‘Bulls***’ excuses: McCaul threatens to subpoena State Department over Kabul dissent cable
Jerry Dunleavy
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A top House Republican dismissed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “bulls***” excuses for not handing over a July 2021 dissent cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and promised a subpoena against the State Department if it doesn’t comply by Monday’s end.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has argued since late 2021 that the Biden administration has been stonewalling his investigations into the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which ended with a chaotic evacuation, a Taliban takeover, hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies left behind, and 13 U.S. service members killed in an ISIS-K suicide bombing.
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McCaul has homed in on Blinken’s repeated refusal to hand over an internal dissent cable that was signed by two dozen U.S. Embassy members in Kabul and sent to the State Department on July 13, criticizing the State Department’s planning for the evacuation and warning that Kabul could collapse soon after the U.S. troop withdrawal. The Republican chairman told Blinken during a committee hearing last week that he would subpoena the State Department for the document if Blinken didn’t hand over the classified cable by close of business on Monday.
“State Department officials at the embassy in Kabul took the extraordinary measure to raise their dissent to the policy, sir, that you and your administration were effectuating. I think the American people need to see this. We need to know what their dissent was — why were they objecting to your policy in the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan?” McCaul told Blinken last week, adding that Afghanistan War veterans and Gold Star families “deserve to know” the answer. He added, “I have the subpoena. It’s right here. And I’m prepared to serve this.”
The summer 2021 dissent cable, sent to Blinken and the State Department’s director of policy planning, Salman Ahmed, reportedly warned about the collapse of the Afghan military and a potential near-term Taliban takeover, urging the State Department to speed up its evacuation planning, to do more to deal with the glut of special immigrant visa applications, and to help keep safe those who had assisted the United States in Afghanistan. Blinken insisted last week that “we are working to provide all the information that this committee is looking for” and that “this tradition of having a dissent cable is one that is cherished in the department and goes back decades.” Blinken added that “we are prepared to make the relevant information in that cable available, including through a briefing.”
“It is vital to me that we preserve the integrity of that process and that channel — that we not take any steps that could have a chilling effect on the willingness of others to come forward in the future,” Blinken said. He has used the “chilling effect” argument since 2021.
McCaul noted that the State Department had cited then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s own refusal to provide a dissent cable to Congress in the 1970s as precedent and said former U.S. Ambassador Tom Boyatt, the author of that dissent cable, is “emphatic about the need for the State Department to produce dissent channel cables.”
“In a statement he provided the committee, he says that any claim that providing them to Congress would have a ‘chilling effect,’ as your staff has claimed, is, and I quote him directly here, ‘bulls***.’ Not my words; those are the ambassador’s,” McCaul said.
Boyatt wrote to McCaul that a shouted “bulls***!” was his response to Kissinger’s claims that releasing the dissent cable could expose him to retribution because “I knew that any retribution would come from the State Department.” He wrote, “Henry Kissinger had a good reason to fight tooth and nail to suppress my Dissent and testimony. I was right about Cyprus and he was wrong.”
“So I believe this committee and the American people, after what happened — for God’s sakes after what happened in that dreadful August — need to see this cable and, sir, need you to respond,” McCaul told Blinken. “And if you fail, I am prepared to serve you with a subpoena.”
McCaul held another hearing earlier in March, and among the witnesses was Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was at Hamid Karzai International Airport and is now a double amputee as a result of the ISIS-K suicide bombing, which occurred as the Taliban and the Haqqanis provided security at HKIA.
Vargas-Andrews testified that, ahead of the ISIS-K attack, he asked for permission to take a shot at a suspicious man who matched the description of a potential ISIS-K suicide bomber, but that permission was denied. McCaul pointed to the testimony from Vargas-Andrews repeatedly when grilling Blinken.
The Republican chairman noted that the former Democratic leader of the committee requested the dissent cable back in August 2021, which McCaul had also done.
As chairman, McCaul sent the State Department the request again in January and repeatedly in March.
President Joe Biden dismissed the significance of the dissent cable right after Kabul fell.
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“We got all kinds of cables, all kinds of advice. If you notice, it ranged from this group saying — they didn’t say it would fall when it would fall, when it did fall — but saying it would fall to others, saying it wouldn’t happen for a long time, and they’d be able to sustain themselves through the end of the year,” Biden said on Aug. 20, 2021. “I made the decision. The buck stops with me.”
Blinken said in September 2021 that the cable expressed “real concerns” about the durability of the Afghan government forces after the U.S. left and called on the State Department to speed up the SIV process.