Republican Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul gave Secretary of State Antony Blinken a deadline of Monday afternoon to turn over a key document related to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan or face a subpoena for the file.
The demand for the dissent cable sent by US diplomats in Kabul in mid-July 2021 is part of McCaul’s push to investigate the chaotic departure of US military and government from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war.
The frenzied final weeks, during which a suicide bomber attacked the Kabul airport and killed 13 US service members and more than 100 Afghans, has been under immense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers since unfolding.
McCaul has repeatedly warned that he would issue a subpoena if the State Department failed to share what he determined were three priority items: the cable, the after action report looking at the withdrawal, and the embassy evacuation plans. A committee aide said they received the last item, and Blinken said Wednesday that the after action report would be given to Congress in the coming weeks.
At a committee hearing Thursday, McCaul told Blinken, “I’m gonna give you until the close of business on Monday to produce that dissent cable to this committee and this Congress so the American people can see what the employees at the Embassy in Kabul were thinking about your policy that they dissented from.”
“This committee and the American people – after what happened, for God’s sake after what happened in that dreadful August – need to see this cable,” the Texas Republican said. “We need you to respond, and if you fail, I am prepared to serve you with the subpoena.”
Blinken seemed to indicate that the Department would not willingly hand over the dissent cable document itself, and instead offered “to make the relevant information in that cable available, including through a briefing or some other mechanism.”
“By our regulations, these cables may only be shared with senior officials in the department,” Blinken explained.
“That’s to protect the integrity of the process, to make sure we don’t have a chilling effect on those who might want to come forward knowing that they will have their identities protected, and that they can do so again without fear or favor,” he added.
The chairman rebuffed Blinken’s argument for the need for an “accommodation” on the matter, countering that Blinken does “not have an executive privilege on this cable.”
McCaul said the State Department had “cited then Secretary Henry Kissinger’s refusal to produce a dissent cable to Congress in the 1970s as a precedent.” The author of that cable, according to McCaul, said that claims that sharing the cable would have a chilling effect are “bullsh*t.”
CNN’s Christian Sierra contributed to this report.