McCaul: Released Afghanistan Docs Another Attempt to Hide Admin’s Culpability in the Evacuation
Washington, D.C. – House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul released the following statement on his disappointment with the State Department’s handling and the content of documents released today relating to the Afghanistan After-Action Review (AAR). This comes in response to the chairman’s April 25, 2023 letter calling on the department to release an unclassified version of the AAR within 60 days. The department’s AAR was completed in March 2022 but was only provided to Congress on April 6, 2023, following Chairman McCaul’s threat of a subpoena.
“On April 25, I called upon the State Department to declassify its After-Action Review on Afghanistan within 60 days. The department failed to fulfill that request, instead choosing to release only a small portion of that document – 24 of 87 pages that were already unclassified – and completely omitted the narrative which forms the bulk of the report. There is no reason not to produce a declassified version of the full report, as much of it is marked ‘Sensitive but Unclassified’ or ‘Unclassified.’ This is another blatant attempt to hide the Biden administration’s culpability in the chaotic and deadly evacuation from Afghanistan.”
###