Blinken subpoenaed for cables warning of Afghanistan tragedy

WASHINGTON – The head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said late Monday he would subpoena Secretary of State Antony Blinken for documents the panel has requested for months on the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) had given the State Department until close of business to turn over a July 13, 2021 “dissent cable” by 23 diplomats that he said “warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation.”

“We have made multiple good faith attempts to find common ground so we could see this critical piece of information,” McCaul said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Secretary Blinken has refused to provide the Dissent Cable and his response to the cable, forcing me to issue my first subpoena as chairman of this committee.”

Diplomats use the “cherished tradition” of dissent channels as “a unique way for anyone in the department to speak truth to power as they see it without fear or favor,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Monday.

“They do it by the regulations we have established for these cables in a privileged and confidential way,” he added. “It’s vital to us that we preserve the integrity of that process and of that channel.”

Asked Monday afternoon if the State Department would comply with the committee’s request, Patel demurred, admitting that “there’s a real interest in the substance of this specific cable.”

“In the spirit of that, we are prepared to make the relevant information in the cable available, including group briefings or some other mechanisms,” he said.

However, McCaul claimed the department refused to hand over the cable despite the chairman offering both to review the document in camera and allow the department to redact the names of the diplomats who signed it.

The cable is one of “three specific priority items” GOP lawmakers want for their oversight investigation into the Biden administration’s bungled bugout from Afghanistan in August of 2021, which culminated in a chaotic evacuation mission that led to the deaths of 13 US service members and hundreds of Afghans in an ISIS suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport.

“The American people deserve answers as to how this tragedy unfolded, and why 13 US servicemembers lost their lives,” McCaul said Monday. “We expect the State Department to follow the law and comply with this subpoena in good faith.”

The two other items are an after-action report by career diplomat Daniel Smith and two versions of evacuation plans drawn up by the US Embassy in Afghanistan – one that was in place before the withdrawal and the final iteration used when it occurred.

The committee also wants “all cables and intelligence community products since January 1, 2021 regarding the threat of ISIS-K or any other terrorist group to Hamid Karzai International Airport.”

The committee first requested the documents in a 23-point letter with a compliance deadline of Jan. 26.

By March 3, the State Department had “only provided two small document productions” – neither of which were particularly revealing, McCaul said in a letter to Blinken complaining of the delinquency.

“Of the 218 pages produced, 88 consisted of a previously embargoed version of the Afghanistan Study Group’s Final Report – a document released to the public on Feb. 3, 2021,” he said. “On Feb. 10, 2023, the department made an additional production consisting of the texts of unclassified opening statements from a June 15, 2022 classified briefing on Afghanistan, totaling 18 pages.”

McCaul on March 20 issued Blinken a new deadline of March 23 to produce the “three highly specific immediately priority items.”

When that deadline went unmet, the chairman pushed it once again to Monday.

McCaul has been seeking the cables and other withdrawal-related documents since before the drawdown was even completed. He first asked the State Department to turn them over in a letter signed by 22 other House Republicans on Aug. 20, 2021 – ten days before the last American soldier left Afghanistan.

At the time, Republicans were the minority party in the House, and their efforts went nowhere until the GOP took the majority in last year’s midterm elections, making McCaul the committee’s chairman.