The Washington Post revealed Monday that U.S. officials under the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have been lying to the American public about the war in Afghanistan for the past 18 years.
Rep. Stephen Lynch has traveled to Afghanistan 14 times as a member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and spoke with Boston Public Radio on Tuesday about the newly exposed Afghanistan papers.
"I knew before this report that I've been lied to," Lynch said. "When I went over and tried to investigate Kabul Bank, years ago, clearly it took two or three years for me to figure it out, but I was lied to in a classified briefing by U.S. personnel, by our CIA and military people."
The newly released documents are similar to the Pentagon papers, Lynch said.
"There's more concealment being done now than there was under George Bush or President Obama," he said. "In the last three years, they've stopped reporting now in the public reports that SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) issues. ... They've stopped reporting on the amount of area that is controlled by the government versus that which is controlled by the Taliban versus that which is contested, and I was over there in Afghanistan two months ago and we raised this issue."
