The Wall Street Journal revealed on Thursday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was warned as far back as mid-July that Kabul would fall into Taliban hands by the August 31 troop withdrawal deadline, putting the lie to the Biden administration’s claims that it was caught off guard by the country’s swift collapse.

“About two dozen State Department officials serving at the embassy in Kabul sent an internal memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another top State Department official last month warning of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline,” the WSJ reported.

The classified cable, dated July 13, warned that the Taliban would quickly gain control of Afghanistan and “offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation.” It also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban.

This revelation is the clearest evidence yet that the catastrophically incompetent Biden administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent. And it contradicts multiple public statements from Biden himself and other administration officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who this week said no such intelligence existed.