A House committee investigating the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is escalating its demand for the Biden administration to turn over documents that could shed light on the messy end of America's longest war.
In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken released Tuesday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, said he would issue a subpoena to force the State Department to hand over documents if the agency does not provide them by Wednesday afternoon.
“Over 18 months after the fall of Kabul, numerous key questions about the withdrawal remain unanswered,” McCaul wrote in the 10-page letter. “The committee has an obligation to investigate how these grievous failures occurred and determine what actions, including potential legislation, are necessary to help prevent a similar catastrophe from occurring again in the future.”
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While McCaul previously requested reams of documents, he is specifically demanding three “priority items” before his new deadline: a “dissent cable” U.S. diplomats in Afghanistan reportedly sent to department leadership weeks before Kabul's collapse warning that the Afghan government was unstable; an after-action report the department conducted on its role in the withdrawal; and versions of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul's Emergency Action Plan from the…
