McCaul says he will hold Blinken in contempt after State Department shrugs off his demands for testimony
Foreign Affairs Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul said he still intends to haul in Antony Blinken on the Afghanistan withdrawal even after his sprawling report was completed, and will hold him in contempt of Congress if he does not comply.
“This was a catastrophic failure of epic proportions,” the Texas Republican told reporters on Monday. “This is a disgrace. I will hold him in contempt if that’s what it takes to bring him before the American people.”
“Secretary Blinken refuses to take one day out of this month to come before the [Gold Star] families.”
McCaul’s comments came on the heels of a 350-page report he released Monday on the withdrawal that the committee worked on for much of the past nearly two years of the Republican majority.
It laid much blame on the State Department and detailed how State officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them.
McCaul subpoenaed Blinken last week, saying he must appear before the committee by Sept. 19.
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State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel shrugged off the committee’s threats.
“The majority isn’t truly interested in legislating on Afghanistan policy. If they were, they would have sought to speak to the secretary long ago,” he told reporters Monday.
“They would have sought to speak to him to get his input as they make this report,” he said. “Instead they waited until the report was completely finished to come back to us.”
In May, McCaul asked Blinken to appear at a hearing in September on the committee‘s report on its investigation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The State Department failed on several occasions to provide a date for Blinken to appear before lawmakers, McCaul said.
But the State Department said Monday Blinken had testified before House and Senate committees 14 times on the withdrawal, including four times before the Foreign Affairs Committee.
McCaul also hinted that he believes there should still be a small contingency of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
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“We cannot see now into Afghanistan except through over the horizon, which doesn’t work. We can’t see Russia, China and Iran, either, because of this tragic failure of foreign policy,” he told reporters.
“We can’t see all of ISIS gathering in the Korazhan region of Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, making their way to the United States of America. That is what they did to us,” the chairman went on.
“They embolden the unholy alliance of Putin, Xi, the Ayatollah and Kim Jong Un,” he said, referring to the leaders of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
The Biden administration has long claimed the president’s hands were tied by the Doha agreement negotiated under President Trump that laid out a deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. But the new report detailed how the Taliban had failed to hold up their end of the deal, absolving the U.S. of any obligation to adhere to it.
“Biden, for his part, faced a stark choice when he came to office, abide by the flawed agreement and end America’s longest war, or blow up the deal, extend the war, and see a much smaller contingent of American troops back in combat with the Taliban,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday.
“He chose the former and was able to buy additional time to prepare for that withdrawal all the way into the summer. And we, as a nation are safer for it. Any and every discussion about what happened in Afghanistan has to start right there. Sadly, the report does not dwell on it.”
The damning report claims that while US military personnel were drawing down their footprint in the nation, the State Department was growing theirs.
And according to the report, U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson was on vacation in mid-July 2021. He allegedly hightailed it out of the country and left some local embassy staff behind. According to the report, he had COVID-19 at the time and forced a foreign service officer to take his COVID test so he could get on the plane.
Wilson previously said the Covid-19 allegation is “false” and he never asked anyone to take a test for him.
Patel defended Wilson.
“I’m just not going to get into a tit-for-tat with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but what I can say is that it is not my understanding that he was on vacation at the beginning of August. Beyond that, I will just echo what I said previously about Ambassador Wilson, that this is an esteemed individual, a decorated Foreign Service officer.”
He claimed the GOP-led report chose “scandal over substance” and called it a “collection of cherry-picked comments… designed to paint an inaccurate picture of this administration’s efforts” and said Wilson was the “last diplomat to leave Afghanistan after the United States ended its military presence.”
He claimed the withdrawal was carried out in a way that was consistent with department policy. “The drawdown in Kabul was conducted in a manner which is consistent with our departments and our country’s standards and protocols when faced in those circumstances.”
He said he did not have a headcount on how many Americans are still in Afghanistan, but touted the more than 18,000 Afghan special immigrant visas (SIVs) for the U.S.’s Afghan allies, such as interpreters, that were processed in 2023.
This report has been updated to include Wilson’s denial of the Covid-19 allegation and to reflect that Wilson was accused of leaving some, not all, embassy staff behind.
