CNN
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The Home Overseas Affairs Committee on Tuesday subpoenaed Secretary of State Antony Blinken to seem later this month to debate its report on the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“The Committee is holding this listening to as a result of the Division of State was central to the Afghanistan withdrawal and served because the senior authority throughout the August non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO),” Republican Chairman Michael McCaul wrote of the listening to set for September 19.
In his letter, McCaul mentioned Blinken had refused earlier requests to seem earlier than the committee.
CNN has reached out to the State Division for remark.
McCaul has repeatedly known as for accountability from the Biden administration on how the withdrawal from Afghanistan performed out. He has slammed the administration for the Abbey Gate bombing that killed 13 US service members within the remaining chaotic days of the withdrawal.
McCaul is ready to launch on September 9 his committee’s report detailing the findings of its three-year investigation into the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
McCaul, in a press release, mentioned the report “will function an indictment on the administration’s reckless refusal to correctly put together for the withdrawal, their chilly indifference to the protection and safety of U.S. personnel on the bottom earlier than and throughout the emergency evacuation, and their culpability within the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers who perished within the terrorist assault at Abbey Gate.”
Final yr, the US State Division publicly launched its Afghanistan After Motion Assessment report, which discovered that the selections to tug all US troops from Afghanistan had detrimental penalties.
“The selections of each President (Donald) Trump and President (Joe) Biden to finish the U.S. navy mission in Afghanistan had critical penalties for the viability of the Afghan authorities and its safety,” the unclassified report mentioned.
“These selections are past the scope of this evaluation, however the AAR (After Motion Assessment) staff discovered that in each administrations there was inadequate senior-level consideration of worst-case situations and the way rapidly these may observe,” it mentioned.
The committee has carried out greater than a dozen interviews as a part of the investigation into the 2021 evacuation.
Former White Home press secretary Jen Psaki sat for a transcribed interview earlier than the committee in late July.
And three high State Division officers offered hours of closed-door testimony to the committee, offering extra on the “unprecedented” state of affairs within the remaining days of the US presence in Afghanistan.
These officers – John Bass, Jim DeHart and Jayne Howell – rushed to Kabul within the days surrounding the Taliban’s seizure of the capital metropolis, and dove into creating programs on the fly alongside the US navy and with continuously altering enter on the bottom and coming from DC, as CNN has reported.
