Blinken Stalling Congress on Withdrawal From Afghanistan: Rep. McCaul

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivers a speech during a visit at the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, Romania, on Nov. 29, 2022. Vadim Ghirda/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has not fully complied with a request for information on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan made by the House Foreign Relations Committee, according to Chairman Michael T. McCaul (R-Texas).

Similar requests were made to Blinken and four other administration officials by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, but it’s unclear whether or not they have responded.

McCaul had requested the information be provided by Jan. 26 but said on March 3 that only “two small document” productions had been provided and that those had been redacted in a way that severely limited their usefulness.

McCaul repeated his request for three pieces of information in a March 3 letter (pdf) to Blinken. According to McCaul, this material has been requested multiple times dating back to August 2021:

“1. The Dissent Channel cable reportedly sent on July 13, 2021, by 23 State Department officials and the Department’s response to it; 2. The After-Action Report prepared under Ambassador Daniel Smith; and 3. Two iterations of U.S. Embassy Kabul’s Emergency Action Plan (EAP): The one in existence on January 1, 2021, and the final iteration of the plan before the Embassy’s closure.”

Taliban terrorists walk in front of a military plane a day after the U.S. troop withdrawal from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 31, 2021. Stringer/Reuters

McCaul quoted a portion of federal law to the Secretary of State related to cooperation with congressional oversight.

“The Department of State shall keep the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives fully and currently informed with respect to all activities and responsibilities within the jurisdiction of these committees. Any Federal department, agency, or independent establishment shall furnish any information requested by either such committee relating to any such activity or responsibility.” [Emphasis in the McCaul letter.]

Request From Oversight Chair

On behalf of the Oversight Committee, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) queried the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, the administrator of USAID, and the president’s national security adviser, for similar information on the U.S. withdrawal.

“We are concerned that the Biden Administration continues to delay long-overdue transparency to the American people about the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation,” Comer wrote to each official on Feb. 17, requesting that specific documents be produced by March 3.

A State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times: “While the State Department generally does not comment on Congressional correspondence, we are aware of this inquiry, and the State Department is committed to working with all Congressional committees with jurisdiction to appropriately accommodate their legitimate need for information to help them conduct oversight for legislative purposes.”

The Department of Homeland Security would not say whether the agency had responded to Comer. “DHS responds to Congressional correspondence directly via official channels, and the Department will continue to respond appropriately to Congressional oversight,” a department spokesperson told The Epoch times on March 3.

The Pentagon likewise refused to say whether the Secretary of Defense had responded to Comer’s request. “As with all congressional correspondence, we will respond directly to the authors of the letter,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

USAID did not respond to a question about whether it had replied to Comer’s request, nor did the White House respond when asked if Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, had replied to Comer.