Secretary of State Antony Blinken of the State Department fails again. Blinkin is refusing to turn over to Congress a 2021 memo that had warned the Biden administration that its Afghanistan withdrawal would devolve into an absolute nightmare.
However, Blinken’s ignoring the congressional timeline to release the memo will reportedly not go unpunished.
Oh hope the entire world sees what was said in this cable. It's gotta be bad for Secretary Anthony Blinken to refuse to comply to 3 three requests over 90 days. The fact that he's being threatened with a Subpoena, and enforcement proceedings thereafter. https://t.co/RNl2atm3K6
— Sunshine Sparkles ✨ (@q112345667yhdcb) May 10, 2023
The Wall Street Journal reports that a classified memo was sent on July 13, 2021, to Blinken and Director of Policy Planning Salman Ahmed ahead of the United States Aug. 31, 2021, troop withdrawal deadline. The memo warned that the Afghan government was at risk of collapse and that the Taliban’s advance was imminent should the US withdraw.
The memo indicated that the Afghan security forces would be crushed and the Taliban would enjoy rapid territorial gains. It also asked that the State Department stop using sanitized language to describe the horrific atrocities being committed by the terrorist organization.
Before the withdrawal, President Joe Biden claimed that a Taliban takeover and the Afgan governmental collapse were “highly unlikely.”
“I am available to view the documents as soon as possible.”
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman @RepMcCaul has accepted the @StateDept's offer to view a dissent cable from the time of the 2021 US withdrawal from #Afghanistan. https://t.co/I9hdYsfd4j
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) May 18, 2023
The Foreign Affairs Committee is now investigating the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal. The Committee subpoenaed the State Department on March 28, seeking a copy of the memo by April 4.
The State Department missed the first and a second deadlines, violating the congressional subpoena.
Blinken and the Biden State Department ultimately determined that the elected representatives of the American people are allowed to see summaries of the memo but not the real thing.
"Unsurprisingly, the Taliban has implemented the same fundamentalist laws that plagued the country during the group’s last reign in the 1990s."
Maya Carlin's latest looks back at the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan:https://t.co/YXce9VZNzU
— Center for Security Policy (@securefreedom) May 16, 2023
Having found these summaries “insufficient to satisfy the committee’s subpoena” and noting that the “Department is now in violation of its legal obligation,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) stressed in a May 5 letter to Blinken that the subpoena “compels you to produce in unredacted form ‘the Dissent Channel cable” and “must be complied with immediately.”
“Should you fail to comply, the Committee is prepared to take the necessary steps to enforce its subpoena, including holding you in contempt of Congress and/or initiating a civil enforcement proceeding,” McCaul warned.
