    [House Hearing, 118 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                     AN ASSESSMENT OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S
                     WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN BY AMER-
                     ICA'S TOP DIPLOMAT
    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                         U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               December 11, 2024

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 118-137

                                   __________

            Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                    Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/,
                              http://docs.house.gov,
                           or http://www.govinfo.gov

                                   __________

                         U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    63-406 PDF                   WASHINGTON : 2026
    =======================================================================

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                       MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Chairman
    CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     GREGORY MEEKS, New York, Ranking
    JOE WILSON, South Carolina               Member
    SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            BRAD SHERMAN, California
    DARRELL ISSA, California             GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
    ANN WAGNER, Missouri                 WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
    BRIAN MAST, Florida                  AMI BERA, California
    TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee              JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
    MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee             DINA TITUS, Nevada
    ANDY BARR, Kentucky                  TED LIEU, California
    RONNY JACKSON, Texas                 SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
    YOUNG KIM, California                DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
    MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida        COLIN ALLRED, Texas
    BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan              ANDY KIM, New Jersey
    AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,       SARA JACOBS, California
        American Samoa                   KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
    FRENCH HILL, Arkansas                SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK,
    WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio                    Florida
    JIM BAIRD, Indiana                   GREG STANTON, Arizona
    MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida               MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
    THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey         JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
    MICHAEL LAWLER, New York             JONATHAN JACKSON, Illinois
    CORY MILLS, Florida                  SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
    RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              JIM COSTA, California
    NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas               JASON CROW, Colorado
    JOHN JAMES, Michigan                 KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
    KEITH SELF, Texas                    BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
    RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
    JAMES C. MOYLAN, Guam

                    Brendan Shields, Majority Staff Director

                     Sajit Gandhi, Minority Staff Director
                                     ------
                             C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                                  ----------

                                REPRESENTATIVES

                                                                       Page
    Opening Statement of Chairman Michael T. McCaul..................     1
    Opening Statement of Ranking Member Gregory Meeks................     4

                                   WITNESSES

    Statement of Hon. Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, U.S.
      Department of State............................................     8
      Prepared Statement.............................................    11

                                    APPENDIX

    Hearing Notice...................................................    96
    Hearing Minutes..................................................    97
    Hearing Attendance...............................................    98

                            Material for the Record

    Rep. Connolly material for the record............................    99
    GWBI statement for the record....................................   100
    AFghanEvac statement for the record..............................   102

    AN ASSESSMENT OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN BY
                             AMERICA'S TOP DIPLOMAT

                                  ----------

                          Wednesday, December 11, 2024

                              House of Representatives,
                                  Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.

        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:14 a.m., in
    room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael T.
    McCaul (chairman of the committee) presiding.
        Chairman McCaul. The Committee on Foreign Affairs will come
    to order. The purpose of today's hearing is to hear directly
    from Secretary Blinken, America's top diplomat, and get his
    assessment of his State Department's withdrawal from
    Afghanistan.
        I now recognize myself for an opening statement.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MICHAEL T. McCAUL

        I want to say good morning to all the members. As most of
    you know, this will be my last hearing as chairman of this very
    important committee that I say is the committee of war and
    peace.
        It goes back to the Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin
    was the first chairman historically, and it has been an honor--
    it has probably been the honor of my entire congressional
    career of 20 years to serve as your chairman on both sides of
    the aisle--Republican and Democrat.
        I am extremely proud of everything that we have
    accomplished, most of it on a bipartisan basis. We have been
    the most productive committee in the 118th Congress.
        And I want to thank Mr. Meeks, my ranking member, but he is
    more than that. He is more than a colleague. He is my partner
    and friend. We have worked together on matters of foreign
    policy, national security.
        Most of the time we agree, and when we don't, we agree to
    disagree civilly, and that is the way it should be.
        And I would say I am going to miss you, but I will be
    around. I will still be known as Mr. Chairman, and I plan to be
    a voice of reason in the next Congress and also a voice--strong
    voice--on national security, sir, and foreign policy.
        And, sir, I want to thank you for your service as well, and
    I know you are getting ready to go to the Middle East with the
    fall of Assad in Syria, which I believe brings great
    opportunities to the United States but also our allies around
    the world for freedom and democracy.
        I also want to congratulate the incoming chair of the
    subcommittee--chair of Oversight and Accountability, Chairman
    Brian Mast, who was selected as the next chair by the steering
    committee.
        Mr. Mast, thank you for your service, not only to this
    committee--not only to this committee but to the Nation, your
    service in Afghanistan, your sacrifice that we all know every
    time we see you. I pledge my support to you, and I hope we are
    going to work hand in glove in the next Congress to do good
    things, and congratulations to you.
        Finally, 5 o'clock will be a get-together to rename this
    committee hearing room as the Benjamin Franklin Committee
    Hearing Room, and we will also--it will also be a Christmas
    party and also my farewell address to the committee. So I hope
    to see all of you there.
        And, with that, I would like to begin this hearing.
        Mr. Secretary, I am pleased that you are here today, and
    over the last 4 years, we have enjoyed a, I think, cordial
    relationship. We have worked together on many, many issues of
    great importance.
        However, today, your appearance here today, and I have to
    be honest with you, it comes after 6 months after I have
    requested your testimony following my comprehensive report into
    the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
        I have constitutional authority, and I have to--I have that
    constitutional authority that I, as chairman, am responsible
    for, and I also have a responsibility to the American people
    and to the 13 servicemen and--women who died, and all the many
    other servicemembers who died, and the Afghan allies left
    behind who died, and the women who were left behind.
        This, under Article I of the Constitution, is Congress'
    greatest role of oversight and transparency.
        I would have to say, I have been disappointed that you have
    ignored my requests for your testimony, forcing me to subpoena
    you, not once but twice. And, rather than accept my good-faith
    efforts to accommodate your schedule, you failed to show up for
    your September hearing.
        And I don't like this probably even more than you do, but
    while your presence here is duly noted, you are showing up only
    after violating a congressional subpoena, triggering
    consideration of a resolution holding you in contempt of
    Congress.
        I have been more than accommodating during the process, but
    you and your staff have fought this committee every step of the
    way. The fact you are here today, on one of the last weeks of
    the 118th Congress, clearly demonstrates my commitment to this
    critical issue, even in the face of persistent delays.
        You insist you have appeared before Congress 14 times, but
    the truth be told, that number is really misleading. You have
    not appeared once during my chairmanship to testify about the
    disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal before this committee.
        Twice you have appeared on the budget. And, as the head of
    the State Department, it was your duty to appear before this
    committee to inform us about legislative solutions to the
    issues outlined in my Afghanistan report so that this never
    happens again.
        My only goal has been to work together with you, sir, to
    help prevent that such another catastrophic event, to prevent
    that from ever, ever happening again.
        Instead, you prioritized this administration's political
    agenda, touting the failed withdrawal as a success.
        On April 14, 2021, President Biden announced his decision
    to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter what the cost. ``Go to
    zero'' were his words.
        As Secretary of State, you are entrusted with the
    protection of American interests and citizens overseas. You
    ignored the Taliban's violations of the Doha Agreement. You
    ignored objections by our NATO and Afghan allies.
        You ignored the security risks in keeping the U.S. Embassy
    in Kabul open, despite warnings from our top military advisers.
        You ignored the warnings of collapse by your own personnel
    as evidenced by the July 2021 Dissent Channel cable, one that I
    call a cry for help that was unanswered.
        And now, tragically, more than 3 years after this
    administration's disastrous withdrawal, you are finally here to
    take responsibility.
        Mr. Secretary, I have reviewed thousands of pages of
    documents produced in discovery by the State Department. I have
    conducted 18 transcribed interviews, led eight hearings on the
    Afghanistan withdrawal. I do not take the issue of subpoenas
    lightly, but today's hearing, and your Department, provided
    these only after the committee was forced to use its oversight
    powers.
        My comprehensive investigation reveals that President
    Biden's unconstitutional surrender to the Taliban, that you had
    plenty of opportunity to plan for the inevitable collapse of
    Afghanistan.
        Instead, even with the warning bells sounding loudly,
    ringing loudly, you denied the imminent and dangerous threats
    to American interests, American citizens, and our decade-long
    Afghan partners, all the while the Taliban captured province
    after province on their march to Kabul.
        And, rather than step up, as America's chief diplomat, you
    delegated this responsibility. And, as the Taliban surrendered
    Kabul--was surrendered to the Taliban on August the 14th, 2021,
    you, sir, were vacationing in East Hampton, New York.
        I do not say that with delight. I say that as a fact.
        Mr. Secretary, to preserve optics, you sacrificed the
    safety and security of our servicemembers, diplomats, citizens,
    and allies. You treated terrorists as diplomatic partners and
    created an environment ripe for chaos.
        And, on October 26, 2021, an ISIS-K terrorist detonated a
    suicide bomb at the Hamid Karzai International Airport,
    murdering 13 heroic U.S. servicemembers and over 170 Afghan
    civilians.
        My heart goes out to the Gold Star Families, and I pray for
    them every day, every day I have been chairman of this
    committee.
        It was the deadliest day for the United States' presence in
    Iraq--I mean, in Afghanistan, since 2012. And the saddest
    thing, sir, it did not have to happen.
        Mr. Secretary, it is time that we, again, remember the
    fundamental principles of diplomats. Peace may only be obtained
    through strength. This catastrophic event was the beginning of
    a failed foreign policy that lit the world on fire.
        I welcome your testimony, and I hope we take the
    opportunity for you first to take accountability but, second,
    for us to move forward so this never happens again.
        As you are aware, we cannot fix a problem without first
    admitting that there is a problem. I have dedicated my tenure
    as chairman of this important committee on this very important
    issue, and your testimony here today will help guide the work
    of the next Congress and the incoming administration.
        The American people, the U.S. servicemembers, the veterans,
    and, most importantly, our Gold Star Families who are present
    here today, deserve better. They deserve your candor,
    commitment, and transparency.
        With that, the chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr.
    Meeks.

           OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER GREGORY MEEKS

        Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me first say to
    you that it has been a distinct honor, privilege, and pleasure
    of working with you. We have worked together now for over 4
    years, 2 years of which I was the chair and 2 years of which
    you were the chair, and really there has been no difference.
    Our relationship only intensified. We worked collective
    together on behalf the people of the United States of America.
        You are a man of integrity. You are a friend. It has been
    an honor and a privilege to serve with you and to continue to
    serve with you because we know, as you have stated, you are not
    going anywhere. You will still be here as a Member of the U.S.
    House of Representatives.
        I appreciate the fact that we have always, even when we
    disagree, as we will disagree on this hearing, but we have
    always been able to talk about it, be honest with one another.
    And that is what is really important.
        You know, when you have honesty and truth and can talk, you
    can disagree, but it never becomes personal, because of you and
    the character that you have.
        So I just have to say for the record that it has been an
    honor. You have been a fair chair, as well as when you were the
    ranking member, you have been a fair ranking member, because
    you are a fair individual. That is who you are at the essence.
        And I want to also congratulate Mr. Mast, the incoming
    chair, and I look forward to working with you. There is no
    question in anyone's mind that you are loyal to the United
    States of America. You have done everything in the military and
    otherwise to represent this country, and I look forward to
    working with you come January 3d or 4th when this committee
    resumes, as the next chair of this committee, and look forward
    to working with you in the same manner that I have worked with
    Mr. McCaul.
        Chairman McCaul. Thank you for those kind words.
        Mr. Meeks. Now I want to thank you, Secretary Blinken, for
    being here today, and I know we want to get you out. There is a
    lot that is going on in Syria and around the world, and you
    will be leaving here on a plane immediately post this here.
        So, you know, your departure will take you straight to the
    Middle East where there is--dealing with the related situations
    of Syria, but thank you for being here.
        And, for me, Mr. Secretary, this will be, if I recall
    correctly, your sixth time being--that you have joined us to
    provide testimony, including your appearance in September 2021.
        You were the very first Cabinet official from the Biden
    administration to testify to Congress immediately after our
    withdrawal from Afghanistan, and I will--even before you
    testified before the Senate, you were right here in the House
    to testify about that.
        And, despite insisting that they needed to hear answers
    from you and repeatedly accused of you stonewalling, my
    Republican colleagues nevertheless released what I see as a
    partisan and misleading report on the U.S. withdrawal from
    Afghanistan in September that distorts the facts received in
    their own investigation from 16 State Department witnesses and
    thousands of pages of documents that you made available to us.
        Sadly, on this brand, as I have pointed out at every term
    in every hearing, the Republicans so-called investigation has
    been nothing but a cudgel aimed at partisan politics in my
    opinion.
        To claim now that it is aimed at a real and legislative
    purpose when I don't see a--they have not introduced a single
    bill. There has not been a bill at all introduced from this--in
    this investigation.
        But there is perhaps no better example on how dishonest
    and--well, I would say politically motivated this exercise has
    been, than how the Republicans misled the public on the ISIS
    attack at Abbey Gate.
        For months, Republicans publicly suggested the Abbey Gate
    bombing could have been prevented and that a marine had a
    bomber in his sights.
        Privately, however, they received information from the
    Department of Defense's investigation dating back as far as
    February 2022, and again reinforced in April 2024, findings
    that the bomber and the person the marine identified were two
    different people and that the attack was not preventable.
        Because the GOP had this information, you would think it
    would be logical to assume that the GOP's report would make
    those facts crystal clear.
        So does their report do that? No.
        Instead of being straightforward with the American people,
    or the Gold Star Families who have suffered so much and who we
    all keep deeply in our prayers, they continue to muddle the
    facts.
        Notwithstanding DOD's clear evidence, the GOP report tries
    to sow doubt in the minds--doubt on the DOD's findings by
    asserting on page 27 that, quote, ``Many who were on the ground
    that day still believe they were one and the same. The full
    report remains classified,'' end quote.
        To my colleagues across the aisle, beliefs are not facts.
    Information that the Department of Defense publicly reported,
    for which I ask unanimous consent to submit for the record----
        [The information referred to has not been submitted:]
        Chairman McCaul. Without objection, so ordered.
        Mr. Meeks [continuing]. Is not classified. The two men were
    not the same.
        So changing or twisting the truth seems to me only happens
    for political gain, and that not only hurts the integrity of
    this committee, it hurts the families of the 13 servicemembers
    who lost their lives during the horrific terrorist attack who
    have been led to believe that there are some greater truths to
    unearth, that when in reality there just is not.
        So I also ask unanimous consent to submit for the record
    the minority memorandum that I released in September of this
    year. That report summarizes the actual facts of the
    committee's investigation----
        Chairman McCaul. Without objection, so ordered.
        [The information referred to has not been submitted:]
        Mr. Meeks [continuing]. Which were remarkably consistent
    across 20 witnesses and found the following.
        The full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was set into
    irreversible motion by President Donald Trump when he concluded
    the Doha deal with the Taliban and ordered the withdrawal of
    troops per that agreement, first from 14,000, to 8,600, and
    then all the way down to 2,500 by January 15th, 2020.
        And, after the Trump administration failed to plan for the
    withdrawal they started, the Biden administration conducted a
    thorough policy review, acknowledged that we would again be at
    war with the Taliban if they abandoned the Doha deal, and
    finish the work his predecessor started by building a
    withdrawal and contingency plan from the ground up through
    2021.
        And, after President Ghani's decision to flee Afghanistan
    led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan Government and Security
    Forces, creating the chaos on the ground, the men and women of
    the State Department acted heroically alongside their military
    colleagues to conduct the largest airlift in U.S. history,
    relocating more than 124,000 people.
        So I believe that President Biden ultimately made the right
    decision to end our 20-year war in Afghanistan and not ask
    another generation of Americans to make an ultimate sacrifice
    for a war that no longer had a purpose.
        No one here has argued that our withdrawal was perfect. So
    I want to be clear. I am not saying that. I don't know any
    withdrawal that has been perfect, but we owe it to ourselves
    and our military and diplomatic personnel on the front lines to
    learn from it and from those 20 years--those 20 years of war in
    which they served--and to incorporate those lessons of 20 years
    in the future.
        But we do them a disservice when we do not examine all of
    the facts. If we are to honor the 800,000 Americans who served
    in Afghanistan since 2001, including the 2,461 military
    personnel killed over the two decades of war, we should have
    conducted proper oversight of the policy decisions made across
    not one administration but four administrations, not only for
    the months in which President Biden was in office for the sole
    purpose of politics.
        For the honest, bipartisan assessment, we will have to
    await the Afghanistan War Commission's report due in 2026,
    because what we have here today is not the true, complete fact-
    finding. In my estimation, it is politics.
        And, finally, let me just say this though. I want to
    conclude by thanking Chairman McCaul for honoring a request
    that I made publicly. I asked that he publicly release all of
    the transcripts from closed-door interviews that were part of
    this Afghanistan investigation.
        And I asked the chairman to do the same for all other
    remaining transcribed interviews conducted as part of the
    committee's oversight investigation.
        And the American taxpayers paid for this work. I asked and
    you responded and you did cooperate and make them all public,
    and for that, I thank you. And with that, I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. I appreciate the ranking member's comments
    on that. I intend to release all this to the American people.
    We do--we are negotiating an interview with Jake Sullivan, the
    National Security Advisor. It may be in a classified setting.
    To the extent we can release that to the American people, we
    certainly will.
        I also want to State that there are two pieces of
    legislation currently in the National Defense Authorization
    that deal with this withdrawal from Afghanistan, one from me on
    having one point of contact who is in charge, if you will,
    another one by Warren Davidson on evacuation.
        So, with that, I would like to say to the members that
    opening statements may be submitted for the record. I want to
    welcome the 71st Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, someone I
    do have admiration for.
        We disagree on this one strongly, but we have traveled
    abroad, and at the end of the day when we travel abroad, we are
    all Americans.
        But, as you know, sir, I have issue with you over the
    handling of this matter, and I recognize you for your testimony
    here today.
        Secretary Blinken. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Meeks,
    distinguished colleagues on this committee, first of all, let
    me just say, I have very much appreciated working with you
    these past 4 years, working with the ranking member. I think we
    have done good and important things together----
        [Disturbance in hearing room.]
        Chairman McCaul. I remind the audience members, disruption
    of committee proceedings is against the law. Holding up signs
    or making verbal outbursts during the proceedings is disruptive
    and will not be tolerated.
        Any disruption will result in a suspension of the
    proceedings until the Capitol Police can restore order. This
    includes the raising of hands and other forms of disruption.
        And, with that, I now recognize the Secretary.

