House Republicans threaten Blinken with contempt over Afghan cable

The Republican-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee threatened Secretary of State Antony Blinken with contempt of Congress if he doesn’t turn over a diplomatic cable related to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In a letter dated May 5, committee Chairman Michael McCaul said the State Department’s efforts to comply with a March 28 subpoena seeking an unredacted copy of a so-called dissent channel cable and the official response were “insufficient.” He gave Blinken until Thursday to hand over the cable.

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“Should you fail to comply, the Committee is prepared to take the necessary steps to enforce its subpoena, including holding you in contempt of Congress and/or initiating a civil enforcement proceeding,” McCaul said in the letter.

The State Department said it had tried to work with McCaul on the issue, giving the committee a classified briefing on the cable as well as a written summary of its contents. Spokesman Vedant Patel called the latest threat “unnecessary and unproductive.”

The dissent channel allows US diplomats around the world to comment on and criticize US foreign policy directly to superiors in Washington. Blinken has argued that providing the actual cable, rather than summarizing it or briefing on its contents, might discourage diplomats from using the channel in the future.

The exchange is the latest back-and-forth on the highly charged issue of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban led to an effective hard end date for the US combat mission there.

As the US readied its departure, Taliban insurgents quickly overran the US-backed national army, while the US and other nations organized last-minute airlifts of nationals and Afghan support personnel. That chaotic operation was captured most vividly by images of desperate Afghans running alongside and climbing aboard a US military transport plane as it taxied along the runway at Kabul’s airport.

Since Republicans won the House in midterm elections and took control of the Foreign Affairs Committee, lawmakers such as McCaul have seized on the Afghan withdrawal — as well as a terror attack during the exit that killed US service members — to criticize the Biden administration’s foreign policy record. That includes an interim report on the Afghan withdrawal titled “A ‘Strategic Failure.’”

Read more: Senior US lawmaker slams State Department for ‘blatant lies’ on Afghanistan probe