The top lawmaker on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee has called for National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to testify publicly on Afghanistan, sending a letter to the White House warning that he would “compel” Sullivan to testify if he did not cooperate.
The top lawmaker on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee has called for National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to testify publicly on Afghanistan, sending a letter to the White House warning that he would “compel” Sullivan to testify if he did not cooperate.
The letter represents the latest salvo in a sweeping investigation by Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC), into the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that ended in a U.S. defeat after two decades of war and led to the Taliban takeover of the country.
In his letter, McCaul asserted that the Biden administration’s National Security Council (NSC) played an outsized role in carrying out the decision to leave Afghanistan and executing the withdrawal, which was marked by a rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the chaotic—and at times deadly—attempt to evacuate U.S. forces and personnel as well as tens of thousands of Afghan allies. Thousands of other Afghan allies who were promised sanctuary by the United States were left behind, and some are still trying to escape.
“Crucial questions remain, including the role of the NSC in usurping congressionally designated responsibilities of the State Department and Defense Department,” McCaul wrote in a letter to Sullivan, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy and verified by congressional aides and administration officials familiar with the matter. “Evidence gathered by the Committee in this investigation points to Mr. Sullivan as the principal architect of Afghanistan policy,” the letter reads, and it gives a deadline of Aug. 30 for the NSC to arrange a date for Sullivan’s public testimony before the Foreign Affairs Committee. “If Mr. Sullivan chooses not to appear voluntarily, I am prepared to compel his testimony.”
A White House spokesperson declined to say whether Sullivan would appear before the committee. “Ending our longest war was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result,” and the decision “has put us in a stronger position to address the challenges of the future and the threats we face today,” said Sharon Yang, the White House spokesperson, in a statement to Foreign Policy.
“When it comes to the Chairman’s inquiry into the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Administration has taken extraordinary measures to be cooperative, including making senior officials available for hearings, providing briefings for Members and staff, making 18 current and former officials available for transcribed interviews, and producing tens of thousands of pages of documents, and we will respond directly to the Chairman regarding his latest request,” Yang added.
Democrats have criticized McCaul’s investigation as a partisan cudgel to criticize the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw and contend that the foundation for the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan was laid during former President Donald Trump’s administration, when Trump opened withdrawal negotiations with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government.
That decision was met with backlash and confusion inside Trump’s administration and among veteran U.S. national security experts at the time. One controversial part of the former president’s strategy for negotiations involved agreeing to have the Afghan government release up to 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison as part of an exchange to start intra-Afghan negotiations, part of what became known as the Doha agreement.
“That Republicans are attempting to relitigate press briefings from three years ago, which have long been a matter of public record, shows their desperation to grab headlines in the absence of having uncovered any new facts,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the HFAC Committee, in a recent statement after committee investigators interviewed former White House press secretary Jen Psaki in July over her role in communicating the White House’s strategy and response to the Afghanistan withdrawal.
The full 235-page transcript of Psaki’s interview with committee investigators is publicly available, though some other transcripts of current and former officials interviewed as part of the investigation have not been made publicly available.
McCaul and a majority of other Republican lawmakers pin the blame directly on Biden for the botched withdrawal and U.S. defeat. “By choosing an arbitrary withdrawal date and making no effort to ensure the Taliban upheld the Doha Agreement’s conditions—such as protecting women’s rights—the Biden administration emboldened the Taliban and allowed the country to become a terrorist safe haven,” McCaul said in a statement published on Aug. 15, the three-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal.
Monday marked the third anniversary of the so-called Abbey Gate bombing, a terrorist attack at Afghanistan’s Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021—at the height of the withdrawal—that killed 13 U.S. service members and some 170 Afghan civilians trying to flee the country. Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery on Monday for a wreath-laying ceremony for the U.S. service members killed.
McCaul has been conducting an investigation into the U.S. withdrawal for nearly three years, but he only gained subpoena power in the probe in January 2023, when Republicans gained control of the House and McCaul became the HFAC chairman. An interim investigation report released in August 2022 determined, among other findings, that some elite U.S.-trained Afghan special forces were forced to flee for their lives to Iran after the Taliban takeover. The report identified this as a security risk, as they could divulge sensitive U.S. military training, tactics, and intelligence to the Iranian government.
McCaul issued or threatened to issue subpoenas multiple times against the Biden administration throughout the course of the investigation in order to obtain documents on the withdrawal.
Jerry Dunleavy, a former top investigator for McCaul, said earlier this month that he resigned in protest over the direction of the investigation and alleged that McCaul did not do enough to hold military leaders to account in the course of the investigation.
Emily Cassil, a communications advisor for McCaul, said in response that the committee has conducted “thousands of hours of work” and examined “thousands of pages of documents” as well as testimony from numerous current and former senior administration officials “that reveal the Biden administration’s utter failure to properly plan for the withdrawal.”
“When our report is released, it will serve as a crucial step towards finally getting accountability for those responsible,” Cassil said.
Correction, Aug. 27, 2024: A previous version of this article misstated the date of the deadline that McCaul gave Sullivan to appear before the committee.
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