Darin Hoover lost his son at Abbey Gate. For three and a half years, he says, the government gave his family almost nothing, no real answers, no accountability, and no indication anyone in charge cared to look back at what went wrong. Now a new Pentagon review panel says it has examined more than nine million documents related to the Afghanistan withdrawal, and Hoover believes the sheer scale of what was hidden tells its own story.

"That smells exactly like a cover-up," Hoover told Fox News Digital, comparing the new review's scope to the roughly 3,000 documents examined in a prior Pentagon assessment. "Now we've got over a million pages being reviewed. Why was everything so top-secret that none of us could see it? They owe us the answers."

The Afghanistan Withdrawal Special Review Panel, chaired by Sean Parnell and established by War Secretary Pete Hegseth at the direction of President Donald Trump, has now completed the substantive phase of interviews with senior military and civilian leaders. A final report with findings and recommendations is expected in the coming months. Among those interviewed: retired Gen. Mark Milley and retired Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr.

A father's long wait for answers

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin "Taylor" Hoover was among the 13 U.S. service members, 11 Marines, one Army soldier, and one Navy sailor, killed in the Aug. 26, 2021 suicide bombing at Abbey Gate during the chaotic withdrawal from Hamid Karzai International Airport. His father has spent every day since demanding to know how it happened and who failed to prevent it.

The Biden administration's response, Hoover said, amounted to silence and a form letter.

"For the first three-and-a-half years... we weren't getting anything from the prior administration. It was crickets."

He described the only communication the families received as hollow and impersonal.

"The only thing we all got was a canned letter saying how sorry they were. There was not anything individual mentioned about any of the kids."

That pattern of avoidance was not limited to private correspondence. Gold Star parents publicly condemned President Biden and senior officials for the handling of the withdrawal, with Hoover himself calling on Biden, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to resign. The White House released a summary of internal reports in April 2023 that argued the Trump administration had left Biden with "no plans" for withdrawal, a move critics viewed as blame-shifting rather than genuine accountability.

The prior administration's posture toward the families stands in sharp contrast to what Hoover describes now. He said Trump spent 45 minutes with the Gold Star families and "gave us his full undivided attention."

Nine million documents versus 3,000

The gap between the old review and the new one is not just a difference of degree. Parnell, in a statement posted to War.gov, said the earlier Pentagon review was "significantly narrower in scope" and "over-classified at the highest levels, which effectively kept the most critical and relevant information from public scrutiny."

That characterization, over-classified to the point of concealment, is what drives Hoover's accusation. A review that examines 3,000 documents when more than nine million exist is not a review. It is a gesture. Hoover put it plainly: "The 3,000 pages... doesn't even make a ripple."

Parnell described the new panel's mission in sweeping terms, calling it an effort "to conduct the most comprehensive military after action review in modern history." The broader pattern of congressional pressure on the Pentagon to release classified material suggests the appetite for institutional transparency extends well beyond the Afghanistan withdrawal.

"This will be the most thorough, transparent, and honest accounting the American people have received of what happened in August 2021. Our purpose is to identify failures in decision-making, so that we may prevent the United States from ever repeating this tragedy."

A Pentagon spokesperson referred Fox News Digital to Parnell's statement when asked for comment.

What the families want, and what the government owes

Hoover is not asking for sympathy at this point. He is asking for consequences. If the review finds that leaders failed to act or made decisions that cost lives, he wants more than a report.

"If they did something wrong or failed to act, they should no longer be allowed to lead where life and death is at stake."

He went further: "I would love to see pensions taken away... and if possible, I'd love to see people go to jail."

Those are strong words from a grieving father. They are also the words of a man who has watched the institutional machinery of Washington protect itself for years. A State Department review found failures in crisis planning and preparation for worst-case scenarios. Milley himself later described the evacuation timeline as "too slow and too late." Yet no senior official faced meaningful professional consequences.

Hoover described a breakdown in coordination that left service members exposed. "The right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing," he said. "And it all got stalled somewhere in the middle."

But he drew a clear line between the leaders who failed and the troops who served. "And our kids did the best they could with the tools they were given," he said. "They did a phenomenal job."

The question of who bears responsibility for the withdrawal's catastrophic final chapter has followed both administrations. Trump marked the third anniversary of the bombing at Arlington National Cemetery and called the withdrawal "a humiliation," tying Kamala Harris to the decision-making process. A 2022 government-appointed special investigator concluded that decisions by both the Trump and Biden administrations were key factors in Afghanistan's rapid collapse.

A trial, a review, and a reckoning still pending

Even as the review panel prepares its final report, a courtroom in Alexandria is set to open another chapter. The trial of an ISIS-K-linked figure accused of giving the final approval for the Abbey Gate bomber to detonate is scheduled to begin Monday. Hoover said some families plan to attend.

The timing, a trial in federal court, a sweeping Pentagon review nearing completion, and Memorial Day approaching, places the Abbey Gate bombing back at the center of public attention nearly four years after it happened. That is exactly where Hoover believes it belongs.

The institutional resistance to transparency has been a recurring theme well beyond Afghanistan. The Pentagon has faced mounting pressure to release long-withheld government files on other subjects, and the willingness of this administration to push for disclosure marks a departure from the default posture of classification and delay.

Hoover's question, "What is it that they saw, or what did they feel needed to be hidden so nobody could know what it was?", remains unanswered. The prior review's narrow scope and heavy classification ensured that. Whether the new panel's nine-million-document review will finally produce honest answers is the open question that matters most to 13 families.

Meanwhile, the leadership figures who oversaw the withdrawal have largely moved on. Lloyd Austin has resurfaced to criticize the current Pentagon leadership, while the families of the fallen are still waiting for someone in a position of authority to tell them the truth about what happened at Abbey Gate and why.

Hoover's Memorial Day message was simple and direct: "Please, please, please remember them. Honor them. Don't forget how we got here, why we got here and live a life worthy of the sacrifices that have been made."

Thirteen families buried their children. The least Washington can do is stop hiding the files.