House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul threatened late Monday to move to hold Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in contempt of Congress unless the Biden administration forks over previously unseen material on Afghanistan.
McCaul (R-Texas) wants to see internal documents that the State Department used to craft an after-action review of the botched August 2021 withdrawal.
“The law does not afford the State Department blanket authority to hide behind ‘Executive Branch confidentiality interests’ to obstruct Congress’s access to the truth,” McCaul wrote in a stern letter to Blinken.
The State Department report, released in March 2022 was based on more than 150 interviews and documents a slew of failures that led to the chaotic pullout, which was blighted by the deaths of 13 American service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport.
“The Committee has pursued the [review] team’s interview notes in good faith and with every effort to compromise,” McCaul wrote. “The Department has not negotiated in good faith and has failed to both comply with the Committee’s July 2023 subpoena and fulfill your August 11 personal commitment to cooperate with this investigation.”
McCaul gave Blinken a deadline of March 6 to cough up the material.
Ultimately, the full House of Representatives will have to approve any motion to hold Blinken in contempt. From there, the Justice Department would weigh whether or not to pursue charges against America’s top diplomat.
In July of last year, the committee slapped Blinken with a subpoena demanding underlying documentation used in the after-action review.
McCaul, who has battled with Blinken repeatedly over Afghanistan material, has also claimed that Blinken assured him personally on Aug. 11 that the secretary intended to cooperate with a separate demand for transcribed interviews with officials who helped produce the after-action report.
McCaul also needed months of persistence last year to obtain a dissent cable that US diplomats sent to Blinken in July 2021 opposing the withdrawal.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.