According to Fox News, the US government has ignored a congressional subpoena for the third time, in relation to documents concerning the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Representative Mike McCaul, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, filed the subpoena requesting a dissent cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, a document that would have contained any concerns officials had about Biden’s withdrawal plans, as part of his committee’s investigation.
Despite the State Department, according to Fox News, offering to give McCaul and his committee a briefing on the document’s contents, McCaul refused, stating that he still had unanswered questions that could only be satisfied by seeing the document itself.
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US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, missed the original deadline to supply the documents in March, as well as the second deadline in April. McCaul set his latest deadline for May 1, but Blinken again refused to provide the documents, Fox News reports.
Blinken argued that releasing the dissent cable would risk the authenticity of future cables, stating at a hearing in March that “we not take any steps that could have a chilling effect on the willingness of others to come forward in the future, to express dissenting views on the policies that are being pursued.”
The US government has been fiercely criticised by many for its handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
