People queue as much as board a military aircraft of the US and leave Kabul at Kabul airport, Afghanistan, Aug. 22, 2021.
Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images
The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee said on Monday he signed a subpoena to be delivered to Secretary of State Antony Blinken for documents related to the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Michael McCaul has launched an investigation into the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan under Democratic President Joe Biden and events within the country since.
Republicans — and a few Democrats — say there has never been a full accounting of the chaotic operation, wherein 13 U.S. service members were killed at Kabul’s airport.
McCaul had given the State Department until Monday to supply the documents.
“Unfortunately, Secretary Blinken has refused to supply the Dissent Cable and his response to the cable, forcing me to issue my first subpoena as chairman of this committee,” McCaul said in an announcement. He said the subpoena can be delivered on Tuesday morning.
About two dozen U.S. diplomats in Afghanistan sent a confidential cable through a so-called dissent channel warning Blinken in July 2021 of the potential fall of Kabul to the Taliban as U.S. troops withdrew from the country, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021.
Blinken said during a hearing last week that the department had already shared information and was working to supply more, but that some specific details could only be shared with senior officials, a move intended to guard the identity of those that had expressed dissent.
Asked by Reuters for comment on the subpoena, the State Department referred to remarks by spokesperson Vedant Patel at Monday’s press briefing. Patel said it was “vital to us that we preserve the integrity” of the dissent channel. He said the department was “prepared to make the relevant information within the cable available through briefings or another mechanisms.”