       STATEMENT OF HON. ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE, U.S.
                          DEPARTMENT OF STATE

        Secretary Blinken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And just to say how much I have valued and appreciated
    working with you these past 4 years, the dialog that we have
    had, including with this committee, where we have agreed, where
    we have disagreed, including on Afghanistan.
        I want to recognize everyone who served in Afghanistan,
    including on this committee. Our thoughts are with the Gold
    Star Families of the 2,461 American servicemembers, as well as
    State Department and USAID employees----
        [Disturbance in the hearing room.]
        Chairman McCaul. Order. The committee will suspend while
    the Capital Police restore order to this committee.
        The gentleman will continue.
        Secretary Blinken. As I said, our thoughts are with all of
    the Gold Star Families. They are with the State Department and
    USAID employees who lost their lives over the course of 20
    years of our military involvement in Afghanistan.
        And I think today especially of the 13 heroes that we lost
    at Abbey Gate, and I deeply regret that we did not do more and
    could not do more to protect them. To those families who are
    here with us today, you are in my thoughts and my prayers.
        I wish that Nicole was here with us today. I am deeply
    sorry that she is not.
        I am also deeply grateful to the dedicated professionals
    from the State Department, from the Defense Department, from
    across the Government, from civil society, other partners who
    did so much to support the people of Afghanistan over those two
    decades.
        [disturbance in the hearing room.]
        Chairman McCaul. The committee will come to order. The
    committee will suspend while the Capitol Police restore order.
    The committee will come to order.
        The gentleman will continue.
        Secretary Blinken. I am here today to continue the
    Department's extensive cooperation with this committee. As you
    know, Mr. Chairman, the Department has provided over 20,000
    pages of documents to you. We conducted nine high-level
    briefings for Members. We facilitated transcribed interviews
    for more than 15 people.
        I have personally testified before the House and Senate
    committees 14 times with questions on Afghanistan, including
    four times before this committee.
        Now, I believe that any attempt to understand and learn
    from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has to be put in the
    proper context of what preceded it, both in terms of the two
    decades following 9/11 and the decisions and events of 2020 to
    2021, that culminated in the removal of our personnel.
        When President Biden took office, he inherited an agreement
    the previous administration reached with the Taliban to remove
    all U.S. Forces from Afghanistan by May 1st of 2021.
        At U.S. insistence, the Afghan Government had released
    5,000 Taliban prisoners, including top war commanders.
        The United States reduced our own troop levels from 14,000
    to 2,500 in December 2020.
        In return, the Taliban agreed to stop attacking U.S. and
    partner forces, to refrain from threatening Afghanistan's major
    cities, and to pursue inter-Afghan negotiations toward a cease-
    fire and a political settlement.
        But it continued a relentless march in the countryside so
    that it controlled or actively contested territory containing
    three-quarters of Afghanistan's population by December 2020.
        In January 2021, the Taliban was in the strongest military
    position it had been in since 9/11, and we had the smallest
    number of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan since 2001.
        Despite the profound effects of the Doha Agreement,
    President Biden ultimately opted to implement the previous
    administration's decision to withdraw American troops and honor
    his pledge to end our Nation's longest war.
        To the extent President Biden faced a choice, it was
    between ending the war or escalating it. Had he not followed
    through on his predecessor's commitment, attacks on our forces
    and allies would have resumed, and the Taliban's assault on the
    country's major cities would have commenced.
        That would have required sending tens of thousands more
    U.S. Forces back into Afghanistan to defend ourselves and
    prevent a Taliban takeover, with, at best, the prospect of
    restoring a stalemate and remaining stuck in Afghanistan under
    fire indefinitely.
        President Biden inherited a deadline but no plan to meet
    it. At his direction, beginning in the spring of 2021, the
    administration, and the State Department in particular, engaged
    in extensive planning for a whole range of outcomes.
        We pursued a sustained campaign to urge any Americans in
    Afghanistan to leave. We restarted and dramatically increased
    resources to what had been a moribund Special Immigrant Visa
    program to bring Afghans who had worked by our side over 20
    years to the United States.
        Even the U.S. Government's most pessimistic assessments did
    not anticipate that the Afghan Government and security forces
    would collapse so rapidly in the face of Taliban advances.
        Nevertheless, because of the administration's extensive
    interagency planning and coordination, one capital fell on
    August 15th. The United States was able to evacuate our Embassy
    and relocate our diplomats to the airport within 48 hours and
    then conduct the largest airlift in U.S. history, helping
    approximately 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and citizens of
    allied nations depart Afghanistan in just 2 weeks.
        In the 3 years since the end of our country's longest war,
    all of us, including myself, have wrestled with what we could
    have done differently during that period and over the preceding
    two decades.
        I asked retired Ambassador Dan Smith, one of our most
    senior diplomats, to lead an after-action review of the State
    Department's actions between January 2020 and August 2021.
        In response to Ambassador Smith's report, the Department
    has taken more than 40 concrete initiatives and identified
    steps to guide our response to future crises. The actions we
    have taken have already made a difference in subsequent
    emergencies, including in Sudan, in Israel, in Lebanon.
        Even as we work to address the places where we fell short,
    I firmly believe the President's decision to withdraw from
    Afghanistan was the right one.
        American troops are no longer fighting and dying in
    Afghanistan. The American people are safer and more secure.
        In fact, many of the most pessimistic predictions have been
    thoroughly disproven. We were told Afghanistan would once again
    become a haven for terrorists and that, as the majority report
    contends, we would be all but blind to the situation on the
    ground.
        In fact, al-Qaeda, the group that attacked us on 9/11, has
    not regrouped in Afghanistan, and in August 2022, we launched a
    precision strike in downtown Kabul that took out its leader,
    Ayman al-Zawahiri with no American boots on the ground.
        We were told that our allies would no longer trust us.
    Well, having just returned from more NATO meetings in Brussels
    and my 20th trip to the Indo-Pacific as Secretary of State, it
    is clear that our alliances, our partnerships, are stronger
    today than they have been in a generation.
        You can see that in the more 50 countries that we brought
    together to defend Ukraine against Russia's ongoing aggression
    and in the unity of purpose and action that we built for
    contending with the challenges posed by China.
        We were told hundreds of Americans and Afghan partners
    would be left behind. Yet today every U.S. citizen who told us
    that they wanted to leave during the evacuation has now had the
    opportunity to do so.
        And, to those Americans who entered the country since
    August 2021 and have been detained by the Taliban, we will not
    rest until we bring you home.
        Since September 2021, the administration has resettled more
    than 185,000 Afghans. We have approved or welcomed to the
    United States more than 68,000 Afghans under the Special
    Immigrant Visa program. That is nearly half of all of the SIVs
    issued since the program's inception in 2009.
        This is a profoundly difficult period for the Afghan
    people, especially Afghanistan's women and girls, but I believe
    the final chapter has not been written on Afghanistan.
        Just last week, I had the chance to be with many partners
    who supported the evacuation effort, including Members of
    Congress. We were joined by a resilient and resourceful young
    woman who left Afghanistan in August 2021 and is now an
    aerospace engineering student at MIT. She aspires to be the
    first Afghan woman astronaut.
        In part, because of our two decade commitment to
    Afghanistan, there are many more women who have the opportunity
    to go to school, to connect about the wider world, to imagine a
    different life for themselves. And these women, their
    experiences, their hopes, will, I know, 1 day help pave a path
    to an Afghanistan where all people can actually choose their
    own futures.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Secretary Blinken follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
        I personally, and other Members, we got four busloads of
    girls at the American School of Music out after Abbey Gate, who
    are now in Portugal. They performed at Carnegie Hall and The
    Kennedy Center.
        But there are many women, unfortunately, who are now
    enslaved under sharia law by the Taliban.
        I now recognize myself for questions.
        Mr. Secretary, in September of this year, your State
    Department's Inspector General revealed that Embassy Kabul,
    under your leadership, abandoned, quote, sensitive security
    assets, unquote, during the deadly Afghanistan evacuation.
        Those lethal assets include firearms, armored vehicles, and
    other weapons. Your IG concluded the Embassy left them intact
    for the Taliban.
        And if that wasn't bad enough, documents--classified
    documents--many that I subpoenaed, also revealed that you left
    behind droves of the Embassy's, again, classified documents to
    the Taliban.
        Your own diplomats described desperate attempts to burn
    documents on the rooftops and in the Embassy while helicopters
    took off the embassy's roof, very reminiscent, in my younger
    life, of Saigon, all because the administration failed to
    prepare.
        Finally, your chief of mission kicked out the Embassy's
    Afghan employees from HKIA, telling them to come back later,
    leaving them to the Taliban, who never made it back, who never
    survived, that we gave our trust to, that we would protect
    them.
        You left weapons behind to the Taliban, classified
    documents to the Taliban, you left behind Embassy employees to
    the Taliban, and now 3 years later, your own IG, inspector
    general, concluded that your State Department has been
    unwilling and unable to learn from its mistakes.
        My question is, have you read the IG report, and have you
    held your own State Department accountable?
        Secretary Blinken. Mr. Chairman, first, with regard to the
    documents, we have in place, at every embassy, including in
    Afghanistan, a process by which sensitive documents are
    destroyed in the event of an evacuation and shutting down the
    embassy.
        We began that process on August the 1st, and then when we
    got to August the 12th, before the collapse of Kabul, we
    proceeded with the emergency destruction of all of the
    remaining sensitive documents. And that process was complete by
    the 14th, the day before Kabul fell.
        That is a process that we engage in wherever we have an
    emergency, and that is exactly----
        Chairman McCaul. Well, reclaiming my time. I mean, the fact
    is, they should have been evacuated long before. I mean, you
    were still negotiating as the Taliban entered Kabul. The
    Embassy should have been, as the military advised you to do,
    evacuate that Embassy.
        Let me ask you this. When President Biden announced his
    unconditional surrender to the Taliban on April the 14th, 2021,
    you demanded that Embassy Kabul remain open no matter what the
    cost.
        Your personnel opposed that. In fact, they did so in a
    cable dissent that we were able to get from you in your
    discovery process, a cry for help.
        The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the CENTCOM Commander,
    Milley to McKenzie, said, this was a fundamental mistake, a
    fatal flaw, and their biggest regret is keeping the Embassy
    open, despite the advice of your own people on the ground and
    military advisers.
        Why did you do that?
        Secretary Blinken. Very simply, because no one anticipated
    that the government and the Afghan Armed Forces would collapse
    as quickly as they did. We anticipated and every intelligence
    assessment that we had anticipated that Kabul would remain in
    the hands of the government, in the hands of the Afghan Armed
    Forces through the balance of the year and----
        Chairman McCaul. I am going to reclaim my time because what
    I want to say----
        Secretary Blinken. Let me, please, let me finish.
        Chairman McCaul. I will let you finish, but I strongly
    disagree.
        Secretary Blinken. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark
    Milley, said, nothing I or anyone else saw indicated a collapse
    of the army or the government in 11 days.
        The DNI, Avril Haines, said, in the days leading up to the
    Taliban takeover, intelligence agencies did not see collapse as
    imminent.
        This unfolded more quickly than many anticipated, including
    in the intelligence community.
        Chairman McCaul. Okay. Reclaiming my time. I hear what you
    are saying, that no one saw the collapse coming. However, I
    have read the Dissent Cable of your Embassy personnel that you
    provided to me, that they sent to you in July, before the
    collapse in 2021, warning of Afghanistan's imminent collapse,
    fearing for their safety.
        You personally read this, sir, and cleared it. Your Deputy
    Secretary, Brian McKeon, testified before this committee that
    you took no step to answer the cries for help.
        And, as you know, Secretary of State, you have a
    responsibility to protect Americans and diplomats.
        Secretary Blinken. Mr. Chairman, that is incorrect.
        Chairman McCaul. Why did you ignore the cries for help, why
    did you leave this Embassy open, and finally, who was in
    charge? Was it you or Mr. Sullivan?
        Because it seems to me you delegated all your
    responsibility on this, you had very little to do with it, and
    it was Jake Sullivan and the National Security Council at the
    White House calling all the shots.
        However, under law, sir, you are the captain of the ship.
        Secretary Blinken. Mr. Chairman, that is incorrect on a
    number of accounts, as is the report that I have read. First,
    when it comes to a NEO, the evacuation, that is a decision that
    is reached by the entire interagency and ultimately by the
    President.
        State Department initiates it by asking the Department of
    Defense to proceed with it, but the decision itself is reached
    as a result of interagency deliberations. And we did not as an
    interagency--and that includes the Secretary of Defense, the
    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Advisor of
    the President----
        Chairman McCaul. I asked who was in charge. This is going
    to help us----
        Secretary Blinken. No, this is important.
        Chairman McCaul [continuing]. Legislate, sir. Were you in
    charge of this evacuation?
        Secretary Blinken. I was in charge of the State Department.
    The Government, the administration, was in charge of the
    evacuation. Specifically, the State Department and the
    Department of Defense together, on any NEO, work closely
    together with clearly assigned responsibilities, and that is
    exactly what we did and----
        Chairman McCaul. And it is the statutory responsibility,
    sir----
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. Call for that NEO until it
    was actually----
        Chairman McCaul [continuing]. For you to execute the plan,
    correct? The NEO, the plan.
        Secretary Blinken. The NEO was executed by the State
    Department and the Defense Department.
        Chairman McCaul. And I would have to say, sir, waiting
    until the last minute is not executing a plan at all, and it
    led to the deaths of many Americans----
        Secretary Blinken. Again, Mr. Chairman----
        Chairman McCaul [continuing]. And Afghan people and Afghan
    allies.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. Mr. Chairman, the record
    reflects that, again, this decision was reached collectively.
    No one urged initiating the NEO until we decided to do it on
    the 14th.
        Chairman McCaul. I think, in my review of our
    investigation, there was so much confusion coming out of your
    embassy, coming from the top military advisers who told me,
    testified that they told you to close down that Embassy in
    advance, to protect Americans and American assets and
    classified documents.
        Secretary Blinken. That is not correct.
        Chairman McCaul. They were left to the Taliban. You were in
    charge by law. You may have delegated this, I don't know, but
    to legislate moving forward, I need to know who was in charge,
    and that is why it is so important that Mr. Sullivan, the
    National Security Advisor, come before this committee and give
    his testimony about what the hell was going on during this
    disastrous evacuation.
        With that, I now recognize the ranking member.
        Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        You know, I do recall a meeting here in the Capitol--
    bipartisan--downstairs, and we were meeting with President
    Ghani of Afghanistan. And we had talked to some folks, and
    President Ghani was very vehement that he was not going to
    leave Afghanistan. He was vehement that the Afghan troops were
    there, and he would stay there, to all these Members of
    Congress. And to everyone that I talked to from almost anywhere
    was clear that that was his position.
        No one knew that 1 week later--not 1 month--1 week later,
    he would get on a plane and get out and all the troops were
    gone. Everybody at that moment in time was surprised. And that
    is a fact.
        Let me ask some yes-or-no questions real quick because I
    believe that you got to look at this whole thing you talk
    about.
        So, Mr. Secretary, President Trump's Doha deal explicitly
    committed to the United States to withdraw all U.S. and allied
    troops, as well as contractors, by May 2021, yes or no?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Meeks. But the speed of that withdrawal, outside of an
    initial reduction to 8,600 troops, was not specified by the
    deal. Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Meeks. And, despite that, President Trump unilaterally
    reduced the U.S. presence twice beyond that, leaving just 2,500
    troops when President Biden took office. Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Meeks. So--and we have seen that President Trump was
    prepared to go to zero. In fact, Ambassador Khalilzad testified
    to the committee that the messages coming out of the Trump
    White House led the Taliban to conclude that Trump was getting
    out regardless of what was agreed in the Doha deal.
        So let's be clear about the conditions. If you are going to
    be factual about this, you have got to consider the conditions
    that Trump handed over to you and the Biden administration, a
    firm commitment for a total withdrawal with no allowance for a
    residual force or contractors, a limited number of troops on
    the ground, and no real prohibition or attacks on our Afghan--
    our allies.
        We have heard testimony from General Milley, Ambassador
    Khalilzad, and others that, if we had tried to reopen the Doha
    deal, the Taliban would have resumed attacks against us.
        Do you agree, Mr. Secretary, with that assessment, yes or
    no?
        Secretary Blinken. I do.
        Mr. Meeks. So that was the fundamental choice facing
    President Biden, a complete--to complete the withdrawal that
    was initiated by President Trump or re-escalate the conflict.
    Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Meeks. So what do you think President Biden's decision
    to complete the withdrawal and end this so-called forever war
    gained us?
        Secretary Blinken. It gained us an end to America's longest
    war. It gained us not having another generation of Americans
    going off to fight and die in Afghanistan.
        It gained us the opportunity to refocus and rededicate our
    resources to the challenges of this moment from the Russian
    aggression against Ukraine to the many challenges posed by
    China to many other issues around the world where we were able
    to free up resources, free up focus, free up time.
        Mr. Meeks. You just hit something because, just months
    after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, we did face a new
    threat, and that was Putin's illegal and unjustified renewed
    invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
        So, yes or no, do you see any connection between Putin's
    reinvasion of Ukraine and the United States' withdrawal from
    Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. No. On the contrary, I think our
    adversaries, including Russia, would have been delighted if we
    doubled down and remained stuck in Afghanistan for another 20
    years.
        Now, in 2008, we had, between Afghanistan and Iraq, about
    200,000 forces deployed. You will recall what else happened in
    2008. Russia invaded Georgia.
        In 2014, we still had about 12,000 forces in Afghanistan.
    You recall what else happened in 2014. Russia, for the first
    time, invaded Ukraine.
        Because we were able to refocus our time, our resources,
    our efforts, we were able to build this coalition of more than
    50 countries that has stood up to Russia's aggression, and I
    must say, the chairman has done a remarkable job over these
    last 3 years.
        Mr. Meeks. I agree. We worked very closely, the chairman
    and I, in making sure Ukraine had everything that it needs. In
    fact, you know, sometimes he was in front of me, and other
    times we went together, but he has been a champion on Ukraine.
        But the issue that I am trying to make sure--and I think
    this is what you said--that the withdrawal from Afghanistan did
    not hinder our capacity or our credibility to lead our allies
    in a robust response to the invasion in Ukraine. That is
    correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Meeks. As well as, the withdrawal did not inhibit our
    relationships with our allies?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Meeks. In fact, just the opposite.
        And, maybe my last question, your assessment of the
    strength of NATO and our alliances system today. Has the
    withdrawing from Afghanistan let us focus on the most urgent
    threats to global security, yes or no?
        Secretary Blinken. It is stronger. It is bigger. It is
    better resourced. It is more focused than it has ever been.
        Chairman McCaul. All right. The gentleman's time has
    expired. Let me just say, with the fall of Afghanistan, within
    months, Chairman Xi and Putin made an agreement at the Olympics
    in Beijing, and we saw satellite imagery of the Russian
    Federation moving toward Ukraine.
        I don't think that was by accident. That was by design.
    Putin saw a weakness, and he was--took aggression, and he
    invaded Ukraine. And then the Ayatollah reared his ugly head in
    the Middle East, and Chairman Xi is on fire in a hot zone in
    the Indo-Pacific.
        With that, the chairman now recognizes the gentleman from
    New Jersey, Mr. Smith.
        Mr. Smith. Okay. Thank you very much. Pardon me, Mr.
    Chairman, and welcome, Mr. Secretary.
        You know, I have a number of questions, and I have asked
    some of those in the past, so I won't repeat those, but I chair
    the China Commission. I have chaired 105-plus hearings on human
    rights abuse in China, Xi Jinping's absolute malevolent
    behavior toward the Uyghurs, and all the other atrocities that
    are committed each and every day.
        But what concerned me with our, I believe, egregiously
    flawed exodus from Afghanistan was how dictators around the
    world, especially Xi Jinping, looked at that and his propaganda
    organs, like the Global Times, and said to the people of
    Taiwan--here is one editorial--why the U.S. will abandon Taiwan
    eventually.
        Another one was Afghan abandonment is a lesson for Taiwan's
    DPP, and when you read it, they are telling the people over and
    over again in Taiwan that America's resolve was questioned--is
    questionable, that we will leave them too. And, you know, I
    won't read the editorial, but it--editorials, because they are
    very, very disturbing.
        You know, dictators love weakness. They probe with
    bayonets, and if they can get away with something, they will.
        And I think the chairman is right when he talks about Putin
    as well, and you had said before how you thought they would be
    happy if we were bogged down for, you know, the next 20 years.
        But I look at it a different way. They look at how it was
    done--yes, we were going to get out of Afghanistan, but the way
    we did it led to the loss of American lives, which we have seen
    the pictures again shown here, and we have all met with those
    families of those loved ones, and countless numbers of Afghans.
        So the impact of this, can you at least admit that to the
    dictatorships of the world, they saw that, and they saw it as
    weakness, and they go to avoid--if they think there is one.
        Second, how many Americans are still in Afghanistan, and
    post exodus, how many were jailed, killed, tortured, left
    behind?
        I know that there was a lot of talk that, you know, we
    encouraged people to leave, but we all remember that Reuters
    broke that story about how the President had, in a conversation
    with Ghani, had said very clearly that, even if we have to make
    it up, in terms of the situation, to project it as if it is
    better than it is--here is the way he put it, this is President
    Biden--and there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is
    a need to project a different picture.
        And that was done on July 23d.
        So, while we may admonish people to leave, they are
    listening to our own President who says there is a 300,000-man
    army, well trained, you know, but meanwhile in back channel,
    talking on the phone to Ghani, he is saying--project a
    different picture. Very, very disturbing. I mean, we got to be
    truthful.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you. Two things on this. First, we
    engaged in a sustained campaign to get every American in
    Afghanistan who was still there, to leave. Nineteen messages to
    that community between February and August.
        By the time the evacuation took place, there was still
    about 6,000 Americans left in Afghanistan.
        Now, who are they? They are almost all dual citizens, most
    of whom, almost all of whom had lived, worked, had their
    families in Afghanistan for generations. And so you were still
    down to 6,000, despite every effort to get people to leave,
    including offering to pay for their travel. The airport
    remained open until August the 15th.
        In the weeks of the evacuation, the 2 weeks of the
    evacuation, almost all of those 6,000 remaining we were able to
    get out. We were left with a few hundred on August, the 31st.
        There were a couple of hundred--and this is what I
