GOP-led House committee accuses Biden administration of misleading the public about Afghanistan withdrawal
Washington — Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee accused the Biden administration of misleading the public about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in a report reviewed by CBS News that detailed the panel's yearslong investigation into the 2021 pullout.
Republicans have routinely criticized President Biden over the deadly evacuation, in which 13 U.S. service members died in a suicide bombing in Kabul, and they are now also criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
"This was one of the deadliest days in Afghanistan. It could have been prevented if the State Department did its job by law and executed the plan of evacuation," the committee chairman, Michael McCaul said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "They left these 13 service men and women hanging out to dry… as a result of the, I'd say moral negligence on the part of the administration allowing this to happen."
The lengthy report, which will be released Monday but was shared exclusively with CBS News, is highly critical of Mr. Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, accusing the president and his administration of ignoring repeated warnings from military officials, national security advisers and U.S. allies about the risks associated with drawing American forces down to zero because he "prioritized politics and his personal legacy over America's national security interests."
"President Biden appears to have believed his historic position on Afghanistan would ensure his legacy," the report says, adding that Harris "appears to have been working in lockstep" with the president to withdraw all U.S. troops.
Mr. Biden has rarely commented on the Afghanistan withdrawal, but he said in September 2021 that he "was not going to extend this 'forever war,' and I was not extending a 'forever exit.'"
Last year, the White House released its own 12-page summary of a classified review of the Afghanistan exit that largely blamed the Trump administration for a deal it struck with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from the country by May 2021. The deal, known as the Doha Agreement, laid out a series of conditions for the Taliban to fulfill in order for U.S. forces to fully leave Afghanistan. Another report partially declassified and released by the State Department last year faulted both the Trump and Biden administrations for "insufficient" planning surrounding the withdrawal.
The White House's report said the intelligence community's assessment was that the Taliban would make gains only after a complete U.S. military withdrawal, and not before, but that's not what ultimately happened during the summer of 2021.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee report includes the overly optimistic statements spokespeople at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon made in the weeks and days leading up to the withdrawal, even as the Taliban was consolidating control of the country. One example cited a Pentagon statement that Kabul was not in imminent danger. Two days later, Kabul fell to the Taliban.
In its investigation, the committee has conducted 18 transcribed interviews with Biden administration officials — including former ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson, Gen. Austin Miller and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, according to the committee. The panel also received over 20,000 pages of documents from the State Department, some obtained through subpoenas, along with holding public hearigns since the probe began.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not testified in front of the committee for the report, and last week, McCaul subpoenaed Blinken for testimony in a public hearing on the withdrawal from Afghanistan taking place later this month.
The report comes days ahead of the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump, and with fewer than 60 days to go until Election Day. McCaul, a Texas Republican, said of the timing that it isn't related to politics, but comes as it's taken two years due to obstructions from the administration, adding that he's had to serve numerous subpoenas to gain documents and testimony.
"Why is it important right now?" McCaul said on Sunday. "Because the foreign policy's at stake. What happened after Afghanistan impacted the world."
The report includes recommendations to prevent a similar situation, including reestablishing a Crisis Bureau in the State Department and congressional action for the State Department and the Pentagon to maintain standard operating procedures. The State Department has undertaken 40 actions from its own report that they say address some of these recommendations.
McCaul said Sunday that the investigation will go "well after the election," adding that "we have a lot of unanswered questions" regarding the Defense Department and what happened on the ground during the airport attack.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote in a letter attached to the minority's report warning that he anticipated a "partisan" report from committee Republicans, who he claimed have attempted to "politicize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan." The New York Democrat argued that the Republican majority took "particular pains to avoid facts involving former President Donald Trump," while accusing them of ramping up criticism of Harris as Election Day nears.
In the minority report, which was also shared with CBS News ahead of its release, the committee Democrats defend the Biden administration's preparations for the withdrawal and response amid swiftly changing conditions. The report accuses the Trump administration of setting the withdrawal in motion without the "necessary interagency preparations or contingency planning for an orderly drawdown," along with conducting a policy handover to the Biden administration that was "shambolic and non-cooperative."
"President Trump initiated a withdrawal that was irreversible without sending significantly more American troops to Afghanistan to face renewed combat with the Taliban," Meeks said. "Rather than send more Americans to fight a war in Afghanistan, President Biden decided to end it."
