Secretary of State Antony Blinken has finally agreed to testify before the House committee investigating the Biden administration’s lethally chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in a hearing next week, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul announced Tuesday.
“After months of good faith efforts that were too often met with stonewalling from the State Department, I’m proud to have secured Secretary Blinken’s appearance before my committee,” said McCaul (R-Texas). “I trust his testimony will provide some long-overdue accountability and transparency for the American people, our Afghan allies, and our Gold Star families.”
The hearing, scheduled for Dec. 11, will come roughly three months after Blinken skipped a similar hearing before the committee, violating a congressional subpoena to appear “despite repeated warnings and accommodations,” according to the committee.
The Foreign Affairs panel then moved to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress for his snub, which McCaul said Tuesday appeared to have pushed the top US diplomat to finally acquiesce.
“It’s unfortunate the secretary agreed to appear only after my committee advanced contempt proceedings against him,” McCaul said.
“While I wish he had not delayed this crucial appearance until the end of his tenure as head of the State Department, I look forward to hearing his testimony and asking poignant questions to help House Republicans and the next administration ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”
Kabul ultimately fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, 2021 — roughly two weeks before the last US troops left Afghanistan. Following the Afghan government’s collapse, President Biden ordered a non-combatant evacuation mission that was marred by the deaths of 13 US service members and hundreds of Afghans in an Aug. 26, 2021, ISIS-K suicide bomb attack.
The committee is expected to press Blinken at least in part for additional information about internal State Department warnings urging against Biden’s plan to entirely withdraw the US from its 20-year war in Afghanistan without leaving at least a small contingent of troops in place.
The House panel has been in pursuit of such information since its investigation began in 2022. That’s when it began pursuing a dissent cable in which 23 diplomats reportedly warned of the Taliban’s rapid advance ahead of the withdrawal.
After months of back-and-forth with the State Department, the committee finally received a version of the report to review in 2023.
The committee in September released its own report on the disastrous pullout, which found in part that Biden was so hellbent on getting out of Afghanistan that he rebuked any Pentagon or State Department advice to the contrary, ignored the pleas of the Afghan government and disregarded objections from US allies.
“Despite President Biden’s public assertions to the contrary, our investigation has revealed the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the commander of US Central Command, the secretary of state, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission and United States Forces-Afghanistan all advised against withdrawing all US troops from the country — both during and after the interagency review,” the 350-page report said.
It also found that the Biden administration consistently lied to and misled the American public to support the president’s consequences-be-damned view that the US should swiftly end its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
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