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On this episode of Newt's World, I'm really delighted to welcome Craig Whitlock of the

Washington Post. His new book, The Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War is by far

one of the most in-depth accounts of our 20 year war with Afghanistan and it asks the fundamental

question, what went wrong in Afghanistan? The book was published August 31st and does not cover

the recent disastrous withdrawal. But as somebody who lived through this entire period and spent

a good bit of the early years in the Pentagon working first with Secretary Rumsfeld, I am

really interested in how this fits together and in Craig's perspective on this, there are

many new revelations in the book from people who played a direct role in the war and they admit

that the US government's strategies were a mess. Statistics were distorted, the nation-building

project was a colossal failure and the drugs and corruption infiltrated our allies in the

Afghan government. So here to talk about his book is Washington Post Investigative Reporter

Craig Whitlock. A three time Pulitzer Prize finalist, he has covered the global war on terrorism

by the post since 2001 as a foreign correspondent, Pentagon reporter and national security specialist.

Craig Whitlock, thank you for joining me. If you don't mind, I want to start with your

2019 Investigative Report for the Washington Post, which I understand you had to sue the federal

government to obtain access to previously undisclosed documents. That's right, it took us three

...