‘Embarrassing’ Afghan dissent cable showed warnings ignored by Biden administration: GOP
Jerry Dunleavy
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A July 2021 dissent cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul gave the Biden administration a critical warning the Afghanistan withdrawal was in trouble, and the “embarrassing” emergency message must be made public, according to GOP lawmakers who viewed it.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), a former Army Green Beret who served in Afghanistan, told the Washington Examiner that “embarrassing does not mean it should be classified, and there is no reason it should be classified.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, under threat of contempt of Congress, allowed the full House Foreign Affairs Committee to view the dissent cable this week, but it remains classified and inaccessible to the public.
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“I see no reason in reading it that it should be classified, in terms of protecting sources and methods. I think it should be released,” Waltz said. “The American people should see it, the Gold Star families should certainly see it, and while I think it will be very embarrassing for the administration, it would do no damage to national security.”
Republicans have argued since late 2021 that the Biden administration has been stonewalling congressional 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.
“The other question that I want an answer to — were [national security adviser] Jake Sullivan and the president briefed on the warnings, which were very dire, that were coming from the diplomats in the field?” Waltz said. “Because either they were briefed and the president was briefed, which I would certainly hope he was in the middle of this crisis, and he moved forward anyway, or they chose not to brief him. Which is it? Either way, that’s unacceptable.”
The State Department announced in May that it would allow Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member, to look at the cable after the GOP had moved toward holding Blinken in contempt over his refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena.
The cable is known to have criticized the State Department’s planning for the Afghanistan evacuation and warned that Kabul could collapse soon after the United States withdrew its troops.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told the Washington Examiner the cable “is a comprehensive and detailed warning, as well as a prediction of what would happen if the Biden admin didn’t change course.”
Issa’s communications director, Jonathan Wilcox, also told the Washington Examiner the cable “obliterates the administration’s big lie on Afghanistan — that this could not have been foretold, nobody could have seen this coming, nothing could have done to prevent it.” He added that “we know it was received, we know it wasn’t followed, and their personnel on the ground saw this, reported it, warned them, and were ignored.”
Issa also insisted that the fight was not over.
“Gaining access to the dissent cable is a credit to Chairman McCaul, but make no mistake: This isn’t the beginning of the end of our drive for Afghanistan accountability,” Issa said. “It’s the end of the beginning. Nothing ends here. Our commitment to the families has to be strong enough to accept nothing short of full disclosure.”
McCaul made it clear on Memorial Day that, despite the State Department letting him and Meeks view the dissent cable, contempt for Blinken was on the table if the State Department did not allow all committee members the same opportunity.
GOP members of the committee, many of them veterans of the war in Afghanistan, told the Washington Examiner last month that the prior concession by Blinken was not nearly good enough, and McCaul agreed and revived his contempt threat until the full committee could view the cable.
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee, is a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who lost both his legs in Afghanistan in 2010. He posted a video about the cable after viewing it.
“These individuals that were on the ground in Afghanistan warned of everything that Americans saw play out,” Mast said. “But most specifically, they warned that they could see as clear as day that the administration was making policy decisions based upon what they wanted the American people to think, but that would never be reality. That was not reality, could not be reality, and would never be reality — that is the way the administration was making policy decisions — and if they continued to do that, then people would die.”
Mast continued, “That was their warning, and that was exactly what happened.”
The 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 near-term Taliban takeover, urging the State Department to speed up its evacuation planning, do more to deal with the glut of special immigrant visa applications, and help safeguard Afghans who had assisted U.S. forces in the country.
“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 told McCaul in March as he initially blocked the committee from viewing the cable.
Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), an Afghan war veteran and a former part of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, said this week that the release of the cable “is a step in the right direction towards getting answers to what really transpired” but that “I won’t stop fighting until there is accountability for the catastrophic decisions made during our withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to lives lost.”
Mills added that “the 13 Gold Star families and the American people deserve transparency about what really happened leading up to that catastrophic event” and that “Blinken and the Biden administration have left the American people in the dark and avoided taking responsibility for the 13 service members who lost their lives.”
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President Joe Biden dismissed the significance of the cable right after Kabul fell.
“We got all kinds of cables, all kinds of advice,” Biden said on Aug. 20, 2021. “I made the decision. The buck stops with me.”