    testified to--who had identified themselves to us--and keep in
    mind, as you know, when you travel to a foreign country or you
    leave a foreign country, as an American, you don't have to
    register, you don't have to make yourself known.
        We made every effort to get in contact with everyone, but
    by the time of the end of the evacuation, there were still a
    couple of hundred American citizens left who had identified
    themselves to us and told us they wanted to leave and who
    couldn't get to the airport or get into the airport.
        There were several hundred others who were there, and we
    knew of, who did not want to leave, either because they didn't
    want to leave extended family members behind or they just chose
    not to leave.
        So, after August 31st, as I said and committed to this
    committee and to this country, there is no deadline on getting
    Americans out of Afghanistan who want to leave.
        In the ensuing 3 months, till the end of the year, we got
    500 American citizens out of Afghanistan who had identified
    themselves to us and said they wanted to leave.
        To my knowledge, every American who identified themselves
    and said that they wanted to leave has been given an
    opportunity to do so, and we have carried that out every single
    day.
        As to those who went back and some who got detained, we are
    working every day to get them out, to get them back, and we
    will not stop for the duration of this administration, and I
    know that the incoming Trump administration will carry that on
    if we are not successful in getting them back.
        Mr. Smith. I am out of time, but are any in jail today?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes.
        Mr. Smith. They are?
        Secretary Blinken. They are. These are Americans who went
    after have the evacuation for a variety of reasons. We are
    talking about----
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired.
        I am going to keep to the 5-minute rule strictly because I
    want every member to be able to have time to ask questions.
        The chair now recognizes Mr. Sherman.
        Mr. Sherman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your service to
    our country. You bring up the fact that Americans in a war zone
    don't have to register with the Embassy. I think we have talked
    in the past about requiring Americans in designated dangerous
    countries to register, and I look forward to working with your
    successor to do that, because you point out how difficult it is
    for the Embassy to deal with these situations.
        Before I get to Afghanistan, back in May, you agreed that
    you would look at designating the Popular Resistance
    Committees, the third biggest terrorist group operating in
    Gaza, as a terrorist organization.
        They are responsible for so many deaths, including three
    Americans.
        This committee voted for my bill to so designate them. Do I
    have your commitment that in the next 2 weeks, your Department
    will make a decision as to whether to designate the Popular
    Resistance Committees a terrorist organization?
        Secretary Blinken. If we can complete the work necessary to
    go into that, yes. I don't know if it will be completed in
    time.
        Mr. Sherman. Well, I asked you to do it in May. How long--
    how many years does it take?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, as you know, there is a lot that
    goes into these designations----
        Mr. Sherman. I do.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. To make sure that we meet
    the law, and if we can complete that work, we will.
        Mr. Sherman. When you were here in the past, I think you
    correctly told us you inherited a deadline; you did not inherit
    a plan.
        The gentleman from New Jersey argues that we should have
    stayed, but that is after Trump released 5,000 blood-thirsty
    terrorists. Had we stayed, would those terrorists, including
    the current head of Afghanistan, who was also released by
    Trump, been able to--would they have been willing to risk the
    lives, every one of those 5,000, risked their lives in order to
    kill as many Americans as possible.
        Secretary Blinken. That seems highly likely. I can't speak
    to every one of the 5,000, but certainly many of them went back
    to the fight.
        Mr. Sherman. So we stayed in--we went into Afghanistan. We
    drove al-Qaeda out. We accomplished something in the George W.
    Bush administration. In the Obama administration, we killed Bin
    Laden.
        We stayed in Afghanistan for the whole Trump
    administration. Sixty-three of our best and--died. Fifty-seven
    came back without the President bothering to be at the ceremony
    with their return.
        The question is, did we accomplish anything during the
    Trump administration? Did we get a better deal in 2020 than we
    could have gotten in 2017?
        Now, the deal we got in 2017 was total surrender. The only
    requirement was that the Taliban not be a center for
    international terrorism. They have that obligation anyway.
        They did not commit themselves to protecting our troops on
    the way out--or our Embassy on the way out.
        And, moreover, the Taliban is not in violation of the Trump
    agreement when they hold 12-year-old girls as sex slaves, kill
    every LGBT person they can, kill any Afghan that converts to
    Christianity.
        So the deal was the weakest ever, and it had no
    enforcement. So couldn't we have gotten that same deal in 2017,
    and would 63 more American soldiers be alive if we had done
    that then?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, in fairness, I think we have to
    ask ourselves about our ongoing presence in Afghanistan after
    we got bin Laden. We had dismantled al-Qaeda; we had removed it
    as a threat. We got the leader, the guy who----
        Mr. Sherman. Right. So if we----
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. Attacked us on----
        Mr. Sherman. So we got something----
        Secretary Blinken. So I think we need to look back at----
        Mr. Sherman. Right. But----
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. This entire period----
        Mr. Sherman. But, clearly----
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. And the decisions that
    everyone made.
        Mr. Sherman [continuing]. The Trump years, 4 years of death
    of American troops, and we accomplished absolutely nothing. We
    signed an agreement under which the Afghan Government is free
    to use 12-year-old girls as sex slaves and to kill those who
    convert to Christianity.
        Some $11 billion to $13 billion of U.S. weapons were sent
    by Trump and scattered all over Afghanistan. And this committee
    has put forward the idea that we should have somehow collected
    those weapons from men who wanted to keep them and who were
    armed with those weapons.
        Could we have accomplished that without any significant
    American casualties, all over Afghanistan, collecting the
    weapons?
        Secretary Blinken. No, we could not.
        Mr. Sherman. Would there have been hundreds of American
    casualties, in your estimation?
        Secretary Blinken. I can't give you a number, but certainly
    there would have been casualties.
        Mr. Sherman. I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        Let me announce also that Mr. Sullivan, the National
    Security Advisor, has agreed to testify before this committee
    on December the 17th at noon. And I insisted, on behalf of the
    Members, that all Members be able to participate in that
    briefing.
        The chair now recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina,
    Mr. Wilson.
        Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Chairman Mike McCaul, and
    thank you for your 4 years of leadership on this committee. It
    has just been so effective for the American people.
        And then we all know that Chairman Brian Mast,--elect, will
    do an excellent job continuing the tradition of serving the
    American people. And what an exciting time in history, as we
    face such positive changes, with the removal of Dictator Assad
    from Damascus, what can occur and what needs to occur.
        But, sadly, the Assad departure and anything that has been
    positive was despite the Biden administration. Because, hey,
    until last week, there was an effort to try to have some level
    of normalization with Assad, which is--but that is not why we
    are here today.
        But it is a continuation, and that is, the Biden
    administration's surrender in Afghanistan has actually set the
    stage for foreign policy disasters around the world, with mass
    murder shamelessly being conducted around the world. Our allies
    who stood with us for decades watched as the American
    capitulated to terrorists, creating safe haven for terrorism,
    and abandoned allies. It was so incredible that this
    catastrophic decision of American--was the worst ever for
    American military and national security.
        And, sadly, President Biden, on August 26, 2021, claimed
    that he had letters--quote, ``had letters'' from the military
    indicating they supported his decision. And, Mr. Secretary, I
    will be giving you copies. That evening, I sent a letter,
    respectfully, to the President asking for copies of the
    letters, and every couple of months, I have sent letters to the
    President respectfully asking for copies of the letters where
    the military, he alleged, supported his decision.
        With the Doha Agreement, President Trump stated from day
    one that any withdrawal would be conditions-based and would
    actually maintain control of Bagram Airfield, which is so
    critical.
        The disorder and chaos that led to the murder of 13 of our
    servicemembers at Kabul Airport just should not be forgotten.
    And then countless civilians, we understand, were the first
    domino to fall in the Biden-Harris appeasement policy.
        And also this year, it should be remembered, we lost 13 at
    Kabul Airport, but we also had 3 reservists from Georgia who
    were killed on January 28th by the Hamas puppets--excuse me--
    Hezbollah puppets of Iran, and 60 were injured, and many with
    traumatic brain injury. It is just heartbreaking to think of
    the loss of life and the lifelong injuries that people will
    have.
        Today in Afghanistan, women have effectively been banished
    from public life, unable to speak in public or hold any job,
    including nursing. And I still cherish seeing little girls--I
    visited Afghanistan very frequently--to see little girls going
    to school with their hijabs or whatever and then little guys
    going to school with something not indigenous to people of
    Afghanistan and it was baseball caps. And so that doesn't occur
    now.
        Terrorists have free rein to regroup and work with their
    backers to coordinate additional attacks on American families.
    As we know, the FBI has said attacks are imminent.
        History reminds us that when America withdraws from the
    world, our enemies fill the vacuums. We now face a war that we
    did not choose, of dictators with rule of gun invading
    democracies with rule of law. It began February 24, 2022, when
    war criminal Putin invaded Ukraine, and then on October 7,
    Iran, through its puppet, Hamas, invading Israel.
        And we all see the risk that we have--and it is personal to
    me, Mr. Secretary, my appreciation of the people of
    Afghanistan. I was grateful to serve with the late Sheila
    Jackson Lee as co-chair of the Afghan Caucus, and we met with
    so many wonderful people who--it is bipartisan, our concerns.
        And then I am grateful my former National Guard unit, the
    218th Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the South Carolina Army
    Guard, served for a year under General Bob Livingston, and they
    have developed a real fondness for their Afghan brothers.
        And, finally, I am really grateful my number-four son,
    Hunter, First Lieutenant Hunter Wilson, served for a year as an
    engineer in Afghanistan.
        And so I would just really want to let you know that I am
    just so disappointed. Hey, we--I really get in trouble at home;
    I said I wanted Biden to succeed. But this has not occurred.
    And we just have to address this.
        And, with that, I yield back my time.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Connolly.
        Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
    your tenure and for your friendship and decency serving as
    chairman of this prestigious committee.
        I would like to put a picture up which seems to suggest,
    Mr. Secretary, that the Republican narrative is correct about
    you. There you are with a prominent Taliban negotiator.
        Do our tech people have that picture?
        Well, I have it here.
        Isn't that you with a Taliban negotiator, Mr. Secretary?
        Secretary Blinken. I am afraid I can't see the picture, but
    I am not aware of having spent any time with a Taliban
    negotiator.
        Mr. Connolly. Oh. I am sorry. That is Secretary Pompeo.
        Was he your predecessor in the Biden administration as
    Secretary of State, in the Biden administration?
        Secretary Blinken. No. He was my predecessor in the
    previous administration, the Trump administration.
        Mr. Connolly. The Trump administration. And there he is in
    Doha with the chief Taliban negotiator. Hmm. I guess I got that
    wrong.
        Well, Mr. Secretary, all things seem to flow from Doha.
        Secretary Pompeo and President Trump appointed a chief
    negotiator on behalf of the United States for the negotiations
    in Doha. What was his name?
        Secretary Blinken. Zal Khalilzad.
        Mr. Connolly. Ambassador Khalilzad. And he, of course,
    testified before this committee, and I can remember an exchange
    with him in which I expressed deep concern about the direction
    of the U.S. posture and the ramifications with allied Afghans
    who had worked for us, or worked with us, and women. And he
    kind of brushed them off at the time.
        Tell us about the details of the agreement he forged in
    Doha. What were the chief elements of that?
        Secretary Blinken. So----
        Mr. Connolly. Precisely, if you would.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes. In essence, the agreement provided
    for this: It provided that the Taliban would not use Afghan
    soil to attack us or our interests.
        Mr. Connolly. Right.
        Secretary Blinken. It would start an intra-Afghan
    negotiation. And as part of that negotiation, there would be
    discussion of a cease-fire and a political roadmap for the
    future of Afghanistan.
        And during the time between the agreement and the
    commitment that we made as part of the agreement to leave
    Afghanistan by May 31st----
        Mr. Connolly. So a firm date was set----
        Secretary Blinken. Yes.
        Mr. Connolly [continuing]. For all U.S. Troops to get out.
    Is that correct.
        Secretary Blinken. All U.S. troops were to be out by May
    31st. In the meantime, 5,000 prisoners were released from
    Taliban prisons----
        Mr. Connolly. And, as Mr. Sherman points out, among those
    5,000 were terrorists, fighters, and people who returned to the
    battlefield against the Afghan Government, which----
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Connolly [continuing]. Allegedly we were supporting at
    the time.
        Now, speaking of that Afghan Government, were they in Doha
    at the negotiating table as equal partners?
        Secretary Blinken. They were not.
        Mr. Connolly. They were not?
        Secretary Blinken. They were not.
        Mr. Connolly. Why were they excluded? That is the
    government we were supporting.
        Secretary Blinken. I can't answer that. I wasn't there at
    the time. But they were not.
        Mr. Connolly. Well, if the government we are supporting is
    not allowed to have a voice at the peace negotiations where a
    deal was, in fact, agreed to by the United States, could that
    conceivably undermine confidence in that government and by that
    government in itself in terms of its future?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes. And, indeed, I think General
    McKenzie has testified to exactly that point, that Doha created
    a tremendous crisis in confidence and about the future for the
    Afghan Government and, presumably, to some extent, for the
    Afghan Security Forces themselves.
        Mr. Connolly. Could it also have a morale effect on the
    Afghan military, that we were training and equipping to, in
    fact, fight the Taliban?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, it could.
        Mr. Connolly. So here we are cutting a deal with Taliban
    while at the same time asking the Afghan military and the
    Afghan Government to resist. Is that correct.
        Secretary Blinken. Correct.
        Mr. Connolly. That sounds like a contradiction in
    diplomatic policy to me. That is kind of hard to follow.
        And it seems to me that we--we--by agreeing to that in the
    Trump years with Secretary Pompeo, your predecessor, and
    Ambassador Khalilzad, we actually set in motion an untenable
    but probably irrevocable, kind of, you know, unfolding of
    events.
        Is that a fair statement, do you think?
        Secretary Blinken. Once the deadline was there--all troops
    out by May 31st of 2021--and, as part of that, an agreement
    from the signing of Doha to that date not to attack U.S.
    Forces, but with the obvious conclusion to be drawn from that
    that if that deadline was not respected, the Taliban would
    resume its attacks on U.S. Forces, on partner forces, and its
    attacks on the cities----
        Mr. Connolly. So, in other words, Mr. Secretary, we cut a
    deal to get out and cut our losses at the expense of the Afghan
    Government, the Afghan military, and ultimately the Afghan
    people.
        And that was all set in motion before you took the oath of
    office or President Biden took the oath of office.
        Secretary Blinken. Well, I think----
        Mr. Connolly. Is that a fair statement?
        Secretary Blinken. I think that is where the Doha Agreement
    led.
        Mr. Connolly. I thank you.
        And I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        Let me just State that the Taliban was not in compliance
    with the Doha Agreement when the evacuation was ordered.
        And your own senior advisor, Ned Price, said that the Doha
    conditions were, quote/unquote, ``immaterial''--``immaterial''
    to the evacuation. That speaks volumes.
        I now recognize Mr. Perry.
        Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, thanks for being here.
        This statement from you, in a 2024 Senate hearing, where
    you said, ``No one has done more to support Israel than Joe
    Biden.''
        Now, during the Obama term, Joe Biden was the Vice
    President, so I understand it is difficult--it was difficult to
    say something, but he didn't say anything about the U.S.
    funding the campaign to oust Netanyahu. And I get it, while
    President Obama was the President, he was the Vice President,
    that is a difficult thing to do. But he was unburdened when he
    became President, so he could have said something then.
        Immediately upon taking office, he redesignated the Houthis
    from a foreign terrorist organization. We see what they have
    done. That hasn't been helpful to Israel.
        He restored the sanctions waiver. I remind everybody that
    Iran exports are at a 5-year high, with 3.4 million barrels
    being sold every day, funding their terrorist activities all
    across the globe.
        The President made a red line for Israel going into Rafah
    to defend itself. Withheld arms shipments to Israel so it
    couldn't defend itself. Continually called and calls for Israel
    to lay down its defenses and demanding a cease-fire. Continues
    at this time to undermine Netanyahu, in this time of war.
    Again, I think I already said about the sanctions waiver.
        But the President didn't even go to greet the Prime
    Minister when he came to the United States. He didn't even send
    the Vice President. He actually used Israel funding to get
    Ukraine funding--used Israel.
        Again, oil exports are at a 5-year high, and that money
    goes directly to support Iran, Israel's mortal enemy, and all
    their proxies, including the Houthis, Islamic Jihad, Hamas,
    Hezbollah--you name it.
        Continues to support United Nations Relief and Works Agency
    and the activities of those within involved in the terrorist
    attack on Israel on October 7th.
        That is just a few things that I quickly found, knowing
    that you would be here, Mr. Secretary.
        And you said, ``No one, starting with President Biden, has
    done more to make sure they have what they need to defend
    themselves from Hamas, to deal with the threat Hamas poses.''
    And that is also from a 2024 Senate hearing, Mr. Secretary.
    ``No one has done more to support Israel than Joe Biden.'' I am
    thanking the good Lord that he is not against Israel, Mr.
    Secretary.
        I don't know if you have anything to say. I am sure you are
    going to have a list of all the wonderful things that he has
    done to support Israel. But you can't support Israel while you
    are at the same time supporting their mortal enemy. You can't
    support Israel, at the same time demanding that Israel support
    Hamas. You can't support Israel when you are allowing Iran
    access to billions of dollars used to fund terrorism, not only
    in Israel but around the globe, threatening not only Israel,
    our greatest ally, but also the United States of America and
    its interests abroad.
        So, if you want to defend all that, you are welcome to it,
    Mr. Secretary.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you.
        I will say simply this: When Israel was attacked on October
    the 7th, the President of the United States rushed there, the
    first President to go to Israel during a time of war.
        When Iran mounted attacks, unprecedented attacks, on
    Israel, not once but twice, the first time we had seen direct
    attacks by Iran on Israel, the United States, for the first
    time ever, actively participated in Israel's defense and
    rallied other countries to do the same, making sure that those
    attacks couldn't succeed and enabling Israel to take the
    strikes that it took to debilitate Iran's air defenses.
        If you want to go back more years than that, the Memorandum
    of Understanding, the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding that
    provides the money for Israel's defense, that was negotiated by
    President Obama, and Joe Biden was a lead in that effort to get
    it. And, as a result, the equipment, the munitions, the arms
    that Israel has had as a result of that agreement have enabled
    it to deal with Hezbollah, to deal with Hamas, to deal with----
        Mr. Perry. If I may, sir, in the remaining 10 seconds, if
    this President weren't on both sides of this war, providing
    Iran all that it has provided, maybe those people in Israel
    that died on October 7th would still be alive.
        And I yield.
        Secretary Blinken. And that--that is simply incorrect. And
    I----
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Keating.
        Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        First, to our Gold Star Families that are here, I
    appreciate your being here. I have everlasting gratitude for
    your sacrifice.
        I come from a Gold Star Family, and my own family--even
    decades afterwards, members of my family went back through
    military records, in years-long, painstaking research, just to
    find out exactly what happened to him as he was killed serving
    our country. And I understand the need for that and hope that
    you take advantage of what the ranking member has submitted,
    take advantage of what is there publicly. And I hope there is
    further opportunity to declassify, because it is important, as
    it was to my own family, to get the facts, not just beliefs,
    about exactly what happened.
        Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here in your last
    hearing. I want to thank you for your selfless public service,
    your integrity, your personal sacrifice.
        I came across some--I was researching the Budapest
    agreements the other day, just trying to get more detailed
    information, including our obligation to Ukraine in those
    agreements to defend aggression that they had. And the name
    that kept cropping up through the whole research was your
    father. And I know your father would be very proud of your
    service.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you.
        Mr. Keating. And I want to thank you for that.
        I want to congratulate Mr. Mast.
        And I want to thank my colleague, Chairman McCaul, for
    working together. When I first came into Congress, he was the
    chairman, I was the ranking member of a subcommittee. We worked
    together on investigating the Boston Marathon bombing, finding
    out what happened, what mistakes were made. And we saved lives
    as a result of that report. And it was comprehensive.
        I dare say, though, that the particular report that he
    issued here had things in it but it was certainly not
    comprehensive. In fact, it was really--the report was
    painstaking in avoiding facts that are integral to seeing what
    happened here, why we got to the point we got to.
        The involvement of President Trump--he had committed the
    United States to a full date-certain withdrawal in the deal he
    negotiated with the Taliban, as we have heard, without the
    Afghan Government even being part of that, without discussion
    of rights of women or children in Afghanistan, forcing the
    Afghan Government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters back onto
    the battlefield before a final withdrawal.
        These are the things that should be looked at in a
    comprehensive report if we really want to get to the answers.
    And, sadly, it is lacking here.
        In that timeframe, too, something we should draw attention
    to is, when President Trump unilaterally did this, he left out
    his own military people when he announced that, he left out
    senior officials in his own office, and he left out our allies
    who were fighting in this battle and communicating to them.
        So I just would like you briefly to talk about the
    importance, for the first time, under Article 5, and the
    importance of NATO, our allies came--and the only time--came to
    our assistance in fighting this war. I visited them in
    Afghanistan, along with our own troops.
        So could you talk to the importance of that NATO alliance,
    how important it was in this, how important it is in the
    future?
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you very much, Congressman. And
    thank you for the reference to my father. I deeply appreciate
    it.
        As you said, the first time--the only time--Article 5 has
    been invoked was in defense of the United States after 9/11,
    and NATO allies came from far and wide to join us in
    Afghanistan in dealing with al-Qaeda, in dealing with bin
    Laden, in dealing with the people who attacked us and attacked
    democracy on that day. And that is something we will forever be
    grateful for.
        I am very proud of the fact that, as we leave office, that
    alliance is stronger, bigger, and better-resourced than it has
    ever been. When we took office, of the allies, only nine were
    meeting the pledge that had been made in 2014 to dedicate 2
    percent of GDP to defense. Now, 23 allies are meeting that
    pledge, and the remainder are en route to do so. We have two
    new allies in Finland and Sweden, making the alliance stronger
    and more effective.
        And I will just say this in conclusion. I think what the
    American people need to understand about the alliance--and I
    understand, it is easy to forget--is what makes it so unique
    and why it is so important going forward.
        When countries came together to join NATO, they made this
