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 stated Blinken had refused earlier requests to seem earlier than the committee.
CNN has reached out to the State Division for remark.
McCaul has repeatedly referred to 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 last 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 an announcement, stated the report “will function an indictment on the administration’s reckless refusal to correctly put together for the withdrawal, their chilly indifference to the security 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 released its Afghanistan After Action Review report, which discovered that the selections to drag all US troops from Afghanistan had detrimental penalties.
“The choices of each President (Donald) Trump and President (Joe) Biden to finish the U.S. army mission in Afghanistan had critical penalties for the viability of the Afghan authorities and its safety,” the unclassified report stated.
“These selections are past the scope of this evaluate, however the AAR (After Motion Overview) crew discovered that in each administrations there was inadequate senior-level consideration of worst-case eventualities and the way rapidly these may comply with,” it stated.
The committee has performed 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 prime State Division officers offered hours of closed-door testimony to the committee, offering extra on the “unprecedented” scenario within the last 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 techniques on the fly alongside the US army and with continually altering enter on the bottom and coming from DC, as CNN has reported.