The State Department missed a deadline again Monday to provide the House Foreign Affairs Committee with files related to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
The hard pass is the third time the department has ignored a set deadline by the committee, according to the Washington Examiner.
A department spokesperson told the Examiner that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would continue to work with the House panel while upholding the privacy of all parties.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, had subpoenaed the department for critical correspondence from the Agency for International Development's Dissent Channel.
The July 13, 2021, cable was signed by over two dozen U.S. Embassy members in Kabul, warning of the Afghan military's ill-preparedness to fend off the Taliban about a month before it became a reality.
But the State Department, in conjunction with the American Foreign Service Association, is hesitant to give Congress access to the cable due to fears that it could compromise privacy and delegitimize the channel.
"It is vital to me that we preserve the integrity of that process and of 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, to express dissenting views on the policies that are being pursued," Blinken said.
McCaul has thus far rejected State Department attempts to circumvent providing the cable. That includes an offer for a written summary and private briefing.
McCaul upped the ante last week, urging the State Department to release an 87-page After-Action Review from March 2022 on the controversial pull-out.
"Despite having been completed for over a year, this document has yet to be shared with the American people," McCaul said of the AAR. "The department only provided this document to Congress in response to the committee's imminent threat of a subpoena."
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