“Nobody wanted to admit they were losing a war that America thought it had won.” A Conversation with Craig Whitlock on The Afghanistan Papers - a podcast by LBJ Foundation

The astonishing fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban after nearly 20 years of American occupation has had many wondering what went wrong in our nation’s longest war, not just in recent days but in the two decades that preceded it. 

 

Award-winning investigative reporter Craig Whitlock offers an authoritative perspective. Whitlock has covered the war in Afghanistan for the Washington Post as a foreign correspondent, Pentagon reporter, and national security specialist. 

 

His new book, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, tells the story of an unwinnable campaign that had gone awry almost from the beginning, sparking a military and government conspiracy to keep the failure of the war from the American people. As he explains in this interview, “America was losing a war it thought it had won.”

Further episodes of With the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency

Further podcasts by LBJ Foundation

Website of LBJ Foundation