Grasping at access to Afghanistan docs, GOP digs in on subpoena threat

WASHINGTON (CN) — Having already dodged one subpoena threat from House Republicans, Secretary of State Antony Blinken already faces another one concerning documents related to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Texas Congressman Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has been a leading voice in the GOP’s effort to take the Biden administration to task for what many Republican lawmakers see as a botched exit from America’s longest war. McCaul and others have pushed the State Department in recent weeks to make public a trove of documents from the 2021 withdrawal, reasoning that such revelations would help to better understand the agency’s decision-making process.

House Republicans faced off with Secretary Blinken last month over the State Department’s resistance to a congressional subpoena for one such document file — a confidential diplomatic cable known as a dissent channel, which the agency worried would be compromised if made public.

The standoff nearly resulted in a drastic move to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress, but lawmakers and the State Department worked out a deal to view the dissent channel and McCaul called off his threats.

Now, however, the Republican committee leader has informed the secretary of state that yet another subpoena could be on the way if the agency refuses to provide another set of Afghanistan documents, including an unredacted version of an after-action report penned by Kabul Ambassador Daniel Smith and the official order initiating the full U.S. withdrawal from the country.

The State Department in April released parts of the after-action report to Congress.

McCaul had initially given the State Department until June 15 to turn over the unredacted report and other requested documents, he told Blinken, but the agency complied only in part. “While I appreciate the Department producing one priority document by the deadline, its official response failed to even address the other two,” McCaul told the Cabinet official in a letter dated Wednesday. “This is unacceptable.”

In addition to providing important context for the 2021 withdrawal, an unredacted version of the Afghanistan after-action report and the evacuation order is particularly vital as Congress begins work on the U.S. military’s 2024 budget, McCaul said.

The Texas Republican gave Blinken until June 26 to provide the requested information. “In the event the Department fails to comply with this request, the Committee plans to proceed with compulsory process,” McCaul added.

The effort to secure documents related to the Afghanistan withdrawal has historically been a bipartisan endeavor. New York Congressman Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House’s foreign affairs panel, had requested information on the Kabul dissent channel back in 2021, when he was committee chair.

Despite that, Republicans have initiated a full-court press on the State Department to divulge information about the Afghanistan withdrawal since seizing control of the lower chamber earlier this year — a move aimed at pinning blame on the Biden administration for the rocky exit.

It is the position of the White House, meanwhile, that blame for the debacle falls largely on the Trump administration, whose 2020 deal with the Taliban set a 2021 deadline for a full U.S. withdrawal. Republicans have said that selections from the after-action report made public in April implicate the Biden administration as well.

Critics of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, including GOP lawmakers, have said that it was a military and diplomatic failure which caused unnecessary loss of life and which left key allies in the lurch. Hundreds of Afghan citizens and several U.S. service members died in the exit, including during an April 2021 attack at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport where 13 U.S. soldiers and more than 150 Afghans were killed.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss

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