GEOFF BENNETT: A long-awaited after-action report on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has identified a number of failings that contributed to the chaos.

Ali Rogin has the story.

ALI ROGIN: Geoff, the State Department review concluded that both the Trump and Biden administrations failed to consider worst-case scenarios for what would happen when U.S. troops withdrew, the U.S. government held back on crisis preparation to avoid signaling to the Afghan government that it had lost confidence, and that the Biden administration failed to appoint a senior official to oversee all elements of crisis response, which led to confusion.

For more on this assessment, we turn to Washington Post national security reporter Michael Birnbaum.

Michael, thank you so much for joining us.

What stuck out the most to you in this report?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM, National Security Reporter, The Washington Post: Well, it's a quite sharply critical report, taking a look at failings mostly in the State Department, but, more broadly, at both the Biden and Trump White Houses.

And what stuck out to me is really a chronicle of failures and missteps that are really on all levels, so from the highest levels, thinking about the broad consequences of the military pullout of Afghanistan, and how that was going to destabilize the country, right down to sort of lower-level things, such as the effect of the pandemic, and a COVID lockdown in summer 2021 that made it hard for diplomats to even talk to each other.

And everybody was locked down in their rooms in the embassy during a bunch of critical weeks.

ALI ROGIN: Now, as you mentioned, it was a very critical report, but it was done more than a year ago.

Why is it only being released now?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Well, that has been the subject of a lot of criticism.

It's being released shortly before a holiday weekend, with absolutely no notice.

And there's been a lot of back-and-forth with House Republicans and other critics of the Biden response to the Afghanistan pullout.

Ultimately, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, Mike McCaul, threatened a subpoena of Blinken.

And he was pushing very hard to have this document released.

And this is a -- seems to be a response to it.

This is what has come out.

ALI ROGIN: And we should note that the report was conducted by a former ambassador, Dan Smith.

Why did the State Department select somebody who's no longer serving in the State Department?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Well, Dan Smith is a senior former diplomat.

He was -- he led the State Department transition ahead of Biden coming into office.

And he's someone with a very sterling reputation.

He's a little bit independent, since he's no longer working inside the agency.

And the goal was to come up with a document.

I mean, if you look at the document, it has -- again, it's not a whitewash.

It's pretty tough in places.

It has recommendations.

So I think the goal was to come up with something that would actually help the department improve.

That is certainly what the diplomats there say was the goal.

ALI ROGIN: And, Michael, one thing that stuck out to us was, despite the fact that there was lots of warnings at the time from diplomats, NGOs, members of the military, and it was heavily reported as well at the time of the fallout of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but this report doesn't really go into those warnings in detail.

It does make some oblique references, including one that -- quote -- "As conditions deteriorated, some argued for more urgency in planning for a possible collapse."

Was it a surprise to you, though, that, despite how critical this report was, it didn't seem to go into the fact that there were warnings coming from numerous channels?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Well, so this -- that's a good point.

I mean, this is a State Department report.

The White House and Pentagon did separate reports kind of looking at other aspects of the lead-up to the collapse of the Afghan government.

I think this was intended to be a document that looked at what the State Department could do.

It was looking at the process largely of the failure problems of issuing visas and helping the bureaucratic aspects of the evacuation.

But it did not go into deep detail about the broader strategic issues and failure to listen to warnings, of which there were, of problems in the lead-up to the fall of Kabul.

ALI ROGIN: And, Michael, as you mentioned, this report was released on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend.

Do you think that was deliberate?

And, also, do you think the messaging coming out from the Biden administration is going to change at all when asked about Afghanistan, given the conclusions in this report?

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Well, it is hard to think this wasn't deliberate.

The White House report was released just ahead of the Easter weekend in April.

You know, reporters asked about the timing.

We didn't get a comment about whether this was deliberate.

But you can draw your own conclusions.

This is a pretty standard way to bury news that administrations of both parties don't want to be paid attention to.

And I think that the Biden administration, Tony Blinken, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, sent an e-mail to State Department employees today acknowledging problems, but saying that they have already taken steps to address a lot of them.

I don't think this is fundamentally going to change the Biden administration's accounting of what really is one of the worst marks of the administration.

They offer a robust defense, and they don't seem to be budging very much off of it.

ALI ROGIN: Michael Birnbaum with The Washington Post, thank you so much for joining us.

MICHAEL BIRNBAUM: Thanks a lot for having me.