The US Congress’s House Foreign Affairs Committee has issued a subpoena to Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, for the “Afghanistan AAR files,” the collection of underlying documents used to produce the State Department’s After-Action Review (AAR).
The committee has been requesting the files since January 2023, but the department has refused to produce them. In a letter to Blinken, committee chairman, Michael McCaul, said that the department’s “obstruction” has forced the committee to issue a subpoena.
McCaul said: “The department’s refusal to produce these files is unacceptable. The American people deserve to know what happened in Afghanistan, and the committee needs these files to conduct a thorough and independent investigation.”
The committee is looking into the planning and execution of the withdrawal, as well as the role of the State Department in the process.
The subpoena requires the department to produce the files by 10:00 am ET on Tuesday, July 25. If the department fails to comply, the committee could hold the department in contempt of Congress