    commitment, under Article 5, that an attack on one is an attack
    on all. And that means that any would-be aggressor thinking
    about attacking any one of these countries knows that if they
    attack one, they have to take them all on. That is the best way
    to prevent war in the first place. It is the best way to deter
    aggression. It is the best way to make sure that we don't have
    a world of conflict.
        Americans don't want to be at war. NATO has been the best
    guarantor that we can have of making sure those wars don't
    happen in the first place but, if they do, that we are not
    fighting them alone.
        Mr. Keating. Thank you so much.
        I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired.
        I will agree--and Mr. Meeks and I--that NATO has never been
    more united or stronger, and I do think Mr. Putin had a strong
    role.
        The chair now recognizes Mr. Mast.
        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Sometimes we speak about decorum in here, and I would say
    that it doesn't take a four-letter word to violate decorum. We
    insult every single person that served when we come in here and
    we say words like ``we are sorry that the Afghanistan
    withdrawal was not exactly perfect, you know, but--you know,
    maybe we could have done a few things.'' That is a violation of
    decorum against every person that put on a uniform.
        And this place absolutely lives up to being a swamp when we
    try to cover up the fact that 26 of your diplomats told you
    directly that if you continued down the path that you were
    going, that it was going to be a disaster. And we should not be
    covering that up.
        I want to talk about a couple of things today.
        You are our top diplomat. That is not in dispute. Have you
    been in Afghanistan since 13 American servicemembers were
    murdered?
        Secretary Blinken. No, I have not.
        Mr. Mast. Have any of your staff visited the U.S. Embassy
    in Afghanistan since that day?
        Secretary Blinken. We have had people in Afghanistan. I do
    not believe they have visited the Embassy.
        Mr. Mast. Do you know who is currently residing in our
    embassy?
        Secretary Blinken. The Embassy is not under our--obviously
    not under our control. We don't have the ability, not being in
    Afghanistan, to control it.
        Mr. Mast. Do you have any information on anybody that has
    spent any time residing in our embassy since our departure?
        Secretary Blinken. No doubt we do or, in any event, the
    intelligence community does. And I am happy to share that, as
    appropriate.
        Mr. Mast. Yet we are still giving the Taliban tens of
    billions of dollars. There is an American citizen out there,
    literally woke up this morning losing 30 percent of their
    paycheck, and a good percentage of that is going to the Taliban
    or other programs abroad. And this is something that we all
    need to think about and we will be thinking about deeply for
    the next 2 years.
        There is a joke that is made often out there about kids
    going to college to learn basket-weaving and what a joke that
    would be. But the United States right now is literally sending
    tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban, $14.9 million to be
    exact, to teach Afghans how to do carpet-weaving. Let's think
    about that.
        We are giving $280 million to the United Nations to do cash
    transfers for food in Afghanistan, yet we are not sending an
    ear of corn from Iowa, a sack of potatoes from Idaho, or a
    cucumber or an orange from Florida. And that discounts the fact
    that there is no American tonnage going through our ports to
    send those things out of here either; it is just cash
    transfers.
        Another line item--these are directly from SIGAR reports--
    $75 million to teach Afghan women to be farmers. I don't
    believe that we spend $30 million in the United States of
    America to teach women to be farmers. My colleague, Mr. Wilson,
    brought up that they can't even dance in the streets or speak
    to one another or go to school. I am not sure that we can trust
    that that $75 million is being used to teach them agriculture.
    And, as you pointed out, we don't have any diplomats on the
    ground to confirm the validity of these programs.
        Here is one that I was entirely curious about, and maybe
    you could explain it to me: $3.5 billion transferred to the
    Afghan fund that is intended to protect the macro financial
    stability on behalf of the Afghan people. What the hell does
    that mean? Can you tell me? I don't know. That is a bunch of
    gibberish to me.
        Secretary Blinken. Happy to address all of this,
    Congressman. Thank you. And----
        Mr. Mast. I will give you one more----
        Secretary Blinken. Okay.
        Mr. Mast [continuing]. Before you address it.
        Secretary Blinken. Please.
        Mr. Mast. Even worse, by the numbers, we have spent $9
    billion to resettle 90,000, roughly, Afghan refugees here since
    the fall of Afghanistan. My simple Army math tells me that is
    about $100,000 a person. That is absurd.
        So my question for you: We do not even have an embassy in
    Afghanistan; we have no diplomats there. What are we doing
    giving them one dollar?
        Secretary Blinken. So, Congressman, as I believe you know,
    the money that we provide and the international community
    provides is done through partners, implementing partners--U.N.
    agencies, NGO's. They have----
        Mr. Mast. Yes. We could say that about all the State
    Department dollars--foreign NGO's, foreign countries, foreign
    companies, and, in this case, foreign adversaries.
        Secretary Blinken. So each of these institutions, as
    verified by the Department, has in place processes to make sure
    that the money that we provide and others provide is spent
    appropriately.
        And the money that has been spent in Afghanistan--and I
    think, internationally, it is about $8 billion since the
    evacuation--has helped divert famine. It has helped prevent the
    collapse of the health system. It has helped prevent the
    collapse of the entire economy. It has helped avoid bringing
    even more disaster----
        Mr. Mast. Mr. Secretary----
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. On people who are
    suffering.
        Mr. Mast [continuing]. You know for a fact that people,
    literally, especially outside of this country, they directly
    lied to us. Your people had to come back and correct, ``Hey, it
    turns out we were, in fact, spending half a million dollars to
    expand atheism in Nepal through the third-party implementer of
    Humanists International. They were lying to us. They didn't
    show us the exact slideshow that they put together for half a
    million dollars,'' and all this. They lied to us. We have no
    eyes on the ground.
        And I would simply close with this: Again, we do not even
    have an embassy there. We have no business putting one dollar
    into that place.
        Secretary Blinken. Well, I respectfully----
        Mr. Mast. I yield back.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes. And I respectfully disagree. I
    think that the work that we have done through these partners,
    and many other countries have done, has saved many, many lives
    in an incredibly difficult situation.
        And of the money----
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. That has been provided----
        Chairman McCaul. The chair now recognizes Mr. Castro.
        Mr. Castro. Thank you, Chairman.
        Secretary Blinken, welcome. And thank you for being here
    today, and thank you so much for your testimony and for your
    years of service as Secretary of State to our country.
        And, speaking of refugees, before I get to the question, I
    want to note that my city of San Antonio, my hometown and the
    place I represent, is home to a growing and vibrant community
    of Afghan-Americans, many of whom are from the Khost Province
    and fled Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the
    country. I appreciate the work the State Department and other
    government agencies and nonprofits have done to help them adapt
    to their new lives in the United States.
        I wanted to ask you a question about the 2001 AUMF.
        Secretary Blinken, one of the legacies of the Afghan war is
    the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which
    authorizes military force against al-Qaeda. This law continues
    to be in force 23 years after it was first enacted and has been
    used by this administration for military action across the
    world.
        In a sense, the war that began on 9/11 will not end as long
    as this authority continues to be in use, and our Nation
    remains at war across the world, with little transparency for
    the American people. While much of this is reported to the
    Congress, too much remains classified and unavailable to the
    American people.
        The Obama administration, in which you served, released in
    its final days a comprehensive legal and policy framework on
    the use of military force. Will the Biden administration do the
    same and release a report so the American people know where we
    are still at war?
        Secretary Blinken. I appreciate what you are saying and the
    point that you are making. I can't speak to what we will do in
    the remaining weeks of this administration on something like
    that----
        Mr. Castro. Do you think that it is a good idea in the same
    way that the Obama administration did?
        Secretary Blinken. I think we should, in any event, as we
    have been very open to doing, revisit various authorizations
    and authorities to make sure that they are right for the moment
    we are in, not the moment we were in 20 years ago.
        Mr. Castro. I want to speak also to a very important
    issue--it was mentioned that you are headed to the Middle East
    perhaps right after this committee meeting--and that is the war
    in Israel and Gaza.
        And I have--and I think you know; I have said it both
    publicly and privately--I have great respect, obviously, for
    our President, for your service, for the work that others, like
    Bill Burns, have done in trying to reach a cease-fire
    agreement. At the same time, this will be one of the defining
    foreign policy legacies of this time, and I am profoundly
    disappointed in how it has been handled.
        All of us on this dais have supported Iron Dome to protect
    the Israeli people over the years. We have supported the money
    in the Memorandum of Understanding that goes for 10 years. We
    have condemned in the harshest terms October 7th. We have
    sanctioned Hamas and other terrorist groups and warned anybody
    about associating with them around the world.
        And, at the same time, what we have seen by the Israeli
    Government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has been inhumane. In
    fact, it has amounted to war crimes. When an army targets
    civilians in refugee camps, in hospitals, in schools, in
    churches, in religious institutions, and does it repeatedly,
    over and over again, those are war crimes. And the people of
    Israel, many people in Israel, have said so. Former ministers
    in the Israeli Government have said so.
        And I wish that this had turned out differently. I wish you
    all had been successful in getting the cease-fire. But when you
    weren't, I wish that we had used more leverage with the far-
    right Netanyahu government, the same way that Ronald Reagan did
    years ago, the leverage of withholding offensive weapons to get
    them to change what they are doing. Because what they are doing
    has been inhumane, and the world has seen it.
        We live in a different world now. This is no longer the
    world of the Vietnam War, certainly not World War II, not even
    the world of the Gulf War in the early 1990's. The world is
    much more transparent now. People can--all of us are
    essentially social demographers and documentarians who can
    record the world around us and then send that out to everybody
    else around the world. And that is why the world has become
    more transparent.
        And people can see the inhumanity on both sides. But,
    again, we have taken action to go after Hamas, to label them as
    terrorists, to sanction them, to do what we can to stop them.
    We have not done enough to stop Benjamin Netanyahu and what he
    is doing to the Palestinians.
        And my question is whether you believe we should have done
    anything differently.
        Secretary Blinken. And I see I am about to be out of time.
    I am happy to take that up, I am happy to respond if you want
    to give me more time, but----
        Mr. Castro. Chairman, can I can get a few seconds on a
    response?
        Chairman McCaul. Yes.
        Secretary Blinken. For us, for me, there will be a lot of
    time to look back and ask ourselves whether we could and should
    have done things differently.
        From day one, we have sought to accomplish several things:
        One, to make sure, to the best of our ability, that we
    helped Israel ensure that October 7th would never happen again.
        Two, to try to prevent a wider war from taking place that
    would result in more death, more suffering, and likely prolong
    the war in Gaza, including a potential war with Lebanon and
    Hezbollah, with Iran, with Iranian-aligned militia groups, and
    with others. And we have actually successfully done that.
        Third, to do our best to make sure that civilians caught in
    a crossfire of Hamas's initiation, who didn't start this and
    can do nothing to stop it, are protected. And we have worked
    every single day to do that.
        I have also been to the region 12 times since October 7th--
    I am heading back in an hour or two--to continue the efforts to
    get a cease-fire and hostage agreement, to get the hostages
    home, to get the guns to stop firing, to put Gaza on a better
    path, and, meanwhile, to try to make sure that people have the
    assistance they so desperately need----
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired, and we
    wish you well on that trip, sir.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. Is with us every single
    day.
        Chairman McCaul. The chair now recognizes Mr. Burchett.
        Mr. Burchett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will miss your
    leadership. Appreciate your friendship, brother.
        Mr. Secretary, 13 brave Americans lost their lives. One of
    them, his people live in my area, and I live on the street
    named after him, Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss.
        And I remind folks that 13 brave Americans lost their
    lives, and there are a lot of moms and dads that lost their
    kids because of this. And the blood is on you all's hands, and
    that needs to be acknowledged.
        But, Mr. Secretary, in your opening remarks, you stated
    that al-Qaeda has not regrouped in Afghanistan.
        A friend of mine who just returned from there wants you to
    know that al-Qaeda, in fact, has thousands of fighters in
    Afghanistan and eight new bases there. One of those bases is in
    the Panjshir Valley, which is the home to Afghan resistance.
        In July 2024, a call was issued to foreign fighters around
    the world to migrate to Afghanistan and join the ranks of the
    jihad. This was widely covered by the media, and, in fact,
    there is video evidence of al-Qaeda fighting alongside the
    Taliban.
        Knowing all that, is Hamza bin Laden still alive?
        Secretary Blinken. I couldn't tell you definitively.
        Mr. Burchett. Well, he was--if people don't know, he was
    the leader of al-Qaeda, and his father, Osama bin Laden, was
    killed. Hamza was thought to be dead sometime in 2019, but new
    reports suggest that he is alive and still in charge of al-
    Qaeda.
        What is the relationship between Taliban, al-Qaeda, and
    ISIS?
        Secretary Blinken. When it comes to ISIS, which is the
    group that is of greatest concern in Afghanistan, the
    relationship between the Taliban and ISIS is deeply
    adversarial.
        Mr. Burchett. Okay.
        Secretary Blinken. The Taliban sees ISIS as its number-one
    enemy. And it has the will but not necessarily the capacity to
    deal effectively with it.
        Mr. Burchett. Okay.
        Secretary Blinken. Al-Qaeda is a different story. This is
    obviously a group that the Taliban in the past has collaborated
    with, given shelter to, and otherwise acquiesced to.
        Mr. Burchett. Okay.
        What has the State Department done, briefly, to unify the
    Afghan resistance groups who want to drive out the Taliban?
        Secretary Blinken. There is not much of a resistance active
    in trying to do that.
        Mr. Burchett. All right.
        Well, my friend alleged that an Afghan-American and former
    U.S. Army noncommissioned officers traveled to Afghanistan
    after the collapse. And, of course, the Taliban has been
    benefiting from U.S. cash shipments sent to the Afghan central
    bank--this is American funds--and that sanctioned terrorists
    are diverting U.S. aid meant for the Afghan people.
        Why are we giving the Taliban millions in taxpayers'
    dollars while they hold Americans hostage and are killing the
    Afghan people? And, in my opinion, sir, they will hate us for
    free; we don't need to be giving them money.
        Secretary Blinken. We are not giving the Taliban anything,
    as I discussed with Congressman Mast. We are providing money,
    as many other countries are, to U.N. agencies, NGO's, to help
    the Afghan people, who desperately need it.
        Mr. Burchett. And these agencies are funding the Taliban.
    Reports are saying----
        Secretary Blinken. So, of the money----
        Mr. Burchett. Sir, reports are saying----
        Secretary Blinken. Under the----
        Mr. Burchett [continuing]. Between 40 and 80 million U.S.
    tax dollars are given to the Taliban every dadgum week. I mean,
    is that acceptable?
        Secretary Blinken. According to the report that I read and
    that the Congressman referred to, the SIGAR's report, of the
    approximately $8 billion that the international community,
    including the United States, has dedicated to Afghanistan,
    about $10 million of that--that is, 0.1 percent--has no doubt
    gotten to the Taliban in terms of fees----
        Mr. Burchett. I don't care if it is a dadgum penny.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. Utilities----
        Mr. Burchett. I don't care if it is a penny. I mean, for
    you to sit up here and admit that our enemies--I mean, these
    people swear to hate Christians and Jews, and that takes care
    of about everybody in this dadgum room--and we are sending
    them--I don't care if it is 1 percent. You can--but let me tell
    you, $10 million is a hell of a lot of money to the people I
    represent, sir. And it needs be to something that you all--let
    me get all my questions. I am running out.
        I have invited President Saleh and Commander Massoud of the
    Afghan resistance to the U.S. to meet with myself and
    colleagues. Will the State Department work to facilitate their
    entry into the country to meet with Congress.
        Secretary Blinken. I will be happy to followup with your
    office on that.
        Mr. Burchett. All right.
        Just for the record, this State Department has funded our
    enemies and they have turned a blind eye to our open southern
    border. U.S. Border Patrol has caught known terrorists sneaking
    into our country, likely using our tax dollars to do so. And
    this disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan was not a solution;
    it was the beginning of a much bigger problem waiting to
    happen.
        Let me ask you one more question.
        Mr. Secretary, according to Ambassador Khalilzad--I am not
    sure how you say that--do you believe the Taliban violated the
    Doha Agreement? And you reportedly advised President Biden
    during the interagency review to endorse the agreement
    conditions and not withdraw until the Taliban complied.
        Secretary Blinken. The Taliban was in violation of the Doha
    Agreement in a number of ways. It was in violation when the
    previous administration drew down forces repeatedly. It was in
    violation during the time that we were in office before the
    evacuation----
        Mr. Burchett. But why did you advise condition---
    conditionally?
        Secretary Blinken. When it comes to the agreement, what we
    tried to do was to get them to abide by the conditions--
    notably, to engage in a negotiation with the Afghan Government
    to produce a new government that would bring everyone together.
        They didn't do that. But because we had the deadline and
    because we had the prospect of the Taliban resuming attacks on
    U.S. Forces, which would have required us to put tens of
    thousands of Americans back into Afghanistan, we followed
    through with pulling them out.
        Mr. Burchett. Thank you.
        Mr. Chairman, it is clear to me that this group is clearly
    out of their league, and the new administration couldn't get
    here fast enough.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        The chair recognizes Ms. Titus.
        Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And thank you, Mr. Secretary.
        Just to bring things back to a little bit to the realm of
    reality, throughout this do-nothing Congress, which has been
    led by the Republicans, we have seen time and time again the
    majority's lack of interest in actually solving problems.
        On this committee, the Republicans have blown a lot of
    smoke about the process, they have tried to hold you in
    contempt, and they have ignored our, kind of, foreign-
    policymaking responsibilities by just not paying any attention
    to democratic backsliding in Georgia, what has just happened
    with the toppling of Assad in Syria, just to do nothing but
    yammer about who is qualified and who is not to make these kind
    of decisions.
        You know, Democrats, on the other hand, have been focused
    on real solutions. We took the after-action report and
    introduced legislation codifying some of these recommendations
    in an effort to support the State Department's crisis response,
    to protect our Afghan allies, which they claim they want to do,
    and to position our national security apparatus to address the
    landscape on this, kind of, new Afghanistan situation.
        Many of those proposals, in fact, made it into the NDAA
    that just came out over the weekend. I was glad to see some of
    those proposals in the State Department's appropriation, or
    authorization, and one of those that I was especially pleased
    with was my CARE Authorization Act. This would codify the
    Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts at the State
    Department for the next 3 years.
        I wonder, Mr. Secretary, if you could talk about the
    importance of the CARE program, this measure to codify it, and
    how it can impact the work that you are doing in the new
    landscape.
        Secretary Blinken. Well, thank you very much. And I deeply
    appreciate the support that you have shown and other Members
    have shown for these efforts.
        We have an obligation that I believe is a strong,
    bipartisan obligation and sense of responsibility to the many
    Afghans who stood beside us for 20 years in Afghanistan. And we
    have worked very hard, as I said, to revitalize the SIV,
    Special Immigrant Visa, program. We have brought in more
    people, more visas, in the last 3 years, almost as many as in
    the entirety of the program, going back to 2009.
        But part of that, of course, as well as refugees who come
    in under other parts of the law, need a tremendous amount of
    support when it comes to relocating them, resettling them here
    in the United States.
        And the Department established this effort and this office
    to do just that: to work to make sure that we could bring
    Afghans out, get them to so-called lily pad countries where we
    could finish processing them, then to bring them to the United
    States, and then to work with resettlement agencies to make
    sure that they could be resettled and integrated into
    communities.
        And we have also seen an incredible outpouring from
    Americans all across this country through a sponsorship program
    we set up so that private individuals and groups could also
    welcome Afghans to this country. And we have seen tens of
    thousands of people stand up to do that.
        But we do need the, I think, ongoing support from the
    Department to make sure that we have the people in place to
    continue this effort, and so we welcome congressional efforts
    to support that.
        Ms. Titus. Thank you.
        I would like to followup about the SIVs.
        You know, the report from the majority said that--or
    alleged that President Biden abandoned our allies, but the
    numbers tell an entirely different story. As you referenced,
    during Trump's time in office, the SIV coordinator role was
    vacant for the entire time.
        Just to give the numbers to the point you make, Trump only
    issued 7,116 SIVs in a 3-year period, and processing time
    increased from 480 days in January 2017 to 996 days in January
    2021.
        When you were here in 2021, you spoke to us about this
    immense backlog that the administration had inherited of more
    than 17,000 applications of SIVs. Ambassador Smith affirmed
    that the Trump administration had taken--this is a quote--taken
    no steps to reduce the backlog.
        In just his first 8 months of the administration, however,
    President Biden issued 8,760 Afghan SIVs and halved the
    processing time.
        So, you know, the success is in those numbers, and it is
    very clear what the emphasis has been under the previous
    administration, not what has been alleged.
        And can you just talk a little bit about how you were able
    to accomplish this?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, I think you covered it very well,
    but simply to say that, yes, we inherited a program that was
    basically stuck. Nothing was happening. There hadn't been an
    interview for someone to get their visa going back to March
    2020. We had a backlog of about 17,000, 18,000 people.
        And as soon as we came in, we restarted the interviews. The
    President issued an executive order--one of the very first--
    instructing us to look at what we could do to cut the delays,
    to beef up the staffing.
        We cut the time in half for processing SIVs. I quintupled
    the resources at the State Department going to look at the
    applications so that we could get people through the system.
        And, as a result--I won't repeat the numbers that you
    cited--we rebooted a program that had been moribund and we
    brought many, many, many Afghans here.
        But that didn't stop after the evacuation. And as I noted,
    since then, almost 70,000 Afghan SIVs. And that was as many in
    3 years as----
        Chairman McCaul. With all due respect, Secretary----
        [Crosstalk.]
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. The entirety of the
    program.
        Chairman McCaul [continuing]. The gentleman's time has
    expired.
        Ms. Titus. Thank you very much. Thank you for doing that.
        Chairman McCaul. The chair recognizes Mr. Baird.
        Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And I would like to start my comments--I appreciate you
    being here, Mr. Secretary, but I want to express my
    appreciation to the Gold Star Families that are here today, and
    I also want to express my sorrow for your loss. And one of
    those was Corporal Humberto Sanchez from my area, Logansport,
    Indiana. So I just want to make that on the record because of
    their sacrifice.
        But, Mr. Secretary, I have questions about whether or not
    you have expressed opposition to the unconditional withdrawal
    to the President or Mr. Sullivan or to NATO. Because on April
    21st you made a visit to Brussels to talk with NATO, and after
    your visit you made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on
    April 15th, 2021.
        Could you give us some idea of what the purpose of that
    visit was? And then what information did you bring back and
    share with the President from this unannounced visit?
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you.
        The purpose of the visit was to see for myself the
    situation on the ground in Afghanistan, to hear directly from
    our embassy how they were pursuing the mission--our diplomatic
    mission, our mission to bring more SIVs out--and also to talk
    to Afghans, not just from the government but from across
    society, which I did on that trip, to hear from them how they
    saw the situation as it was evolving.
        And that was a very informative trip, as were my many
    discussions at NATO with our allies and partners throughout
    that period.
        Now, I am not going to share the advice or counsel that I
    gave to the President. That is between me and him. And having
    said that, I think what we were looking to do was to see if we
    could get the Taliban to meet its requirements under the
    agreement, particularly to engage in a negotiation with the
    Afghan Government to have not only an enduring cease-fire but
    also to have a political transition in Afghanistan.
        We worked on that until the day that the Afghan President,
    Ghani, fled. In fact, I was on the phone to him the night
    before he fled on August the 14th, in which he told me that he
    wanted to continue working on getting an agreement with the
    Taliban but, if he couldn't, he would stay and fight to the
    death. And he left the next day.
        So my trip back then helped to inform our diplomacy, our
    approach to what we were trying to do. And I wish we could have
    gotten, obviously, the Taliban to agree to meet its
    commitments, but we didn't.
        Mr. Baird. So thank you.
        The thing that I am also interested in: Do you feel that
    the President acted on any of the information that you brought
    back to him from that meeting? And was it any coincidence that
    the President announced an unconditional withdrawal just 6 days
    after you had that meeting with him?
        Secretary Blinken. The President absolutely factors in--and
    I know firsthand--the information, the ideas, the
    recommendations that I bring to him, that many others in the
    administration bring to him.
        And we have a very deliberate process for working through
    all of these issues. And he has insisted from day one on
    hearing from everyone, on making sure that we are all
    questioning our assumptions, our biases going in. That is the
    way he operates. But, ultimately, he has to make the decisions.
    We can all give our recommendations and advice. He is the one
    who has to make the judgments; he is the one that makes the
    final call.
        Again, it was our effort and our policy to see the Taliban
    meet its obligations. It didn't. But I remind again that we had
    a deadline that was bequeathed to us. And during that period
    from the Doha Agreement to the evacuation, the Taliban agreed
    that it would not attack our forces or partner forces, it would
    stay away from the cities. Had we not fulfilled the Doha
    Agreement in terms of removing our forces from Afghanistan,
    those attacks would have resumed on us, on our partners, on the
    cities. And, as I said, it would have required sending in
    thousands more Americans to defend against those attacks and to
    try to hold on to Afghanistan.
        Mr. Baird. Thank you.
        I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        The chair recognizes Ms. Jacobs.
        Ms. Jacobs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here.
        Thank you to the Gold Star Families who are here for your
    sacrifice and for representing the Gold Star Families that we
    know have sacrificed so much over the last 20 years. I
    represent San Diego, the largest military community in the
    country, and my community has borne the cost of this 20-year
    war.
        And so, Secretary Blinken, rather than repeatedly, you
    know, revisiting the events of 3 years ago, I would really like
    to look ahead and consider what we actually learned from
    America's two-decade, $2.3-trillion investment in Afghanistan,
    an investment which was intended to foster democratic
    governance and State capacity but which ultimately fell short,
    as evidenced by the fact that the government instantly
    collapsed after our departure and is longstandingly ranked as
    one of the most corrupt states in the world.
        So the Global Fragility Act, a law which was signed by
    President Trump, was designed to incorporate some of these
    lessons from Afghanistan and to pilot a more integrated
    strategic approach to how we deal with fragile and conflict-
    afflicted regions.
        Reflecting on the shortcomings of our 20-year war and the
    withdrawal's aftermath, what key insights have guided the
    Department's evolving approach to conflict prevention and
    stabilization? And how have these lessons shaped the
    implementation of the Global Fragility Act to ensure that
    future engagements emphasize building resilient, accountable
    institutions rather than just propping up hollow, corrupt ones?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, I think you said it very well.
        I think one of the lessons that I, at least, take away from
    the 20 years is that, while very well-intentioned and noble in
    aspiration, the idea of nation-building and trying to impose a
    democracy on a country, in effect, by military means alone is
    simply not going to work, and that while security is necessary,
    it is not sufficient to getting the job done.
        And unless you have a whole-of-government and really a
    whole-of-society approach that looks at the various things that
    are likely to drive people apart and create conflict within a
    society, you are unlikely to stop it and you are unlikely to
    see the emergence of a stable--never mind democratic--
    government.
        And I think what you and others have done in your work in
    support for the Global Fragility Act very well reflects that
    insight. Because if we are not operating across society and
    across the government--and not only us; NGO's, the private
    sector, and others--again, we are unlikely to actually prevent
    these countries from failing, never mind building something
    successful.
        So we have now had some beginnings of experience with the
    Global Fragility Act, but, as you know very well, the other
    insight is that this doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't
    happen by flipping a light switch. These are engagements and
    investments that we have to sustain over a decade.
        So we are in the early years of this, but I think this is a
    much better approach to trying to get the results that, again,
    are extremely well-intentioned but, I think, Afghanistan and,
    in different ways, Iraq shows us are unlikely to be achieved
    just by focusing on security and the military.
        Ms. Jacobs. Well, I couldn't agree with you more.
        And, you know, I know one of the other things that the
    Afghanistan withdrawal revealed was a sort of systemic
    vulnerability in the Department's ability to manage urgent,
    high-risk situations.
        So I was also wondering if you could talk about what sort
    of organizational measures you have implemented to streamline
    decisionmaking authority, improve interagency coordination,
    ensure rapid, accurate communication during future emergencies,
    and how have these reforms addressed some of the issues
    identified in the After Action Review?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes. Thank you very much. This is
    something we have taken very seriously, and as you know and I
    think as the chairman knows very well, members of the committee
    know, we undertook an After Action Review.
        I brought back a very senior retired member of the
    Department, Ambassador Dan Smith. He conducted interviews of
    150 current and former State Department officials, myself
    included, on this period basically from January 2020 through
    the evacuation to look at the State Department and what we did
    right, what we did wrong.
        And as I mentioned earlier, a number of important
    recommendations came out of that to strengthen us going
    forward. We had 34 recommendations in 11 categories. We have
    taken 40 actions since then.
        And just very quickly, one was the need to strengthen our
    overall crisis preparedness and our response capabilities. We
    didn't have, before this, a common operating picture of what
    was going on in a given emergency situation. We stood up
    something called the Orion platform. We would bring together
    everything in one place--cable traffic, news sources,
    intelligence, risk indicators, accountability for our
    engagement with U.S. citizens, all in one place.
        Before, we had a dispersed staff; we didn't have the proper
    capacity to surge our people during a crisis. We opened a new,
    modernized operations center with that capacity, with the
    flexible spaces to have task forces develop overnight.
        We had, before, no comprehensive system for tracking or
    deconflicting the status of American citizens who are caught in
    the middle of a conflict. So we stood up a streamlined and
    cloud-based system to track, to communicate with American
    citizens in real-time to avoid duplication, overlap.
        There are a number of things. I would really commend to
    you----
        Chairman McCaul. The gentlelady's time has expired.
        The chair now recognizes Mr. Barr.
        Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your
    service as chairman of this committee, and thanks for the great
    job you have done for us as chairman.
        Secretary Blinken, thank you for your service.
        In this, your last appearance before this committee as
    Secretary of State, I do want to ask you some tough questions,
    though, about what I see as not only a chaotic retreat from
    Afghanistan but probably the biggest foreign-policy blunder of
    the administration over the last 4 years but, I would argue,
    maybe even the last generation.
        The failure was not the 20-year fight against terrorism in
    Afghanistan. That was not the failure. In fact, that was a
    success, where the brave men and women of this country who wear
    our uniform kept the homeland safe because they took the fight
    to the terrorists. And, in fact, we eliminated terrorists like
    Osama bin Laden because of their valor and their bravery.
        That was not the failure. The failure that dishonored their
    20-year service was the chaotic and disastrous retreat.
        And so, from your opening statement, you said it is
    important to put it in context, the events of August 2021.
    Important, I agree. So let's talk about the Doha Agreement, Mr.
    Secretary.
        According to Ambassador Khalilzad, you believed the Taliban
    violated the Doha Agreement, and you purportedly advised
    President Biden during the interagency review to enforce the
    agreement's conditions that Secretary Pompeo, your predecessor,
    and President Trump had entered into and not withdraw until the
    Taliban complied.
        Why did you advise on this conditionality?
        Secretary Blinken. To be very clear, what--and, again, I am
    not going to get into my advice to the President. I can tell
    you what our policy was.
        The policy was to seek compliance with the agreement and to
    get the Taliban to live up to what it had promised to do, which
    was----
        Mr. Barr. Right. And I am going to reclaim my time. Yes, I
    agree with that. But the Taliban failed to live up to the
    agreement. The Taliban failed to engage in intra-Afghan
    negotiations, correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Barr. The Taliban was inflicting violence on Afghan
    forces, correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Barr. And the Taliban conducted indirect-fire attacks
    against American forces. Is that correct.
        Secretary Blinken. Prior to the evacuation, that may have
    been incidental. But everything else you said is certainly
    correct.
        Mr. Barr. Well, I don't think President Biden listened to
    you, and I don't think he was implementing the Doha Agreement.
    It was not that he was bound by the Doha Agreement. He
    disregarded the Doha Agreement. And he said we are going to
    retreat regardless of the Doha Agreement, and that is what
    happened here.
        Let me talk about NATO, because----
        Secretary Blinken. Well, just to be clear, the Doha
    Agreement said we would be out by May 31, 2021. That is what we
    inherited.
        Mr. Barr. Yes, based on conditions, Mr. Secretary, and you
    know that. In fact, you acknowledged that the Taliban was
    failing to live up to the conditions. And so Doha did not bind
    your administration to retreat the way you did.
        Secretary Blinken. What would have happened if we had not--
    what would have happened had we not----
        Mr. Barr. Certainly not the way you did.
        Now, Mr. Secretary, I want to talk about NATO, because you
    all talk about and tout this great strengthened NATO alliance.
        I was just in Europe in October. I agree, NATO's strong,
    but it is not because of your retreat from Afghanistan. It is
    because of Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine that required NATO
    to get stronger, despite the invitation to aggression that the
    retreat from Afghanistan gave to Putin.
        Let me ask you about NATO and how NATO felt about the
    policy of this administration back in 2021.
        According to the State Department documents--documents that
    we subpoenaed--our NATO allies wanted the Biden-Harris
    administration to enforce the conditions of the Doha Agreement.
        You met with former NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg in
    March 2021 at the NATO ministerial meeting, correct?
        Secretary Blinken. Uh-huh. That is correct.
        Mr. Barr. Yes. And according to State Department documents,
    Mr. Stoltenberg opposed an unconditional withdrawal, and you,
    in response, stated, quote, ``I share your view that it would
    be preferable to reach a political settlement before foreign
    troops depart.''
        We have also learned that you were jolted by how strongly
    NATO officials argued against a complete withdrawal.
        Did you share NATO's concerns with the White House?
        Secretary Blinken. I shared everything I heard from NATO
    allies and partners with the White House, with my colleagues,
    with the President. That is my job.
        Mr. Barr. General Miller testified that NATO leaders were,
    quote, ``unhappy,'' unquote, with the President's unconditional
    withdrawal, and they, quote, ``voiced that unhappiness in
    different publications.''
        Then your No. 2, Mr. Chollet, lied to this committee,
    stating NATO itself didn't take a position.
        We are told by public sources that NATO Secretary-General
    Stoltenberg was, quote, ``livid,'' informing Secretary Austin
    and yourself that he, quote, ``strongly disagreed with the
    decision and felt that NATO's collective position hadn't been
    taken into account,'' unquote.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes. I will let Mr. Stoltenberg speak
    for himself, someone I have great respect for. But that is not
    the----
        Mr. Barr. Yes. So here is the bottom line. NATO is stronger
    today, but not because of you all. NATO is stronger because
    your weakness invited Putin to move against Ukraine.
        You signaled you weren't going to stand with our NATO
    allies. You didn't care. President Biden didn't care about our
    NATO allies and what they thought about a retreat from
    Afghanistan. Instead, what it did is it signaled weakness, and
    Putin took advantage of it.
        The reason NATO is stronger today is because of the
    invasion. It is not because of U.S. policy.
        Secretary Blinken. No, that is incorrect.
        Mr. Barr. I yield.
        Secretary Blinken. The reason NATO is stronger today is
    because of President Biden's leadership. This alliance is
    bigger, it is better resourced, it has got more members because
    of his leadership. And if you ask any NATO ally, that is
    exactly what they will tell you.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time is expired.
        The chair now recognizes Ms. Manning.
        Also, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the
    gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Van Orden, be allowed to sit on
    the dais and participate in today's hearing.
        Without objection, so ordered.
        Ms. Manning. And we will certainly miss you, and thank you
    for your service.
        Ms. Manning. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman
    McCaul.
        Thank you Ranking Member Meeks.
        Thank you, Secretary Blinken, for your service and for your
    answer to that last question.
        I want to express my appreciation for the Gold Star
    families in the room today. I have a Gold Star mother on my
    staff, and I do understand the terrible sacrifices those
    families make.
        I must say, I am disappointed that we are having yet
    another hearing on the now 3-year-old withdrawal from
    Afghanistan. It seems to me that the fall of the Assad regime
    in Syria and what happens next, including the potential
    resurgence of ISIS or other terrorist groups, has major
    consequences for our security and the future of the region, and
    it would be a much better use of our time to talk about that
    topic today.
        So, Mr. Chairman, I would respectfully suggest that the
    committee hold a hearing and a classified briefing on this
    critical situation, the situation in Syria, next week.
        Chairman McCaul. [inaudible.]
        Ms. Manning. Thank you very much. I look forward to that
    meeting before I am no longer on this committee.
        Mr. Secretary, in your view, what are our core interests
    that are at stake in Syria?
        Secretary Blinken. A number of them. First and foremost, of
    course, is protecting our forces that are there, that remain
    there. Second is making sure to the best of our ability that
    ISIS does not reconstitute.
        Through the Obama administration, then the Trump
    administration, we were successful in eliminating the
    territorial caliphate that ISIS had developed in Syria. We
    don't want to see that revive.
        And in particular, there are thousands of foreign terrorist
    fighters who are detained in a detention center that is being
    policed by our Kurdish partners in Syria. We want to make sure
    that that is preserved.
        Third, there may be, and I very much hope there is, an
    opportunity to move Syria away from the disaster of recent
    decades toward a country that is unified, that reflects all of
    the different communities that make up Syria, and so that we
    get a political transition that is inclusive and that brings
    everyone together.
        We have an interest in seeing that because if Syria goes
    the other way, if it fragments, then we are likely to see more
    mass migrations, we are likely to see more places in Syria that
    become centers for terrorism and extremism, none of which is in
    our interest.
        Ms. Manning. Mr. Secretary, the President-elect has
    suggested that we have nothing, no interest in Syria, that he
    doesn't want to get involved there when he takes over.
        What impact would that have if the United States were
    simply to step aside and wash our hands of what is going on in
    Syria?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, again, as I just said, in fact
    there was a, I think, very important success through the Obama
    administration, that was completed by the first Trump
    administration, in eliminating this territorial caliphate that
    ISIS had established in Syria.
        That was a job very well done over two administrations, and
    I believe that the incoming administration will have an
    interest in preserving the gains that it helped achieve.
        Ms. Manning. To what do you attribute the resurgence of the
    rebels in Syria and the fall of the Assad regime?
        Secretary Blinken. I think what we are seeing is a result
    of a number of factors.
        But, first, all of the outside patrons of the regime--
    Hezbollah, Iran, Russia--were at the very least distracted and
    in some cases on the ropes because of problems of their own
    making and problems that we helped exacerbate for them.
        Second, Assad's utter refusal to engage in any kind of
    political process to try to bring the country together, despite
    everything he had inflicted on the country, I think that sowed
    the seeds of his downfall.
        Ms. Manning. I do want to address one thing that we are
    seeing happen in Afghanistan.
        Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, we have witnessed the
    tragic consequences of the takeover of the Taliban,
    particularly on the Afghan women and girls.
        Women who had high-ranking positions, who had good,
    productive jobs, are no longer able to work. Girls who were
    attending school are no longer able to attend school.
        When I read the Trump Doha Agreement, I was shocked by how
    few conditions there were in there for the Taliban. There were
    no protections requested for Afghan women and girls.
        Since the withdrawal we have seen the Taliban issue more
    than 100 edicts targeting women and girls, restricting not just
    their education and their ability to work, but also their
    ability to leave their homes, their ability to seek healthcare
    services from male providers.
        And just recently, the Taliban issued an edict suspending
    medical education for women. We know what this means. Afghan
    women will eventually be unable to get medical care that they
    need. This will be a disaster not just for the women of
    Afghanistan but for the country.
        What steps have you taken to push back on those edicts and
    help the vulnerable Afghan women and girls.
        Secretary Blinken. Well, these edicts are abhorrent, and
    they would take Afghanistan back to the Dark Ages.
        From day one, we have worked to do everything we can to
    defend, support, and, where we can, empower women and girls in
    Afghanistan, including having senior officials whose mission is
    to do just that, including setting up different mechanisms so
    that their voices can be heard in our policy deliberations and
    in the international policy deliberations, including when it
    comes, for example, to recognizing the Taliban. We have
    sanctioned many members of the Taliban.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentlelady's time is expired.
        Secretary Blinken. I am happy to followup.
        Chairman McCaul. The chair recognizes Ms. Salazar.
        Ms. Manning. Thank you.
        Ms. Salazar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And thank you, Mr. Blinken, for being here with us.
        As you know, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan had
    ramifications around the world, not only in the Middle East,
    and not only including the messages to dictators just like the
    Taliban, but to other people, specifically the Western
    Hemisphere.
        And I just want to concentrate my time on three countries
    that are highly important for my constituents, starting with
    Venezuela.
        Sir, I hear that you are planning to cancel the oil
    licenses to actors like Chevron and Repsol and others. And my
    question is, are you planning to cancel those oil contracts
    before or after January 10, which is when Maduro is supposed to
    be assuming the Presidency?
        Secretary Blinken. I can't speak to the actions that we
    will take in terms of when we will take them. I am happy to
    followup with your office.
        Ms. Salazar. You know, you can take this opportunity to
    announce, sir, that we are not going to be doing business with
    the dictators anymore. And the whole world is looking at you.
    So why don't you send the right message to Maduro in saying,
    ``If you steal the elections, you are not going to make any
    money off of it''?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, I think we have been sending very
    clearly the message about how we see the election, how we see
    the abuse of the system by Maduro, with the work that we have
    done to support Mr. Gonzalez and others going forth.
        Ms. Salazar. I know, sir, but the problem is that if the
    Maduro regime has money from Chevron, that goes to PVDSA, it
    goes to the treasury, and then they have more money for their
    oppressive apparatus. You know that.
        Secretary Blinken. And as you know, the opposition
    supported all the efforts that we took to see if we could get
    an election that would reflect the will of the people.
        We got them an election. We saw the will of the people.
    Unfortunately, it has not been recognized.
        Ms. Salazar. And they stole it.
        Secretary Blinken. Right. And so now----
        Ms. Salazar. And now he is going to be sworn in on January
    the 10th. But you can send a message to Chevron, saying: No
    more oil for now.
        Secretary Blinken. We will take the necessary steps to make
    clear----
        Ms. Salazar. But I hear that you are thinking about doing
    that. Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. Again, everything is on the table right
    now, including in terms of the licenses.
        Ms. Salazar. Good.
        Now let's go to Colombia, sir. President Petro from
    Colombia has asked President Biden to pardon a guy, but most
    people here won't know who he is. His name is Simon Trinidad.
    He is a terrorist. He is serving 60 years in prison at a
    Federal prison for kidnapping three American contractors.
        What was your recommendation to the President? To pardon
    Simon Trinidad?
        Secretary Blinken. I am not aware of that request, but I am
    happy to followup. I am not aware----
        Ms. Salazar. You are not aware?
        Secretary Blinken. I am not aware of that person.
        Ms. Salazar. But you know, if that request should go
    through the State Department, that is you.
        Secretary Blinken. I imagine it would.
        Ms. Salazar. So you have not heard about that.
        Secretary Blinken. I have not heard.
        Ms. Salazar. But if that were to be the case within the
    next hours, what recommendation would you give the President?
        Secretary Blinken. I would have to make sure that I am
    fully informed.
        Ms. Salazar. Well, he is a terrorist.
        Secretary Blinken. Again, I want to see--if there is
    something, I want to see it, understand it, and read it. But
    certainly his record speaks for itself.
        Ms. Salazar. Understand. But you understand that if you
    were to pardon Simon Trinidad, you will make every single
    Colombian living in the United States a Republican, right? And
    we don't want to do that.
        I mean, we are happy about that, but that is not the
    honorable thing to do.
        So make sure that President Biden doesn't make a mistake.
    Just it is a humble opinion.
        Let's go to Cuba. Is Cuba under review to be removed from
    the list of countries sponsors of terrorism? Is it under
    review, sir?
        Secretary Blinken. I don't anticipate any changes in our
    policy toward Cuba during the pendency of this administration.
        Ms. Salazar. All right. I am happy you are saying that,
    laudable to hear that. But specifically is it under review
    right now?
        Because if you are going to remove a country from a list of
    terrorists, of the countries sponsors of terrorism, you need to
    start a review. And my question is, is it a yes or a no, is
    Cuba under review?
        Secretary Blinken. Under the law, depending on the
    different authorities of this kind, some mandate a regular
    review, others don't. All I can tell you right now, sitting
    here today, is I don't anticipate any changes in our policy.
        Ms. Salazar. So you are telling me that between now and
    January 20, the President of the United States is not planning
