Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., condemned the Biden administration for ignoring the Afghanistan dissent cable after he finally viewed it Tuesday.
Issa, a House Foreign Affairs Committee member, informed Fox News that Biden's "embarrassing" decision to ignore the Dissent Channel document stoked the crisis.
"This 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," Issa's office shared. "We know it was received. We know it wasn't followed. Their personnel on the ground saw this, reported it, warned them, and were ignored."
The channel is run jointly by the Department of State and the Agency for International Development, serving as a framework for Foreign Service officers and other U.S. citizens to voice disapproval of current policies anonymously.
One of the channel's cables, viewed by Issa and other lawmakers this week, was signed by 23 officials on July 13, 2021, and warned of a rapid Taliban offensive after the U.S. withdrawal that came to pass a month later.
The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the cable's existence in 2021 and eventually became a focus of the new Republican House majority a year later.
But Secretary of State Antony Blinken initially side-stepped the House Committee on Foreign Affairs' demand to see the cable, citing anonymity concerns, before recently agreeing to show it to panel members.
"What we saw was their prediction, with great accuracy, of exactly what was going to happen and what the outcome would be if they did not change their directions," Issa said.
"We saw a response from the office of the State Department saying, 'We hear you, and we agree, basically, we don't take it lightly.' And then, obviously, we know what they did and didn't do, which was totally insufficient for the warning that was given," he added.
The congressman then confirmed that, although they redacted specific names, the panel knows that many were senior executive surrogates — the highest level in the State Department.
According to Issa, there was also "no expectation by the State Department that there would be sustainability" in the region, with the department duly aware that U.S. equipment would fall into the Taliban's hands.
Issa said he believes the next step for his committee is to get the document declassified, specifically for the 13 U.S. service members killed in an ISIS suicide bombing during final departures at Kabul International Airport.
"This is classified because it's embarrassing," Issa insisted. "There's absolutely no reason the American people shouldn't see it, and I will not rest until they do."
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