure on them? It just — it’s falling on us as tone-deaf. They don’t understand what it’s doing to each and every one of us each and every one of the servicemembers that were there, and frankly, the veterans who have given their blood, sweat, and tears throughout this 20-year war. And to now just be coming around to say, oh, ok, we’re going to revisit this, let’s see where this goes.”

Host Elizabeth Vargas then asked, “At the very least, Darin, and I understand this just — it’s like picking at a wound for you, not only your inability to get what you — the information you think you deserve and are owed as the parents of somebody who died serving this country, but the fact that, now, after giving this official report saying, oops, we couldn’t — there was no way to prevent this, then hearing testimony, oh yes there was, then reporting that actually, they really wanted an attack. They knew where the ISIS-K fighters were building the suicide bomb. Is this just all prolonging the agony for you?”

Hoover responded, “Yes and no. In the general sense, yes, that it keeps opening that wound up, like you said. But in the broader sense, it’s an answer that we’re looking for, and whatever it takes at this point, two years into it, we’re starting our third year now and still wanting those answers, whether it comes from Congress or through Congress, whether it comes from the administration, or whether it comes from Biden himself, we still want those answers so that this doesn’t happen again. This can’t happen again.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett