US Congressman Michael McCaul has said in a letter to the State Department that his review of the July 2021 dissent cable on Afghanistan makes clear the extent to which the dissenters accurately predicted the situation on the ground and that the Biden Administration’s actions taken in response “were grossly inadequate”.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, McCaul, and Ranking Member Gregory Meeks were granted access to the cable last week, but the State Department has refused to give other members – including members on the committee who served in Afghanistan – the same access.
In a letter Monday night to the State Department, McCaul notes there “isn’t an adequate basis for the cable to be classified,” and called on the Biden administration to grant all House members access to the document to satisfy a March 28 subpoena he issued.
“I strongly urge you to do the right thing and provide access to the documents to all Committee members and to the American people,” wrote McCaul.
“Based on my review of the documents, I do not believe there is an adequate basis for them to be classified or that their release would have any negative impact on national security. To the contrary, their release would be first step in restoring Americans’ trust with the Administration’s foreign policy decisions,” he wrote.
He said “reading the original documents has significantly enhanced my understanding of the deteriorating conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and the direness of the dissenting officials’ warnings to the Department’s leadership.”
McCaul went on to say that a “review of the dissent cable makes clear the remarkable extent to which the dissenters accurately predicted the situation on the ground and the Department’s course of action in Afghanistan, and that the Department’s actions taken in response were grossly inadequate.
“Without divulging any classified information, and based on my review of the cable and response, I can unequivocally state that the summary and briefing which the Department provided the Committee are not an adequate substitute for reading the documents themselves,” he said.
He went on to state that he is writing the letter to reiterate the “acute need” for the State Department to provide Committee members with access to these documents.
McCaul said the original cable clearly conveys the urgency of the warnings the Department received from embassy officials [in July 2021] in a stark manner that the Department’s one-page summary could not and did not satisfactorily convey.
He reiterated the terms of the subpoena and pointed out that it compels the State Department to produce an unredacted Dissent Cable and the official response to it.
McCaul gave the State Department a June 9 deadline to provide all Committee Members access to the cable and response. He said however he had no objections to the signatories’ names being redacted.
He pointed out however that the Committee’s subpoena remains “in full force and effect”.
In conclusion, McCaul said: “The Department waited nearly two years after the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal to provide just two Members of Congress with access to documents showing the dire warnings by career officials that went unheeded, with tragic consequences. I strongly urge you to do the right thing and provide access to the documents to all Committee members and to the American people.”
