House Foreign Affairs Committee subpoenas Blinken over Afghanistan withdrawal
By Haley Talbot, CNN
(CNN) — The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday subpoenaed Secretary of State Antony Blinken to appear later this month to discuss its report on the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“The Committee is holding this hearing because the Department of State was central to the Afghanistan withdrawal and served as the senior authority during the August non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO),” Republican Chairman Michael McCaul wrote of the hearing set for September 19.
In his letter, McCaul said Blinken had refused previous requests to appear before the committee.
The State Department said in a statement Wednesday that Blinken is unavailable to testify “on the dates proposed by the committee” and that they have proposed alternatives.
“It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena,” Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the State Department, said in a statement.
McCaul has repeatedly called for accountability from the Biden administration on how the withdrawal from Afghanistan played out. He has slammed the administration for the Abbey Gate bombing that killed 13 US service members in the final chaotic days of the withdrawal.
McCaul is set to release on September 9 his committee’s report detailing the findings of its three-year investigation into the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
McCaul, in a statement, said the report “will serve as an indictment on the administration’s reckless refusal to properly prepare for the withdrawal, their cold indifference to the safety and security of U.S. personnel on the ground before and during the emergency evacuation, and their culpability in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers who perished in the terrorist attack at Abbey Gate.”
Last year, the US State Department publicly released its Afghanistan After Action Review report, which found that the decisions to pull all US troops from Afghanistan had detrimental consequences.
“The decisions of both President (Donald) Trump and President (Joe) Biden to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security,” the unclassified report said.
“Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR (After Action Review) team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,” it said.
The committee has conducted more than a dozen interviews as part of the investigation into the 2021 evacuation.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki sat for a transcribed interview before the committee in late July.
And three top State Department officials provided hours of closed-door testimony to the committee, providing more on the “unprecedented” situation in the final days of the US presence in Afghanistan.
Those officials – John Bass, Jim DeHart and Jayne Howell – rushed to Kabul in the days surrounding the Taliban’s seizure of the capital city, and dove into creating systems on the fly alongside the US military and with constantly changing input on the ground and coming from DC, as CNN has reported.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
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