House Republicans are expanding their investigation of the Biden administration’s botched Afghan withdrawal, calling upon Secretary of State Antony Blinken to make dozens of officials available for interviews.
The Republicans, led by Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said they were requesting the transcribed interviews “because recent briefings by State Department officials have been cursory exercises that mystify as much as they illuminate, with relevant actors often declining to answer questions directly, deferring to other colleagues or agencies, or claiming not to have relevant information at their immediate disposal and then offering to ‘follow up’ with answers that never seem to arrive.”
McCaul’s letter to Blinken was co-signed by 22 other Republican congressmen and gave a sense of the questions they intend to ask the State officials, including about “the number of American Citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents who still reside in Afghanistan (in public media accounts, the Department’s own employees have recently called the magic number 100, which was repeated by senior Department officials for over a month, ‘absurd,’ and now the number has been confirmed to be significantly larger but is still unclear).”
Other topics will include any agreements made with the Taliban, the new realities of U.S. counterterrorism and over-the-horizon capabilities in Afghanistan, the processing of special immigrant visa applications, the vetting of Afghan evacuees, and “Embassy Kabul’s Emergency Action Plan, decision to destroy sensitive documents like visa applications and passports, and calling on DoD to move arms stored at the embassy.”
AL QAEDA PLAYED LONG GAME IN AFGHANISTAN
ISIS-K is believed to be responsible for the August suicide bombing at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, which killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghan civilians. Weeks after a U.S. drone strike in Kabul at the end of August, the military admitted it had killed as many as 10 civilians, including an Afghan aid worker and seven children, as opposed to an ISIS-K terrorist.
Numerous members of the Haqqani network have received top positions in the Taliban’s “caretaker” government, including leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is now acting interior minister. The State Department has continued to insist it believes the Taliban and the Haqqani network are “distinct” groups, despite Anas Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s brother, saying: “We are the Taliban.”
Among the nearly three dozen requested interviewees were Ross Wilson, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, John Bass, the State Department’s lead of evacuation efforts at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Beth Jones, the coordinator for Afghan relocation efforts, and Suzy George, Blinken’s chief of staff.
Blinken was dismissive when McCaul pressed him on June 7 about the Biden administration’s failure to prepare special immigrant visas for Afghan interpreters and allies properly and swiftly.
“If there is a significant deterioration in security, that could well happen — we have discussed this before — I do not think it is going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday,” Blinken said. “So, I would not necessarily equate the departure of forces in July, August, or by early September with some kind of immediate deterioration in the situation.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
McCaul previously pointed to the “rosy picture” the State Department had painted about Afghanistan in explaining why he believed the Biden administration miscalculated the Taliban takeover so badly.
