WASHINGTON —
U.S. Representative Michael McCaul's office recently released detailed findings of an investigation into the chaotic August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has been criticized for poor planning.
Speaking with Saba Shah Khan of VOA's Urdu Service, McCaul, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denied that the latest probe was a "political exercise" that coincides with a tight presidential race. He said its purpose was to ensure that "an evacuation will never happen like this again."
On Tuesday, the committee's ranking Democrat, Representative Gregory Meeks from New York, issued a statement criticizing the report as a collection of “cherry-picked witness testimony” that excludes “anything unhelpful to a predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal.”
“The Majority did not involve the Minority in this report, nor have they even provided a draft copy to us,” he wrote.
In the following interview, McCaul accuses White House officials of “stonewalling” the investigation and mentions his September 3 decision to subpoena Secretary of State Antony Blinken for testimony even though findings of the full report were released Monday.
“We’re still not finished with the investigation,” McCaul told VOA on Tuesday.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller last week issued a statement to The Hill stating that Blinken was unable to testify on the dates requested and offered "reasonable alternatives" to comply with McCaul's request.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Why is the Foreign Affairs Committee report on U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan being released now? With less than two months left to Election Day, some would say the report is politically driven.
It's been three years since the ... chaotic evacuation. The first year, the majority — at that time, the Democrats — did nothing to investigate. So, I've had two years to put this very comprehensive, complete, historic account of what happened together. In the meantime, we served many subpoenas. We've had to threaten contempt proceedings. And I would have liked to have had this done a year ago. The administration has been, you know, stonewalling us and slowing down the delivery of the report. In fact, we're still not finished with the investigation.
In light of the report, what do you think the Biden administration could have done differently to avoid the chaos and mayhem that unfolded during the withdrawal?
That’s one of the key takeaways here. The military is on the ground doing their job. That's to pull out by July [as dictated by a predetermined date of withdrawal negotiated by the prior administration]. The intelligence community sees what's happening. They report this information. It gets a little bit manipulated when it gets to the higher level. And then it is amplified that everything's fine in Afghanistan, when, in fact, on the ground, the conditions are getting very bad.
The State Department is required by law to come out with an evacuation plan called the NEO [Noncombatant Evacuation Operations]. They kept resisting this because they thought evacuation means failure. So, they wait until the very day that the Taliban is overrunning Kabul before they finally initiate an evacuation plan. That is why it was so chaotic. That is why the 13 servicemen and women were left behind — with Taliban, by the way — to work with them to help Afghans get out.
The report says that [President Joe] Biden kept Zalmay Khalilzad on as special representative [for Afghanistan reconciliation from September 2018 to October 2021], making it clear Biden embraced the [February 2020] Doha Accord. Sir, was that a good decision?
The complaint I had — and Zal and I, you know, I've known him for a long time, and I have respect for him — but he did not include the Afghan government in the Doha talks. So, it was just between Zal Khalilzad and the Taliban. That sent a terrible message to the Afghan government. They felt like they were sidelined. ... The Doha Agreement had conditions. Most important is the Taliban cannot hit U.S. forces. They were continuing to do that. But according to President Biden's press guy [former State Department spokesperson Ned Price], Doha was “immaterial” as to the evacuation. He was going to go to zero — that means zero troops, zero contractors, zero air power — one way or the other. That was going to happen. He made that decision on day one.
The [Doha] negotiations and the decision to leave Afghanistan was made during the Trump administration. Chairman, do you think....