    to remove those bastards, the Cuban regime, off the list of
    countries that sponsor terrorism?
        Secretary Blinken. As I said, I don't anticipate any
    changes in our policy.
        Ms. Salazar. You don't anticipate?
        Secretary Blinken. Right.
        Ms. Salazar. So how can I interpret ``anticipate''? Can you
    commit right now that that is not going to happen? You know
    why, because all I am doing is trying to prevent to give money
    to the repressive apparatus that has been taking everything
    away from the Cubans.
        You are aware of that, right? So I just need to make sure
    that you understand the message from my community.
        Secretary Blinken. I----
        Ms. Salazar. Do not do that. Don't give them the oxygen
    that they want to continue greasing the repressive apparatus.
    Tell me. You have 20 seconds.
        Secretary Blinken. Again, I can't--I do not make decisions
    for the President. The President----
        Ms. Salazar. Sure you do. Come on, sure you do. You are the
    State Department.
        Secretary Blinken. I do not make decisions for the
    President. The President makes decisions. All I can tell you
    is----
        Ms. Salazar. You give the recommendation whether to take
    them or--tell me. I am sorry.
        Secretary Blinken. All I can tell you is----
        Ms. Salazar. Tell me.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. I don't anticipate any
    changes in our policy toward Cuba between now and the end of
    this administration.
        Ms. Salazar. Thank you. I am going to take your word as
    your bond. Let's keep it that way. Appreciate, sir.
        Thank you.
        Chairman McCaul. The time of the gentlelady is expired.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Stanton.
        Mr. Stanton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Secretary Blinken, I would like to focus my questions on a
    topic of great importance to my home State of Arizona: the
    U.S.-Mexico relationship.
        I believe we are at a make-or-break moment for the region.
    Our two countries face significant shared challenges, and there
    remains a lot of work to do to address migration, securing our
    borders against illicit drugs trafficked north and arms
    trafficked south, and to fight pervasive organized crime.
        But the U.S.-Mexico relationship is more than just
    migration and security. Our economies are fundamentally
    intertwined. Mexico recently surpassed China to become the
    U.S.' largest trading partner, supporting hundreds of thousands
    of jobs in my home State of Arizona.
        And I am particularly excited about the vast economic
    potential of near-shoring. Moving supply chains closer to the
    United States market as hundreds of businesses, including the
    semiconductor supply chain enterprise, is critical to our
    national security, move from Asia back to America or to North
    America or even Latin America.
        Meanwhile, the upcoming World Cup gives us an opportunity
    to forge a durable security relationship to address
    international threats.
        There is a choice in front of us now: Do we choose to forge
    a strategic path forward together, rooted in mutual respect and
    cooperation, or do we each go it alone?
        The Mexican Government recently passed a series of sweeping
    constitutional reforms that will harm the U.S.-Mexico
    relationship--overhauling its independent judiciary,
    eliminating independent regulatory agencies, and closing access
    to its energy markets.
        These changes could undermine Mexico's obligation under the
    USMCA, and I have heard from business leaders in Arizona and
    around the country who are anxious that these reforms will hurt
    investor confidence and their ability to do business in Mexico.
        Secretary Blinken, how do you see these constitutional
    changes impacting our economic relationship with Mexico?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, first, you are exactly right about
    the importance of that economic relationship. It is vital to
    this country, it is vital to Mexico, and our citizens benefit
    from it every single day.
        Second, the Mexicans, of course, have the sovereign right
    to make their own laws, amend their own Constitution. That is
    not for us to say.
        As their friend and partner, and as countries that are
    bound together by the USMCA though, we do have opinions on some
    of the steps they are taking.
        And we have raised concerns about certain aspects of the
    constitutional reform, the judicial reform in particular, and
    we have shared those very clearly and very directly with the
    Mexican Government, both with former President Lopez Obrador
    and with President Sheinbaum.
        But the Mexicans will make their own decisions about this.
    But the concerns that we have underscored are exactly what you
    have just cited, which is what effect does this actually have
    on the private sector and investment that is so critical to
    actually meeting the full potential of this relationship,
    including things like near-shoring, including having a supply
    chain where Mexico and the United States are joined in the most
    critical things necessary to our economies and even to our
    security.
        Mr. Stanton. And I want to commend Ambassador Ken Salazar
    for speaking with such clarity on this most important issue.
        There was a recent discussion about sweeping 25 percent
    tariffs on all imports from Mexico and Canada by the President-
    elect.
        Secretary Blinken, in your opinion, how would these
    proposed tariffs impact U.S. and diplomatic interests in
    Mexico?
        Secretary Blinken. Look, I don't want to speculate on what
    the incoming administration will do or not do. That is really
    not my place. I think what I can say is just to underscore what
    you said a few minutes ago, which is this economic partnership
    is so vital, and we want to maximize it, not minimize it.
        Mexico is now the U.S.'--it is our top trade partner for
    goods. We have got $800 billion traded in the last year we have
    accounting for, 2023. That is more than a million dollars every
    single minute of every single day.
        So I think we just want to make sure whatever we do, and
    whatever the incoming administration does, how do we strengthen
    that, how do we build on that, because it is good for both of
    our countries.
        Mr. Stanton. I mentioned the upcoming World Cup as a unique
    opportunity, North American World Cup, for U.S., Mexico, Canada
    to work together to build obviously an incredibly important
    security partnership to make sure the World Cup is as safe as
    possible, but then make that a durable security partnership and
    relationship.
        How should the United States work with the Sheinbaum
    administration on a security partnership to counter the drug
    cartels' violent crime?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, we have been working incredibly
    closely together over the last almost 4 years now on exactly
    that, and I think that work is continuing with the new
    Sheinbaum administration.
        You saw one of the results just the other day. The Mexicans
    seized, with our help, 20 million fentanyl pills. Each one
    could have killed an American citizen.
        They have seized more fentanyl at the border over the last
    2 years than in the previous 5 combined.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time is expired.
        The chair recognizes Mrs. Kim.
        Secretary Blinken. This is a product of the work that we
    are doing together. Thank you.
        Mr. Stanton. Thank you, Secretary. Good luck.
        Mrs. Kim of California. Thank you, Chairman McCaul and
    Ranking Member, for holding today's hearing.
        The American people and the families of our 13 fallen
    servicemembers and the Afghan allies are demanding answers.
        Secretary Blinken, your appearance before our committee
    today is long overdue as we seek to understand the role that
    you played in the Biden-Harris administration's failed and
    disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021.
        In your previous conversation with my colleagues before me,
    you claimed that you have done everything you can to support
    Afghan women and girls. Yet you excluded them and Afghan civil
    society from Taliban talks with the U.N. in Doha.
        So why do you continue to deprioritize Afghan women and
    girls?
        Secretary Blinken. Just the contrary. We have done
    everything we can to integrate them, their voices, their views,
    into everything we do, including any engagements that we have
    had with the Taliban, including in the engagements that we have
    with partners around the world, particularly when it comes to
    decisions being made about recognizing or otherwise engaging
    with the Taliban.
        So it is exactly the opposite. We have made every effort to
    engage women and girls.
        Mrs. Kim of California. We are continuing to hear from
    those families, and also this committee has heard gravely
    concerning stories of what it was like trying to get through
    HKIA as an evacuee.
        Your own personnel testified that there was little to no
    guidance from you on who qualified to be evacuated from
    Afghanistan.
        So based on documents we received and witnesses we
    interviewed, at no point did you identify who the U.S. would be
    responsible for getting out during the non-combat evacuation
    operation.
        So did you ever determine which populations were eligible
    to be evacuated?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, absolutely, and that was very
    clear. They were very discrete populations.
        Mrs. Kim of California. Who were they then?
        Secretary Blinken. American citizens, legal permanent
    residents, and Afghan allies and partners, particularly those
    who had stood with us.
        But what happens is----
        Mrs. Kim of California. How did your Department determine
    which populations were eligible for evacuation? Who was
    responsible for making those decisions?
        Secretary Blinken. These are determinations that are made
    by the administration, by the State Department.
        And when it comes to Afghans at risk, there were many
    Afghans at risk that we were seeking to get out. And because
    this was such a dynamic situation, with conditions changing by
    the hour, at different moments during the evacuation, we had
    greater access to certain parts of that population than others.
        Mrs. Kim of California. Let's talk about some documents
    that were required then.
        Secretary Blinken. So we focused where we could.
        Mrs. Kim of California. Secretary, what documents did those
    evacuees have to provide to prove their eligibility?
        Are you aware of a hall pass that your Department provided
    instead of legal identification documentation?
        Secretary Blinken. We sought to do everything possible to
    get them the documents or identification that they needed in
    order, as necessary, to get through the Taliban, which had
    control of the area around the airport, and, of course,
    documentation as necessary for our own people.
        Mrs. Kim of California. And that hall pass that we are
    talking about was reprinted in droves. That was then sold to
    people outside of HKIA. So did you direct them to replace legal
    identification documents with a forgeable Word document?
        Secretary Blinken. No. We provided, as best we could, legal
    and enforceable documents.
        Mrs. Kim of California. Then who did? Because apparently
    they were shared.
        Secretary Blinken. I have not seen that, but I am happy to
    look at whatever information you have about that.
        Mrs. Kim of California. Okay. You know, during the
    evacuation over 80 Afghans who risked their lives to work with
    the U.S. Government contacted my office for assistance. So when
    you include their families, that is more than 526 Afghans who
    claimed they faced a direct or personalized threat.
        But despite the referral to the SIV program, my office is
    only aware of only, like, 80 applicants who were able to
    complete the requirements and file. And of those three, none
    have been approved and are still awaiting processing.
        Hearing from those Afghans, the SIV verification process
    has been difficult and tedious, and according to your deputy,
    one of the biggest obstacles to the verification process came
    from SIV applicants who had been employed by the DOD
    contractors.
        And that was well documented, yet you did not ask the DOD
    for support until the end of July 2021. So why did you wait
    until just weeks before the Afghanistan withdrawal to fix that
    obvious issue?
        Secretary Blinken. No. These were longstanding issues and
    problems with the SIV program going back many years. And as I
    said earlier, we inherited a program that was totally moribund.
    There hadn't been a single interview for an SIV going back to
    March 2020 when we came to office.
        We immediately reinstituted the interviews. I immediately
    surged resources to go through the SIV applications. We cut the
    time in half to process the applications. We went from issuing
    a hundred visas a week on SIVs to a thousand a week.
        All of that happened in the space of just 5 or 6 months
    because of our dedication to the program. But we inherited a
    program not only moribund, but that had 14 different steps
    required--by Congress--to make sure that the SIV was issued in
    the appropriate way.
        And, of course, security usually important. We want to make
    sure that we are not bringing threats into the country. That is
    important. Being able to document effectively, yes, that they
    had been working with us.
        And the challenge, as you rightly point out, was that,
    because it was with DOD, it was contractors, many of whom were
    out of business.
        Chairman McCaul. All right. The gentlelady's time is
    expired. I agree this is a very important issue.
        Secretary Blinken. But we can followup on that.
        Chairman McCaul. And we would like to talk with you, Mr.
    Secretary.
        The chair recognizes Ms. Madeleine Dean.
        Ms. Dean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And, Mr. Chairman, I want to echo the words of many others
    on both sides of the aisle. I feel lucky to have had the chance
    to serve with you on this committee as you were our chairman,
    you are our chairman. Look forward to the renaming of this
    room.
        I thank Mr. Meeks as well. It has been a pleasure.
        I do acknowledge the attendance of Gold Star Families and
    other military families and veterans. Thank you for your
    extraordinary sacrifice and service.
        And thank you, Secretary Blinken, for being here, for being
    in front of us and being available to tell us sometimes harsh
    truths, and also to just reveal the thoughtfulness that your
    Department has taken over the course of these years. So I thank
    you for that.
        And it is important to understand what happened with the
    withdrawal of Afghanistan. It is important to understand what
    happened before, after, during, after. And my only problem with
    this report and this set of hearings and this set of questions
    that you are facing is that, sadly, this became a partisan
    investigation and never should have.
        This committee, sadly, came up with a report digging into
    evidence that would only focus on the Biden administration. A
    20-year war, a withdrawal set in place by the previous
    administration.
        The cherry-picking was clear. The report's own methodology
    says, quote, ``The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is
    understood to encompass the U.S. military retrograde, beginning
    with the 'Go to Zero' order officially announced by President
    Biden on April 14, 2021.''
        That is a strange, very narrow window, if we really want to
    understand what happened, what went wrong, what went right.
        So, Secretary Blinken, just to set the record straight, the
    Doha Agreement was entered into under the Trump administration.
    Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Ms. Dean. Signed on February 29, 2020.
        The agreement included a commitment to reduce U.S. Forces
    in Afghanistan to 8,600 troops in 135 days. Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. It is, yes.
        Ms. Dean. The only other force reduction commitment in the
    agreement was complete withdrawal of U.S. Forces within 14
    months. Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Ms. Dean. Then-President Trump, despite not being required
    by the agreement, ordered more troop drawdowns, as he was
    eligible to do as President of the United States, those being
    in September 2020, reduction to 4,500 troops. Am I right?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Ms. Dean. And then strangely to me, in January 2021, on the
    administration's way out the door, a reduction to 2,500 troops.
    Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. It is.
        Ms. Dean. Puzzling. Absolutely puzzling.
        So those were all actions taken before Mr. Biden was even
    sworn into office in January 2021.
        What effect did the significant reductions have on the
    administration and on the withdrawal?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, I think the combination of the
    release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners under the agreement and the
    reduction in U.S. Forces to 2,500 put the Taliban in the
    strongest position it had been in since 9/11, and the United
    States in arguably the weakest position we have been in,
    because we had the fewest number of forces on the ground that
    we had had since 2001.
        Ms. Dean. What a terrible, deadly combination of factors.
    And also, again, so much good was able to be done under those
    horrifying circumstances. But nothing can take away the tragedy
    of Abbey Gate.
        I would like to move, just as Ms. Manning did, to other
    issues of the day, very critical issues of the day.
        Ukraine. I have always believed that the United States must
    do everything in our power to be sure that Ukraine has
    everything it needs to win.
        What is going on in these last few weeks of the
    administration, lifting of any more restrictions, imposing any
    more sanctions on Russia or Russian banks? What is the
    administration able to do?
        Secretary Blinken. We are determined, in the time that we
    have left, to make sure that, to the best of our ability,
    Ukraine has everything it needs to be as successful as possible
    and continue to push back on the Russian aggression, to make
    sure that it has what it needs, if it chooses, by necessity, to
    fight through 2025, or, if there is to be a negotiation, that
    it can negotiate from a position of strength.
        And so that means making sure that it has the weapons, the
    munitions, et cetera, that it has the resources, the money, and
    also that it has mobilized forces to deal with the aggression.
        Ms. Dean. I appreciate all that.
        My time is limited.
        Israel-Gaza. Where are we on a cease-fire? It has been 431
    days since the horrific Hamas attack, 431 days, hostages still
    held. Where are we? When will we get them home?
        Secretary Blinken. We want to get them home now.
        Ms. Dean. Yes.
        Secretary Blinken. As we speak, there are intense efforts
    underway to see if we can reach finally a hostage cease-fire
    deal. Again, it is ongoing. That is as much as I can say right
    now.
        Ms. Dean. And I hope that humanitarian aid is flowing more
    fully.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes.
        Ms. Dean. I appreciate your letter. Pleased to see our
    letter to you.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes.
        Ms. Dean. Again, thank you for your service.
        And I yield back.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentlelady yields back.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Davidson.
        Mr. Davidson. Thank you, Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, I want to review a couple dates.
        First, on February 29, 2020, the Trump administration
    signed the Doha Agreement with the Taliban. The agreement
    promised a conditions-based, incremental withdrawal, and the
    Trump administration delayed that withdrawal precisely because
    those conditions were not being met.
        On April 11, 2021, the Go-to-Zero presence in Afghanistan
    was given by the Biden administration, and that was given
    freely by the administration despite not being in compliance
    with the Doha Agreement.
        Your own Deputy Assistant Secretary, Mark Evans, testified
    before this committee that the decision to go to zero was not
    contingent upon the Doha Agreement.
        Secretary, one of the dates I really want to focus on is
    July 8, 2024. That is the date that the total withdrawal was
    finalized by the administration, and the date certain, it
    shifted from a conditions-based to a date certain. Is that
    correct?
        Secretary Blinken. The date certain was there, I believe,
    starting in April when the President said we would follow
    through on the withdrawal that the previous administration had
    agreed to, except it was extended from May 31to September.
        Mr. Davidson. So it was always going to be date certain,
    not conditions-based?
        Secretary Blinken. Well, that was what the Doha Agreement--
    --
        Mr. Davidson. So that is what you--look, that is what you
    said.
        So when you made that decision, did the State Department
    block American citizens from departing from the airfield in
    Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. Absolutely not.
        Mr. Davidson. They didn't? Who did then? Who blocked them?
        Secretary Blinken. I am not aware of blocking any U.S.
    citizens. On the contrary, we were doing everything possible to
    get citizens out.
        Mr. Davidson. You know they were blocked. You know they
    were blocked.
        Secretary Blinken. I would be happy to look at any
    information you have on that. I am not aware of any American
    citizens who were blocked. And, in fact, we were doing
    everything possible.
        And by the way, I want to thank you and thank every Member
    who has been involved in this and the work that they did to get
    Americans out.
        Mr. Davidson. Mr. Secretary, your State Department blocked
    American citizens and Afghan allies from leaving there.
        I personally worked with your State Department during those
    days. I have the emails. I have the photographs of American--
    blue passport-holding American citizens who were on the
    airfield awaiting departure, that got clearance for safe third
    countries to depart to, and the order came down from the U.S.
    Government.
        Was it the State Department?
        Secretary Blinken. I am not aware of any such orders. I am
    happy to followup and look at that. I am certainly not aware of
    it. We were doing everything possible to get Americans out.
        Mr. Davidson. Last year, Colonel Francis Hoang, my
    classmate, testified before this committee that due to the
    fiasco in Kabul, many Americans and allies were forced to
    conduct a dangerous 400-mile journey to Mazar-i-Sharif air base
    where they were delayed for weeks.
        Colonel Hoang testified, quote, that, ``We spent 3 weeks
    hiding these nearly 400 people from the Taliban, keeping them
    alive and fed, using funds from American donors, all this while
    the State Department delayed and, frankly, blocked American
    citizens from leaving.''
        Secretary Blinken, I have communications, as I said, that
    show this happened, and you are saying that didn't happen?
        Secretary Blinken. Why would we block Americans from
    leaving Afghanistan? Why?
        Mr. Davidson. That is the problem I have. I had it at the
    time. Why?
        Secretary Blinken. We were doing everything possible to get
    them out. But I am happy to look at the information.
        Mr. Davidson. And here is the thing, Mr. Secretary. As I
    was working with your State Department while you were Secretary
    of State and relaying this information, someone said to me,
    ``Which tail number?''
        ``Which tail number? You mean, there is more than one plane
    you guys are blocking? Are you freaking kidding me.''
        And then your State Department wanted to deny it, and here
    today you won't even acknowledge the truth of that.
        It is disgusting to try to blame this on Donald Trump when
    we all know there is no way that anyone forced you guys to do
    the dumbest thing possible.
        You don't have to have worn our Nation's uniform, like I
    and other people did, to know that first you get the civilians
    out, then the military, not the other way around.
        This has to be one of the dumbest, most poorly executed
    paths to depart any country possible.
        My only hope is that in the 11 embassy evacuations that
    have happened on your watch--an unprecedented number--you have
    somehow gotten better at it.
        Secretary Blinken. Congressman----
        Mr. Davidson. It is appalling to see you sit here and say,
    ``Oh, I express sympathy,'' and yet have never acknowledged the
    failures or owned the consequences of it.
        In fact, to this date, the only person that has been fired
    was a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps who spoke out.
        None of you have been held accountable. None of you even
    expressed shame or embarrassment. Have you learned anything?
    Have you learned anything from this?
        Secretary Blinken. First of all, on the planes, just to
    come back to it, the Taliban was blocking planes. We worked to
    clear them. And I am happy to go over that with you, with your
    office, and also to see any information you have to make sure
    that we get to the bottom of what you are saying.
        But we were certainly not in the business of blocking
    Americans. We were in the business of getting them out and
    continuing to do that.
        Mr. Davidson. Well, I appreciate you did create a position
    after that to address the problem. So you clearly had to be
    aware of it. You created a position to facilitate the
    coordination after you left them behind.
        Secretary Blinken. Of course. We were determined to get
    every American who wanted to get out out. And that didn't stop
    on August 31.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        Secretary Blinken. We got 500 Americans out between then
    and the end of the year because of that ongoing commitment.
        Chairman McCaul. The chair recognizes Mr. Crow.
        Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman.
        And thank you, Secretary Blinken, for coming before the
    committee voluntarily and providing your perspective and
    helping address the questions of the committee.
        As you know, I served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan,
    and like the tens of thousands of Americans that did, we left
    pieces of our heart behind in that country.
        And even though the military chapter and the diplomatic
    chapter are largely closed--although there are still issues
    that are in America's interest--those of us who served in
    combat roles with the Afghans feel a special obligation to make
    sure that we are protecting those friends and those folks who,
    in many cases, saved our lives.
        I mean, there are a lot of Americans. And I know you know
    this well, Secretary. We have had these conversations, and I
    know this is a sentiment that you share very deeply as well.
        I mean, these are people who, at great personal risk to
    them and their families, took on jobs that helped bring
    Americans home. And the story of that is not a finished story.
        So with that in mind, I would love to hear from you, can
    you speak to the number of currently eligible SIV Afghans who
    are in that country? How many do we think are still there? And
    what are we doing to help get them out? What does the pipeline
