Listen to story:

Download: mp3 (Duration: 24:48)

FEATURING MATTHEW HOH – For three years the Washington Post fought a legal battle to obtain documents of hundreds of interviews with experts and government officials about the US’s longest war, still being fought in Afghanistan. The interviews were conducted by a little known watchdog group called the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

Analyzing the documents in great detail, journalist Craig Whitlock and his colleagues published a multi-part story they called the Afghanistan Papers. The exposé confirms what critics had been asserting for nearly 2 decades: that there is no clearly defined goal or endpoint to the war to help determine when to stop fighting and that our efforts have been futile at best, and deeply destructive at worst. It also shows that officials have been lying about the war for years and that our billions of dollars spent have little to show for it.

**This segment was originally broadcast on December 12, 2019.

Already have an account? Sign in