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House Republicans Subpoena Blinken for Key Afghan Dissent Cable
The congressional grilling of the Biden administration over the Afghanistan fiasco is just getting started.
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul issued a subpoena for U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to produce a document related to the collapse of the Afghan government, FP’s Robbie Gramer reports.
A top Republican lawmaker issued a subpoena for U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to produce a sensitive government document related to the collapse of the Afghan government, escalating a monthslong battle between the Biden administration and Congress over a Republican-led investigation into the final days and months of the war in Afghanistan. Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, aims to force Blinken to deliver a confidential dissent cable written by nearly two dozen U.S. diplomats in July 2021, related to the precarious state of the Afghan government, and accused Blinken of stonewalling the committee as it investigates the chaotic last stages of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan just a month later. The State Department has denied accusations of stonewalling and insists it is working to cooperate with the committee while following regulations on not releasing dissent cables. McCaul sent the subpoena to Blinken on Tuesday. The brewing political fight between the Republican-controlled House and the Biden administration spotlights the unique role that the State Department’s dissent channel plays in U.S. foreign policy. The dissent channel is a specialized system that allows diplomats of any rank to send a cable registering formal protest directly to the top echelons of the secretary of state’s team. The system carries outsized importance in the culture of the American diplomatic corps, even if it rarely changes U.S. policy.
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