    look like? And what more do we need to do?
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you very much, and thank you for
    your enduring commitment to this.
        So we have right now about 63,000 SIV applicants who are in
    the so-called pre-chief of mission phase. That is, they have
    expressed interest, they have started to compile the necessary
    documentation.
        We believe, based on experience, that roughly 20 percent
    will become fully documented. That is 20 percent of 63,000.
        There are 54,000 who are actually at the chief of mission
    phase right now. Again, based on our analysis, we believe
    roughly 35 percent of those will likely be approved, because,
    as you know, unfortunately, many people wash out, either
    because they simply don't qualify or because of documentation
    issues, which we have tried to remedy over the last couple of
    years.
        Finally, we have right now 10,000 who have chief of mission
    approval. The only thing they are waiting for is their
    interview, which they need to do out of country.
        Of those 10,000, about 9,000 are in Afghanistan. We have
    six flights a week now that are going out of Afghanistan to
    different places. And so we are working expeditiously to move
    people out, to finish the process with an interview, and then
    get them on to the United States.
        That is roughly the current population.
        Mr. Crow. And I know these averages change, but can you
    give me a snapshot of a typical month, how many folks are we
    getting out of Afghanistan in a particular month?
        Secretary Blinken. We are working to get roughly a thousand
    a week.
        Mr. Crow. Okay. And at the current rate--I worked with
    House leadership to get 12,000 additional visas authorized
    earlier this year--at the current burn rate, when do we run out
    of authorization?
        And I obviously will make a pitch to my colleagues here to
    join our effort to push for 20,000 additional visas in the next
    appropriation which we are advocating for that.
        Secretary Blinken. We need that. We need that. We will run
    out of our--of the allotment we have. That is the basis for our
    support for getting another 20,000 SIV----
        Mr. Crow. When you do think we are going to run out?
        Secretary Blinken. Let me come back to you with the exact
    time based on our most recent analysis.
        Mr. Crow. Okay. The last piece is, the State Department did
    a pretty extensive and thorough after-action review. There was
    a classified version of that, a public version of that.
        I spent a lot of time reviewing both documents, and as a
    result of that, I have introduced legislation, the CRISIS Act,
    to help codify some of the changes.
        Can you just tell us very briefly, what are some of the
    reforms and changes you have made within the Department to
    ensure that the problems and the shortfalls that we experienced
    in the withdrawal, we are learning from those lessons and we
    are ensuring that we are fixing things going forward?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes. And very briefly, and much of this
    is in the report, including the unclassified version.
        We now have a common operating picture that we didn't have
    before, where we are fusing all of the information that we need
    in a crisis. Whether it is cables, whether it is open source,
    whether it is intelligence, we now have what we didn't have
    before, which is a modern operation center so that we can surge
    resources, stand up a task force immediately, bring in the
    other agencies to do that.
        We now have what we didn't have before, which is a
    streamlined, cloud-based system to track all of our engagements
    with American citizens to make sure we are not duplicating, to
    make sure that we are in near real-time communication with
    them.
        We are working to better utilize our own personnel. We
    stood up a 100-person roster of a Rapid Response Corps. People
    sign up for 6 months.
        That means that they are ready on a moment's notice to
    become part of a task force. They get training throughout that
    period on what they will need to know if there is an emergency.
    We stood that up.
        I see my time is up. I am happy to go over----
        Chairman McCaul. Yes, I am just trying to make sure you
    stay on schedule for your flight, your flight to the Middle
    East.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, yes.
        Chairman McCaul. I don't want you to miss that.
        Mr. Crow. I appreciate that.
        Secretary, thank you.
        Chairman, I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Green is recognized.
        Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your
    leadership on investigating this catastrophic withdrawal.
        I am over here, Secretary.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you.
        Mr. Green. And I want to thank you, Secretary Blinken, for
    attending today.
        I am going to preface my comments with something very
    similar to what the chairman prefaced his comments with. We
    have worked well together on near-shoring and stuff like that,
    getting the Tennessean out of Venezuela. Roger Carstens is my
    classmate. Did a fantastic job with that.
        But today my comments are going to be, as a Global War on
    Terror veteran who served in Afghanistan, I want to once again
    recognize the sacrifice of all the Americans that fought for
    our country in Afghanistan. I lost friends there.
        But those of you who came home, your service was not in
    vain. Those of you who died there, your service was not in
    vain. You helped keep our country safe for two decades. And I
    am grateful for your sacrifice and the sacrifices of your
    families.
        As a Night Stalker flight surgeon and an Army ranger
    infantry officer, I remember our most sacred creed: Leave no
    man behind.
        Secretary Blinken, you and our Commander in Chief left
    people behind. You left those in your care behind. You left
    Americans and our allies behind.
        Your delayed appearance before this committee, I think, is
    a disgrace to those Americans who did die in Afghanistan, and
    your decisions, or the absence of leadership on this issue
    during the withdrawal of 2021, are directly responsible for the
    disaster.
        Prior to President Biden's Go-to-Zero approach, the Taliban
    had ignored U.S. attempts for a smooth exit and shown
    themselves totally ignoble negotiators.
        We knew the dangers, and yet, as the military withdrew, you
    told U.S. Embassy Kabul to remain.
        Furthermore, you actually increased personnel. When senior
    security advisers and leaders at DOD and embassy staff said it
    was time to make a non-combatant evacuation operation plan, a
    NEO plan, you said no.
        Instead, when the day came for the Embassy to evacuate,
    there was no plan. You left your personnel high and dry to
    figure it out on their own.
        In fact, you never even issued the NEO. As Secretary of
    State, that is your responsibility, but instead the NSC had to
    make that call.
        Did you step in? No. The NSC continued to lead the initial
    response, including decisionmaking regarding Afghan population
    eligible for evacuation, which should have been State's
    responsibility.
        Because you weren't at the helm, there was little
    documentation or communication. State personnel had to rely on
    spur-of-the-moment decisionmaking just to get to the airport,
    and thousands of evacuees were left in limbo.
        Now, I also want to share a story, a conversation I had
    with the leader of one of our greatest allies, Britain. I had a
    conversation with Boris Johnson 6, 8 months ago.
        I was at dinner with him, and I asked him, I said, ``Hey,
    could you confirm a rumor, Mr. Prime Minister? Could you
    confirm the rumor that the Commander in Chief of the United
    States, Joe Biden, you called him and asked him to stay an
    extra 5 days, just 5 days, so that all the Brits could get
    out.''
        And Boris Johnson told me, ``Chairman Green, I remember
    exactly where I was when I made the phone call. I asked for 5
    more days, and President Biden told me 'no.'"
        This is our greatest ally on the planet, participating in
    the Red Sea with us against the Houthis when few others would.
        I pulled wounded British SAS guys off a target in Iraq.
    Their blood was on my hands.
        And I am going to tell you, that relationship is--I mean,
    it is one of our greatest, if not our greatest. And yet we
    slapped them in the face and said, ``No, you don't get 5 extra
    days to get your people out,'' this according to the Prime
    Minister of England at the time. I just--I find that
    unconscionable.
        And senior leaders at DOD have come here and testified,
    senior leaders at DOD have testified on the HASC and told us,
    ``We were telling the State Department 4, 5 months in this
    drawdown period, 'Get your stuff together,' and they didn't.''
        Why?
        Secretary Blinken. Mr. Chairman, I hope you will give me
    time to respond, because I dispute virtually everything that
    was said, with great respect though for the Member and
    particularly for his extraordinary service to our country.
        First, did we leave people behind? No, we got them out,
    including after the deadline of our evacuation.
        By the time we got to August 31, we had, as I said, several
    hundred Americans who were left, who had identified themselves
    to us as wanting to leave but could not get to, or into, the
    airport.
        I committed to make sure we got them out. And between the
    end of the evacuation and the end of the year, we got the 500
    remaining Americans out who either then, or after August 31,
    identified themselves as wanting to leave. We made good on that
    commitment.
        Telling the Embassy to remain open, yes, we all wanted the
    Embassy to remain open. It was fully our expectation that the
    Afghan Government and the Afghan military would not collapse.
        It was the desire of Congress to make sure that we remained
    engaged in Afghanistan, including to look out for our own
    citizens, including to make sure we were doing right by the
    SIVs. And it was fully our intention to continue to bring them
    out by keeping the Embassy open.
        And as I have said earlier, and as many others have
    testified, no one anticipated the collapse of the forces. No
    one anticipated the collapse of the government.
        When it comes to the NEO, again, let me be very clear. The
    State Department initiated the NEO. We did. That is what the
    record reflects.
        But this is a collective decision. As an instrumental
    matter, the State Department initiates it by requesting the
    DOD. The decision to initiate it was a decision taken by the
    NSC and ultimately by the President.
        Not once before we initiated the NEO did anyone say, ``You
    need to do this,'' among the principals in the administration.
    It was a collective decision on the 14th of August.
        Those capitals, provincial capitals, started to fall on the
    6th, and by the 14th, we decided that the NEO was imperative.
        Now, there is a reason, Congressman, that it was so
    important that we focus on this. The Ghani government was
    pleading with us throughout the summer: Don't engage in an
    evacuation. That will actually precipitate exactly what we are
    trying to prevent, which is a collapse of the government, a
    collapse of confidence, people fleeing the country in
    uncontrolled ways. So that was also part of our thinking.
        But in terms of preparing, yes, we started preparing
    intensely, going back to April, multiple exercises with
    different agencies, tabletop and otherwise, planning through
    different scenarios. We had tripwires, we had indicators, all
    of which came into effect.
        We moved the Embassy in 48 hours to the airport. That
    wouldn't have happened without a plan. We got control of the
    airport because we had prepositioned forces. We were able to
    start moving people out in 72 hours. We moved 120,000 people
    out, the largest evacuation in the history of this country.
        Mr. Green. Mr. Secretary, I will tell you that your DOD
    colleagues don't remember it that way. And I remember your face
    when we got that secret briefing during the midst of this.
    During the height of it, we all gathered in HVC, and I am going
    to tell you, I just, I think our memory here isn't as accurate
    as it could be.
        And I will just leave it at that, Mr. Chairman.
        I just--I will never forget the fear in your face and the--
    I just--I don't have anything else to say.
        Chairman McCaul. Will the gentleman yield?
        Let me just add, I think this is a very important issue the
    gentleman raised from Tennessee.
        And I appreciate your perspective, Mr. Secretary. I will
    tell you what our investigation revealed: that Ambassador
    Wilson did not want a NEO. In fact, he punished his staff for
    even mentioning the word NEO.
        And it wasn't--we got from the DOD, as you indicated, on
    August 6, 2021, that the NSC said, the National Security
    Council said, ``A NEO equates to failure,'' quote/unquote. That
    is what was going on. ``A NEO equates to failure.''
        Maybe that is because of President Ghani, as you said, Mr.
    Secretary. But that--those are really the facts. And only until
    August 15, the day that Kabul fell, think about that, the day
    that Kabul falls is the first time that Ambassador Wilson
    requests a NEO, and by that time, sir, it was too late.
        With that, I will recognize Ms. Kamlager-Dove.
        Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        And thank you, Secretary Blinken, for gracing us with your
    presence again.
        I have actually some questions about the Sudan, but because
    we have continued to talk about NEO, I will also ask a question
    on this.
        So Ambassador Wilson testified to the committee during a
    transcribed interview about the specified reasoning for why he
    called the NEO on August 15, describing the situation that
    included thousands of Talib fighters streaming directly into
    Kabul ``a flow that contradicted orders that we--assurances
    that we had received from the Talibs and orders that we
    believed had been given for them to stop, by Taliban senior
    leadership, the expected seizure of two prisons later that day,
    and the release of thousands of inmates--Talib fighters, ISIS
    fighters, common criminals--and the abandonment overnight of
    checkpoints into and within Kabul's Green Zone that were vital
    to our security.
        ``We had been striving to maintain embassy operations in
    accord with the direction given to us. This was no longer
    possible. And at that point, I recommended to Secretary Blinken
    our immediate evacuation. He agreed, and the White House
    subsequently approved a noncombatant evacuation.''
        The majority has repeatedly pointed to the testimony of
    military leaders to argue that the State Department waited too
    long to initiate the NEO.
        But Ambassador Wilson had a clear rationale for his timing,
    and that calling for the NEO too soon would have complicated
    our ability to get out.
        ``If we had left earlier, several thousand SIV applicants
    that we got out, in whatever the number of days that you want
    to talk about, would not have been able to leave the country.
        ``We would not have been able to provide support to
    American citizens trying to get out. Our eyes and ears about
    what was happening around us would have been drastically
    degraded.''
        Secretary Blinken, would you agree that Ambassador Wilson's
    testimony reflects a detailed and realistic understanding of
    the conditions on the ground.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, I would.
        Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you.
        What would have been the repercussions if the State
    Department had called a NEO before conditions on the ground
    warranted one?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, it would have actually precipitated
    those very conditions, and it would have made it more difficult
    for us to get people out, including American citizens.
        The airport was open until August the 15th. We were trying
    to avail ourselves and push people out to take commercial
    flights. It would have made it much more difficult to get SIV-
    eligible people out of the country, other Afghans at risk.
        All of that would have been made more difficult by
    precipitating the very kind of crisis we ultimately solved.
        And, again, I come back to a fundamental proposition, which
    is that no one--and I say this collectively, this is the State
    Department, this is the intelligence community, it is the DOD--
    in terms of the consensus view on where this was going, there
    was no consensus view that the government, the Afghan forces,
    were going to collapse.
        Our military, having worked with them for 20 years,
    believed that they would stay and fight. They needed to have
    the sustained support to do that--General McKenzie has said
    that--including financial and logistic support.
        We had no indication that the government would fall. The
    intelligence community didn't see that.
        We have very remarkable people at the State Department,
    including those who wrote the so-called Dissent Channel cable,
    who were very concerned about what would happen after we left
    in terms of the durability of the government.
        I read that cable immediately, I responded to it almost
    immediately, and many of the measures that they called for in
    the cable were already in train, because what they were focused
    on was trying to make sure that we got people out of the
    country, especially the SIVs.
        And as I have talked about earlier, that is exactly what we
    were doing, having taken a program that was dead in the water,
    revived it, and accelerated it dramatically.
        Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you also for just even mentioning
    the dissent cable and the fact that, regardless of if you agree
    with them or not, there is still a space for folks within the
    State Department to register discontent. I certainly hope that
    that is a practice that will continue in this next
    administration.
        I would now like to ask in the few moments that I have left
    about the war in the Sudan, which is a catastrophic
    humanitarian crisis impacting innocent civilians. I think it is
    a moral outrage.
        Over 150,000 have been killed, 11 million have been
    displaced. The evidence of genocide in Darfur is significant,
    and I believe an official genocide determination against the
    RSF and allied militia is long overdue.
        Why has the administration refrained from making a genocide
    determination? And do you intend to come to a decision about a
    determination before the end of this year?
        Secretary Blinken. First and very quickly, you are right to
    put a spotlight on Sudan. It is the worst humanitarian
    situation in the world by far, by orders of magnitude.
        We are working intensely to try, of course, to bring an end
    to it, but in the first instance, to get assistance to people
    who desperately need it. We have made some progress on that in
    the last few weeks with both the SAF and to a lesser extent
    with the RSF.
        But in terms of atrocities, war crimes, genocide, we have
    been making determinations already about atrocities and war
    crimes. We are looking at the question of genocide. Whether we
    complete that review in the time that we have, I can't----
        Chairman McCaul. I am trying to be respectful. The
    gentlelady's time is expired.
        Let me just, if I could comment. I mean, you did not see it
    coming. I have heard that over and over.
        Perhaps we were getting different intelligence briefings,
    but I certainly saw it coming, and your own employees in the
    Embassy saw it coming when they sent the dissent cable to you,
    a cry for help that Kabul is falling and the Embassy will fall
    soon. And I don't know how you can say that honestly, sir, with
    a straight face.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Huizenga.
        Mr. Huizenga. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate
    your work at leading this committee.
        Secretary Blinken, how many U.S. citizens are still in
    Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. I can't give you an exact number because
    we never know for sure. There are several----
        Mr. Huizenga. Do you believe they are all there voluntary?
    You were going to start to say there are several thousand.
        Secretary Blinken. No, I believe that the--any American
    citizens who are left there, several, as have been noted
    before, who have actually been detained. These are people who
    went there after the evacuation for one reason or another, have
    been detained by the Taliban. We are working every day to get
    them out.
        Mr. Huizenga. But are you--hold on a second--are you saying
    that the only people detained are those who went after the
    evacuation?
        Secretary Blinken. I am saying the ones that we know of who
    are detained, we are actively working----
        Mr. Huizenga. Okay. We can clue you in. I got to give you
    credit. You were successful in doing this. You have completely
    pulled me off of what I was going to ask you about, much to my
    staff and everybody else's chagrin.
        But the crap that you are throwing out here about this is
    unbelievable. I will tell you, I was in that same briefing when
    you said that you thought there was, quote, several hundred
    citizens who were staying in Afghanistan voluntarily.
        My caseworker had 185 individuals alone, in my district,
    the Fourth District of Michigan, that were asking us for help
    to get out, including those who did make it to HKIA and were
    beaten by the Taliban, and were known by the U.S. troops. And
    the troops that are being shown up here, including one of my
    constituents, who I have referred to as Jose and Carlos and
    Juan and various things because I haven't wanted to use his
    real name at his request, who was blown up and injured, and
    knew every single one of those marines and those Navy corpsmen
    up there on that screen right now, they have not gotten
    satisfactory answers.
        And I will tell you, Secretary Blinken, that we have
    citizens there who are not there voluntarily and they want to
    get out, and the State Department has utterly failed them.
    Failed them.
        Secretary Blinken. Congressman, if there are citizens that
    you have identified that have been in communication with you
    and that want to get out, please, if you haven't already, share
    that information with us.
        Mr. Huizenga. We have shared it. We will share it again,
    and we will keep asking.
        Secretary Blinken. And we are happy to sit down and go
    through it----
        Mr. Huizenga [continuing]. At some point, the exercise in
    futility gets a little frustrating as a Member, Secretary
    Blinken, when it does not feel like you are answering Mr.
    Green's questions or Mr. Warren's questions, or you are going
    to have a couple of other military folks who were there, had
    friends there.
        Well, I had a friend who was in Doha, and he is telling me
    that there was no damn plan to have all of those planes divert
    to Doha. So they got caught flatfooted. There was no place for
    them to go. It was a bungled, bungled, bungled exit. So I have
    to hit on a couple of the things that I have here, and I am
    going to try to truncate this.
        A recent report by Inspector General of Afghan
    Reconstruction, John Sopko, found, since August 2021,
    implementing partners of yours from the State Department have
    paid at least $10.9 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to the
    Taliban in form of taxes, fees, and duties. In fact, the SIGAR
    noted that, while conducting its investigation, your State
    Department repeatedly refused to cooperate. They then requested
    that the State Department attest to that it had distributed a
    questionnaire to all the relevant implementing partners, that
    responses were not altered, and that no attempts were made to
    influence the implementers' responses. However, at the time the
    report was published, your Department refused to sign the
    attestation.
        Mr. Secretary, did you instruct your employees to obstruct
    the SIGAR investigation of U.S. tax dollars going to the
    Taliban? And then, since then, has that changed?
        Secretary Blinken. To the contrary. We have done everything
    possible to cooperate with SIGAR, 13,000 staff hours dedicated
    to the SIGAR----
        Mr. Huizenga. Why would the inspector general say? Is the
    inspector general lying----
        Secretary Blinken. SIGAR in his report of, I believe, in
    2023 said that the Department was cooperating with SIGAR. So--
    --
        Mr. Huizenga. So, while I--so I got to skip all kinds--a
    whole bunch of stuff. I just will say, Mr. Chairman, I have got
    a bill, H.R. 9503, Protecting Taxpayer Dollars from Taliban
    Theft Act, which makes U.S. policy that tax dollars, U.S.
    taxpayer dollars, do not be paid to the Taliban in the form of
    taxes, duties, and fees.
        I wish I had a few more moments. I have a couple of seconds
    here. I have got to hit on this. This is about Iran.
        Thanks to congressional notification, we know that, on
    November 8, just days following the Democrats' election loss,
    you signed off on a sanction waiver providing the Tehran access
    to $10 billion in funds of Iraqi electricity payments.
        Last dated December 2023, Congress is aware of two releases
    of funds for humanitarian purposes to Iran. Have there been any
    other additional transactions since that period?
        So you have been allowing them access to the dollars. We
    know that there was two that had--we got testimony--had
    problems. They asked for the explanation to be behind closed
    doors. There was nothing that was top secret about that. It was
    just that egg was on their face. Have there been any more
    withdrawals?
        Secretary Blinken. I assume you have asked the previous
    administration about the waivers that it issued.
        Mr. Huizenga. Oh, Okay, Okay, Okay. I guess, actually, we
    did. Actually, we did. The explanation of why this
    administration allowed Korean funds, the funds that were used
    that were shipped to Korea, that were supposed to stay in
    Korea, why were they shipped to Oman? Why were they allowed to
    be given a Treasury license----
        Secretary Blinken. You are confusing two things.
        Mr. Huizenga [continuing]. And a State Department license.
        Secretary Blinken. Those are two different things.
        Mr. Huizenga. Oh, now, you are conflating what had been
    going on.
        Secretary Blinken. No, I am saying that the waivers that we
    issued were the same waivers issued----
        Mr. Huizenga. They were not. Absolutely one hundred percent
    not. See, this is the thing. A group of us are actually on the
    Financial Services Committee; I am one of them. You can't throw
    this crap out because we actually write the sanctions. We
    actually know what the law is. And, when you and Treasury come
    in here and say, ``Oh, don't worry your pretty little head
    about all of these confusing sanctions things,'' guess what? We
    wrote the damn things. We understand. And here you are throwing
    these load of--I wish I could curse more, Mr. Chairman, but I
    won't. This is so unbelievable.
        I am so glad to see this administration and you leaving
    because you have failed the American people with this.
        With that, I am out of time.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired.
        And, for the record, let me say that I personally, in the
    Emergency Wartime Supplemental that dealt with Israel, that
    dealt with Indo-Pacific, and Ukraine, put the sanctions that
