Washington, DC — Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, today issued a statement regarding Chairman McCaul’s release of two additional transcripts of closed-door interviews conducted as part of the Committee’s oversight of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The two closed-door interview transcripts released last night contain important testimony from two State Department officials, Counselor Derek Chollet and former Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brian McKeon.
Key excerpts from the testimonies can be found here (Chollet) and here (McKeon). Full transcripts can be found here (Chollet) and here (McKeon).
“Last night’s release of two more interview transcripts is incremental progress toward fulfilling the Chairman’s pledge to me that he would release all transcripts from the Afghanistan withdrawal investigation.
“I am disappointed to see Republicans continue their political games, distorting the contents of these full transcripts to suit a narrative that is not corroborated by witness testimony. They have attacked these two witnesses for what they did not know to distract from what answers the witnesses did provide, answers which refute the GOP narrative on the Biden Administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
“Counselor Chollet noted that, when he started his job in late January 2021, he saw ‘no evidence’ that President Trump’s prior troop withdrawals had been connected to any planning process (p. 63). In fact, he was shocked by the ‘very little planning’ that had been done under the Trump Administration to prepare for the withdrawal it had agreed to in the Doha Deal (p. 20). Chollet testified that the Biden Administration ‘accelerated’ planning for a possible withdrawal even prior to President Biden’s April 2021 announcement that he would finish the withdrawal his predecessor started (p. 97).
“Deputy Secretary McKeon’s testimony reveals that the Biden Administration worked to ‘revive and improve the SIV program’ (p. 78) and ‘revive the Refugee Admissions Program’ (p. 129) to get Afghan allies out, after these programs had been significantly constrained by the Trump Administration. McKeon also described focused efforts in 2021 to account for the risk that the Taliban ‘would take it out on U.S. forces by attacking them’ upon ignoring the withdrawal deadline (p. 111).
“With seven transcripts now released, I look forward to the remaining nine Afghanistan-related transcripts being released so the American public can have the facts, not the spin, on what our committee has learned throughout its oversight investigation.”
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