The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

Craig Whitlock is an American journalist. Since 1998, he has worked for The Washington Post, serving as a national security correspondent. He grew up in Kennett Square, a small outer suburb of Philadelphia, and received a BA from Duke University. At the Post, Whitlock covered transnational terrorist networks and the September 11 attacks. He later served as bureau chief in Berlin, Germany, and then took over the Pentagon beat from 2010 to 2016. Whitlock established a public profile in late 2019 with the initial publication of the “Afghanistan Papers,” the first piece of which showed how high-ranking officials in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations had all willfully deceived the public regarding the progress of the war. His publication and subsequent reports on the lack of a strategy, the failures of nation building, the problem of opium, the failure to train an Afghan army, and the overwhelming corruption of the Afghan government helped bring the Afghanistan war back to public consciousness after years of relative disinterest, in part because of official efforts to keep the war out of the public eye. In 2020, Whitlock published his journalistic findings in book form, amplified with new information from his own interviews and other oral histories compiled by the US military.