The White House criticized the GOP-led report on Sunday, saying "Chairman McCaul's latest partisan report is based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation from the start." Sharon Yang, a White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations said in a statement that "ending our longest war was the right thing to do," adding that it strengthened the U.S. position and redirected resources to threats elsewhere.
"Because of the bad deal former President Trump cut with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan by May of 2021, President Biden inherited an untenable position," Yang said. "The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago."
The GOP-led report details the chaotic month of August 2021, including when Wilson fled with embassy staff, leaving the entire evacuation support operations team to fend for themselves. The diplomat took a two-week vacation in July and August, despite the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, the report says.
Local employees were "actively deprioritized" in the evacuation, and the report says many left the Kabul airport in tears. U.S. lawful permanent residents without American passports were beaten by the Taliban and denied entry, while there were also times when American citizens were beaten, including a 12-year-old boy from Virginia, the report says.
Jim DeHart, the consul general in charge of the special immigrant visas, described the scene at the airport as "apocalyptic." The report says the Taliban would whip and kill entire groups of Afghans who showed up at the airport, and U.S. service members were forbidden from intervening.
The committee largely blames the White House National Security Council and national security adviser Jake Sullivan for providing the talking points used during this period, accusing them of being "the source of the majority of that misinformation campaign." Sullivan and the National Security Council failed to solicit input from key U.S. officials in Afghanistan, the committee said. Republicans have requested that Sullivan testify, which he has so far declined to do. A White House official refuted the characterization, adding that the messaging reflected input from multiple government departments and agencies within the U.S. and in Kabul.
The report also faults Zalmay Khalilzad, who helped broker the Doha Agreement. Khalilzad was appointed by President Trump, and continued in his position as special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation under Mr. Biden.
The report accused Khalilzad of undermining the Afghan government by excluding it from negotiations, as well as undermining longstanding U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists. Top military officials said Khalilzad did not consult the U.S. military during negotiations and left them "in the dark" about the exact terms of the deal.
In his testimony before the committee in November 2023, Khalilzad "explained there was never a comprehensive assessment by the [Biden] administration on whether the Taliban was adhering to the Doha Agreement," according to the report. State Department documents obtained by the committee through a subpoena showed that the administration was aware in March 2021 that the Taliban was violating the agreement.
Still, the next month Mr. Biden announced the decision to withdraw the remaining 2,500 troops from Afghanistan. They would leave before the U.S. marked 20 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said.
Former State Department spokesperson Ned Price told the committee in December 2023 that the Taliban's adherence to the deal was "immaterial" to the administration's decision to withdraw.
Despite the decision to withdraw the U.S. military from Afghanistan, the State Department was determined to keep the U.S. embassy in Kabul, according to the report. The report criticizes the State Department's lack of preparation for the worst-case scenario that there would need to be an emergency evacuation while the Taliban controlled Kabul.
Multiple witnesses told the committee that planning for a non-combatant evacuation operation to evacuate the embassy, U.S. citizens and Afghans who had helped the U.S. military did not begin in earnest until August 2021, according to the report, after the Taliban had made sweeping gains across the country.
A State Department spokesperson said "officials who spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee explained during their hours-long interviews that there was extensive planning by the State Department for a possible diplomatic exit from Afghanistan. Planning began in April 2021, with multiple inter-agency and embassy exercises, using a range of scenarios. Statements or suggestions that the Department had the sole authority to activate, or that there was not planning, for a NEO are false."
The report alleges that when the evacuation began, the "State Department was not operating off of a plan," which led to chaotic decisions on the ground because of the pressure to evacuate as many people as possible.
The evacuation did help more than 124,000 people leave Afghanistan, but according to the report, not everyone who was eligible, like many of the Afghans who had helped the military in the 20-year war, were able to leave.
The committee said the Afghanistan withdrawal would have long-term consequences on U.S. national security.
"When Kabul fell, many drew comparisons to Saigon as, once again, U.S. helicopters were ferrying Americans off a U.S. embassy, abandoning longtime allies. But this investigation reveals what happened in Afghanistan was far worse," it said.
Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat who also appeared on "Face the Nation" on Sunday, strongly criticized the report and refuted the allegation that President Biden came to office with an "agenda" on Afghanistan.
"It is a politicized, cherry-picked report designed to do one thing, not shed light on a tragedy," Himes said. "It is going to be a nakedly partisan campaign thing."