    was waived or not enforced back into law. That would be on
    energy and on missiles and drones coming out of Iran, funding
    their terror operations, killing Israelis, and killing
    Ukrainians.
        And, sir, I have to say I agree with my friend here that it
    is very disappointing that it that has not been----
        Mr. Huizenga. And, Mr. Chairman, the last administration
    did not authorize any releases of those funds. This
    administration did. That is the problem.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields back.
        Mr. Schneider is recognized.
        Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Before I start, if the Secretary wants to address the
    previous thing at all, I would be interested in hearing it.
        Secretary Blinken. I am happy to share with the Congressman
    everything we have done. We can go over this. We don't have
    time to do it now. I am happy to do that. I am happy to show
    you exactly what we have done, what we haven't done. Happy to
    get any information that you have to the contrary and work
    through this.
        Mr. Huizenga. Great. I look forward to it.
        Mr. Schneider. Thank you.
        And let me thank the chairman, Chairman McCaul, and Ranking
    Member Meeks, having had the privilege to again waive on this
    committee for this term. It has been an honor working with you,
    and I appreciate that.
        I want to thank the outgoing Biden-Harris administration
    and directly you, Secretary Blinken, for your tireless efforts
    navigating some of the most critical challenges in recent
    history.
        I looked up the definition of the Great Passage, why it is
    so treacherous, and its unimpeded currents, large waves, strong
    waters, frequent storms, rough and unpredictable seas. You have
    navigated, I think, exactly that, rough and unpredictable seas.
    And, as has been said, even by the chairman, our relationship
    with NATO, our relationships in many places around the world
    are stronger.
        I also--earlier, there was talk about President Biden's
    legacy vis--vis--vis--vis Israel. And I think it is a defining
    element. The fact of the matter is, since the invasion by Hamas
    on October 7 last year, President Biden has stood with Israel
    longer than any President in United States history, ensuring
    Israel's security and strengthening its position in a very
    dangerous neighborhood.
        As you noted, he was the only President to visit Israel
    during a time of war--not just the first but the only. He
    supported Israel in immeasurable ways, including sending an
    aircraft carrier, thwarting not one but two attacks from Iran.
    And, today, as we sit here, there are still talks--as the chair
    of the Abraham Accords, there are talks of bringing peace to
    the region, putting it on a better course.
        No one has worked harder than I in trying to make sure we
    get aid into and throughout Gaza. I hope we can find a path to
    continue to move it in a better direction.
        Turning to the topic at hand, the majority's partisan
    report recommended Congress pass legislation to require that
    certain Dissent Channel messages be shared with the Secretary
    of Defense, the intelligence community, other relevant
    agencies, and the chairs and ranking Members of Congressional
    committees.
        Salman Ahmed, the Director of Policy Planning testified
    that you personally read every dissent cable that comes and
    personally clear the response. Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, it is.
        Mr. Schneider. Director Ahmed also testified about the
    reaction to the dissent cable. Quote, ``What I can say is that
    I think that those who read it at the time, their immediate
    reaction was there is a lot here I agree with. There are a lot
    of things they are raising in here that in fact we are already
    working on doing. They have added some details that are very
    helpful. So I think it was more a question of like having
    information that the drafters didn't have, in some cases, and,
    other cases, getting information from the drafters that was
    helpful,'' end quote.
        Does that testimony comport with your own reaction, namely
    that the Dissent Channel cable pointed to issues that were
    already under discussion with the Department?
        Secretary Blinken. It does. But I want to underscore how
    valuable it was both in reinforcing some of the things we are
    doing as well as appointing some things that we then
    subsequently pursued.
        Mr. Schneider. And, if the cable had been more widely
    shared, do you think it would have changed the outcome?
        Secretary Blinken. No.
        Mr. Schneider. Thank you. So, although you made a single
    dissent cable available to us on this committee as part of a
    truly extraordinary--I want to emphasize--again truly
    extraordinary accommodation to the committee's investigation,
    do you think an expectation that dissent cable messages,
    Dissent Channel messages would be shared widely outside the
    Department? What impact do you think that will have on the
    willingness of Department personnel to utilize the Dissent
    Channel in the first place?
        Secretary Blinken. I am very concerned it would have a
    chilling effect, and it would cause people not to engage in the
    Dissent Channel, which is a deeply honored tradition of the
    Department going back to the Vietnam War, one I take very
    seriously. I read every single Dissent Channel cable. I respond
    to every Dissent Channel cable. It informs my views. But people
    need to know that they can come forward without fear or without
    favor. And knowing that this will be shared beyond the
    Secretary and my immediate office is something that I fear
    would have a chilling effect.
        Mr. Schneider. Not only would it possibly chill or make
    people more reluctant to share that, if you don't get that
    information, what are the implications to what you are trying
    to achieve?
        Secretary Blinken. The implications are we will not be as
    well-informed as we need to be, and it will make our decisions
    less effective than they otherwise would be.
        Mr. Schneider. All right. Thank you.
        And, you know, if I expand, this hearing addresses one of
    the most significant and complex issues in recent memory. And I
    do want to recognize the families, the Gold Star families that
    are here, and all the Gold Star families of great Americans who
    made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan and other conflicts
    defending our Nation.
        The withdrawal was in no small part shaped by the 2020 Doha
    Agreement. That, as we discussed, was negotiated not by this
    administration but the preceding administration and handed
    over. By the time you received it, the administration, the
    Biden administration received it, the Taliban had gained
    significant ground, options were limited, to recommit to a
    conflict without clear goals or complete to withdrawal--commit
    to a complete withdrawal----
        It was an extraordinary achievement. More than 124,000
    people were airlifted in just 17 days.
        Chairman McCaul. Keeping in time with the other members,
    the gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Mills is recognized.
        Mr. Mills. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank you
    for your continued leadership throughout this entire time. It
    has been an honor to serve in this committee, so I want to
    continue to thank you for that.
        Secretary Blinken, are you familiar with U.S.C. 22, section
    4802?
        Secretary Blinken. Please tell me.
        Mr. Mills. It is basically your obligation to try and
    protect and provide security and safety for American citizens.
        Now, in one of your statements, you said, ``We did not
    leave Americans behind.'' Well, see, unlike other members on
    this, I actually went overseas and was conducting rescues of
    Americans left behind in Afghanistan. I actually conducted the
    very first successful overland rescue of Americans that were
    left behind, which was Mary and her three children. These are
    Amarillo, Texas, American-born natives, who was at the front
    gate, waving their passport, trying to get inside while we were
    on the phone, myself and Senator Markwayne Mullin, trying to
    get your State Department task force to let them inside.
        You are telling me you didn't leave them behind?
        Secretary Blinken. I am telling you, Congressman, that we
    got every American out that we could. And, when we completed
    the evacuation, I said, ``We are not leaving anyone behind. We
    are going to keep doing this until we get every American who
    says they want to leave and identify themselves to us out.''
    And as I mentioned----
        Mr. Mills. You also said, though--I am reclaiming my time.
    You also told Congressman Davidson that the U.S. Government was
    not blocking aircraft. Is that correct?
        Secretary Blinken. I have no knowledge of U.S. Government--
    --
        Mr. Mills. Yet, my aircraft, who had five approved PPRs,
    which are Prior Permission Required Landings, to HKIA to rescue
    28 Americans was denied five times, saying that it was at the
    behest of the Department of Defense and the Department of State
    to prevent us from coming in to rescue Americans. That was what
    was told to us over the radio from the ATC towers. But, yet, to
    your knowledge, no one was being blocked. Let me tell you, that
    is a farce, and it is a complete lie.
        I will also tell you that, in a NEO, State Department does
    not take ultimate control once it is declared. It is the
    Department of Defense, who is actually is supposed to--yet your
    task force still tried to hold operational control, which led
    to a lot of disruption. And that has been reported multiple
    times by commanders on the ground.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, that is----
        Mr. Mills. I am going to finish, sir. The other thing is,
    is that, in Israel, a horrible incident occurred where over
    1,200 people lost their lives. And yet the State Department had
    done nothing to come in and actually rescue Americans who had
    been left behind. How do I know that? Because the very first
    rescues conducted--it was on October 11 from Nazareth,
    Tiberias, and Haifa. How do I know it? Because I was the one
    who conducted them. Thirty-two Americans that day. Then into
    the West Bank, then into Jerusalem, then out toward Gaza. I got
    255 Americans out by myself before the State Department lifted
    a finger and did anything to bring a plane in. Meanwhile, other
    nations were already flying aircraft in and out rescuing their
    citizens. Again, another failure of 22 U.S.C. 4802.
        Secretary Blinken. That is not correct.
        Mr. Mills. It is correct. And the reason I know it is
    because I was there. Were you there, sir?
        Secretary Blinken. No. I had a----
        Mr. Mills. You were not. Let's go ahead and start with
    that.
        Secretary Blinken. I have been there 12 times.
        Mr. Mills. How many Americans did you rescue, sir?
        Secretary Blinken. We have gotten many Americans out.
        Mr. Mills. How many have you personally rescued, sir? None.
    Correct? Do don't try and talk to me about ground truth. You
    couldn't even control what was happening in Afghanistan. Let's
    start there.
        The next thing I want to talk about is, under your
    leadership, we have allowed Iran, the regime, to grow stronger
    than it has ever in its life.
        I will give you some facts here. The Energy Information
    Agency said that Iran petroleum exports in Iran sold $144
    billion in the first 3 years of your administration. Now, why
    is that number important? Well, because that is a hundred
    billion dollars more than what was permitted in the full 2
    years of the Trump administration.
        You talked about we had to go forward with the Doha
    Agreement. But that was part of the--even though it was a
    conditions-based agreement, you couldn't prevent from pulling
    out of that. But you had no problem pulling out a Remain in
    Mexico that has led to an increase in sex trafficking, fentanyl
    deaths, and illegal migrants. More angel families than ever.
        You had no problem, but again, you can't pull out of it, in
    trying to delist the Houthi rebels from a terrorist
    organization that now has resulted in 12 percent of global
    trade to the Red Sea being disrupted.
        Do you agree that delisting the Houthis as a terrorist
    organization was a good play?
        Secretary Blinken. In terms of making sure the humanitarian
    assistance can get to the people of Yemen and that the Houthis
    were designated under multiple other authorities----
        Mr. Mills. So endangering American citizens while now they
    are getting an increase in tax is a result of your actual
    failures----
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. They were being sanctioned
    at----
        Mr. Mills. Reclaiming my time. I can tell you with absolute
    clarity, sir, that Hezbollah got stronger while you were in
    office. Hamas was funded because of your failures to go impose
    necessary sanctions so that Iranian regime couldn't----
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. Right now----
        Mr. Mills. I am still talking, Mr. Secretary. You have had
    your time. You have had 4 years to destroy this Nation. You and
    this administration.
        I will tell you with absolute certainty, sir, that America
    is better off with you not in office, that the Iranian regime
    will now finally start to weaken with stronger sanctions and
    with us being able to do our jobs for the Iranian people who
    are actually trying to lead a free democracy.
        I can tell you that Hezbollah, Hamas--Hamas' leadership
    under Sinwar would not have been eliminated if they would have
    listened to Israel to what Biden had advised to cease-fire and
    stop. Hassan of Hezbollah would not have been eliminated if
    they would have listened to your leadership.
        And I can tell you right now that we are better off as a
    Nation, we are safer as a Nation, and our American citizens
    will be safer with you not sitting in that seat.
        With that, I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Costa is recognized.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you for your judgment. I wish you
    very good luck.
        Chairman McCaul. Mr. Costa is recognized.
        Mr. Costa. First of all, like others, I want to acknowledge
    the Gold Star mothers and families that are here. My
    grandmother was a Gold Star mother. And I have a bit of an
    understanding of the difficult, difficult situation that you
    have been through.
        And, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your tenure as
    the chair here. I have enjoyed serving with you and working
    with you.
        Mr. Secretary, you have done a good job, in my opinion, in
    the 4 years that you have been here under difficult challenges.
    We can all have different perspectives, but we are in a seminal
    moment in America and world history, I believe. And I am want
    to talk about that as it relates to our efforts with Ukraine,
    clear and present.
        I know you are doing a lot of things, but I think that I
    want to have some assurance that, in the remaining weeks
    allowed, that we do everything possible to move the necessary
    military equipment, material, and authorizations that Ukraine
    needs to win this war.
        With that in mind, there is a transfer currently, and I
    think you have the information, your staff does, of a dozen
    Black Hawk helicopters from the United States. They are
    awaiting approval from the State Department to complete this
    transfer. I am going to head up a letter, but can comment on
    that quickly?
        Secretary Blinken. Congressman, I can't speak to a specific
    transfer. I can just tell you that we were trying to push out
    the door everything we possibly can to make sure the Ukrainians
    have everything they need to deal with the ongoing aggression.
    We continue to do drawdowns. And I signed off on another one as
    recently as a day ago. I can't speak to the specifics, but I
    can tell you we are making sure that every dollar that has been
    authorized and appropriated, we are using.
        Mr. Costa. Will you get back to us as it relates to these
    12 Black Hawk helicopters that you have the information.
        Secretary Blinken. I am happy to come back to you on that.
        Mr. Costa. And please do. How about with other efforts in
    terms of the money that has been appropriated that we ensure
    that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes.
        Mr. Costa. It is not clear to me what this next
    administration is going to do. And I think that it is incumbent
    upon us to set--to keep our promises and also to maintain that
    leadership with our NATO allies.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes. We are determined to do everything
    we can. And it is fully our intent. As I said, every dollar
    that has been appropriated we want to see get out the door.
        Mr. Costa. As it relates to Afghanistan--and I was there
    numerous times--what would you say the lessons have been
    learned? I mean, it is easy to Monday-morning quarterback this,
    I think. And obviously we have people with strong opinions. But
    you inherited a treaty that had already been signed by the
    previous administration. You talked in your opening comments
    about your efforts to try to implement it. It clearly didn't go
    the way all of us wanted it do.
        What are the lessons that have been learned? And, most
    important, what changes would you make, and why?
        Secretary Blinken. I think there are lessons to be learned
    over the 20 years. There are lessons to be learned over the
    year preceding the evacuation. There are lessons to be learned
    from the evacuation itself.
        As to the latter, and actually the year preceding it, the
    report that I commissioned, the after-action review that I
    commissioned, looks at least at what the State Department could
    and should have done differently and how it could set itself
    better up for----
        Mr. Costa. Is the Department aware of any Americans in
    Afghanistan after August 31 who asked for assistance to depart
    the country, but not----
        Secretary Blinken. Yes.
        Mr. Costa [continuing]. Had not been previously--did so.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, we had about--as I said at the
    time, at that time, there were about 200 or so Americans who
    had identified themselves to us and wanted to leave but who
    either couldn't get to the airport or couldn't get into the
    airport. There were several hundred others who we knew of who
    did not at that point want to leave because either they
    couldn't bring extended family with them, or they decided that
    they wanted to stay.
        After August 31, the 200 or so who couldn't get to the
    airport, we were able to get out. Several hundred others came
    forward, seeing the success of our ongoing efforts to get
    Americans out and said, ``Actually, now, we want to leave.''
        And, between August 31 and December 31, we got another
    500--495, I believe, American citizens out of Afghanistan
    because of that enduring commitment to leave no one behind.
        Mr. Costa. Does it make sense that all Americans you may
    have heard of subsequent to August 31--2021--were ever in
    Afghanistan and then assumed that you had been there, and that
    the Department have known waiting for your help to get them out
    prior to date.
        Secretary Blinken. I am sorry. Can you repeat the question?
    I missed the question.
        Mr. Costa. I said, does it make sense just to add up all
    the Americans you may have heard subsequently prior to the
    August 31st date were ever in Afghanistan and then assume that
    you knew that they were there and that they were going to have
    an option.
        Secretary Blinken. The challenge that we have had, as you
    know, is that our citizens in any country around the world
    don't have to tell the government that they are there. They
    don't have to register with us when they leave the country.
    They don't have to deregister. And, in Afghanistan, we had many
    thousands of people who are, in effect, dual nationals who had
    made their lives in Afghanistan.
        Mr. Costa. Thank you for your service, and thank you.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired. I am
    telling members I am going to keep a very strict 5-minute rule.
        And, Secretary, I know you have a plane to catch to go to
    the Middle East.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Kean.
        Mr. Kean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also wanted to take
    this opportunity to thank you for your leadership in this
    Congress as well as of this committee.
        Mr. Secretary, you are here with us today to discuss the
    Biden administration's failure in the disastrous withdrawal
    from Afghanistan in August 2021 and your role in the sad
    chapter that our country witnessed.
        During President Biden's time in office and your tenure as
    Secretary of State, our country has seen many international
    crises that have become more inflamed. This administration has
    slow-walked critical arms and the capabilities to Ukraine and
    has prolonged this war into what will be soon its third year.
    This administration has also intentionally delayed vital
    assistance to Israel and has eroded confidence around the world
    about America's continued support for our strongest ally in the
    Middle East.
        And, in addition, you and your President's lack of
    accountability and ownership for withdrawal from Afghanistan is
    inexcusable.
        Mr. Secretary, why did you believe that the Taliban would
    negotiate with the Afghan Government despite President Biden's
    unconditional surrender on April 14, 2021?
        Secretary Blinken. As I said earlier, the Taliban had made
    commitments under Doha. We wanted to see them fulfill those
    commitments, including negotiating with the government on the
    transition. We made every effort diplomatically throughout that
    period to hold them to that, but it became clear that they
    wouldn't. And it also became clear that, when the deadline
    expired, the deadline negotiated by the previous
    administration, they would go back to attacking our forces,
    attacking our partners, attacking the cities. It would have
    required us to send tens of thousands of Americans back to
    Afghanistan. That is not a decision the President----
        Mr. Kean [continuing]. Especially during that entire time,
    what leverage did the United States have over the Taliban once
    President Biden announced that he would abandon our allies no
    matter what the Taliban's violations of the Doha Agreement
    would be?
        Secretary Blinken. Again, we had a deadline negotiated by
    the previous administration. And the choice was not between the
    status quo and ending the war. The choice was between ending
    the war and escalating it because, again, they would have gone
    back to attacking us. We had only 2,500 forces in Afghanistan.
    At that point, we would have had to reinforce them dramatically
    had the Taliban gone back to directly attacking our forces,
    directly attacking our partners, going at Afghanistan cities.
    That was the choice before the President.
        Mr. Kean. Do you agree that your power-sharing agreement
    further destabilized and delegitimized the Afghan Government.
        Secretary Blinken. I am sorry, Congressman. Could you
    repeat that? The power-sharing agreement?
        Mr. Kean. Do you agree that your power-sharing agreement
    further destabilized and delegitimized the Afghan Government?
        Secretary Blinken. There wasn't a power-sharing agreement.
    It was the intent of the Doha Agreement that the Taliban
    negotiate with the government a cease-fire and a political
    transition--something that they didn't do. But that was what
    was in the Doha Agreement. That was the objective. It didn't
    happen.
        Mr. Kean. It was clear that the Taliban was going to
    violate, and they did. On May 8, 2021, your State Department
    held a rehearsal, a concept drill, with the Defense Department
    to plan for the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
        And, during that meeting, the military warned against
    keeping Embassy Kabul open. Your deputy, Brian McKeon,
    responded, quote, ``We at the State Department have a much
    higher risk tolerance than you guys.''
        Mr. Secretary, it was you who tasked Mr. McKeon with
    purportedly leading the State Department's NEO planning. Is
    that correct.
        Secretary Blinken. I am sorry; I had trouble hearing that.
    Please repeat that.
        Mr. Kean. During this meeting, where you were warned not to
    keep Embassy Kabul open, your deputy, Brian McKeon, responded,
    quote, ``We at the State Department have a much higher risk
    tolerance than you guys.''
        Mr. Secretary, you are who tasked Mr. McKeon with
    purportedly leading the State Department's NEO planning. Is
    that correct? And do you agree with his assessment.
        Secretary Blinken. I can't speak to that conversation or to
    that meeting. What I can speak to is the fact that, starting in
    April, we worked on ever scenario with our colleagues from DOD.
    We did multiple exercises. We planned out what we would need to
    do, including in the event of a NEO. And, as I said before, the
    decision to actually initiate the NEO is a collective decision
    made through the interagency process by all of the Cabinet-
    level members and ultimately by the President. The State
    Department technically initiates it. And it was on August 14
    that everyone agreed that we should initiate the NEO. And, for
    reasons that we have discussed before, we didn't want to
    precipitate a panic. No one believed that the government and
    military would collapse. We wanted to sustain our diplomatic
    efforts in Afghanistan.
        Mr. Kean. Respectfully, your decision to keep U.S. Embassy
    Kabul open, against military advice, put people's lives at
    risk, and people were killed. And I want to also express my
    sympathy----
        Secretary Blinken. It was a collective decision.
    Congressman, it was a collective decision of the
    administration----
        Mr. Kean [continuing]. the families of the 13
    servicemembers who were killed at Abbey Gate--I know many of
    the Gold Star families that are here today.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Amo.
        Mr. Amo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I certainly want to
    thank you for your leadership as I started my time in Congress
    on this committee, and I certainly look forward to working with
    you in other ways in the future.
        I certainly also want to recognize the Gold Star families,
    adding to the comments of my colleagues: We are grateful to
    you.
        Thank you, Secretary Blinken, for being here today. And
    thank you for your extensive cooperation with our committee's
    oversight of the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan.
        Over the past 3 years, your State Department provided
    thousands of pages of documents and facilitated countless
    interviews with many career and political officials. I
    understand this is one of many appearances that you have had on
    this topic before our committee, and, you know, I can relate.
    Despite only being in Congress for just over a year, this is my
    third hearing on Afghanistan in this committee.
        Unfortunately, for my friends on the other side of the
    aisle, the quantity of these hearings is not really correlated
    with the quality of them. Their so-called investigation
    selectively airbrushed the full picture of what happened in
    Afghanistan. Their report ignores any of the actions that
    Donald Trump took to negotiate the withdrawal.
        The report claims we abandoned our allies but fails to
    mention how Trump folks left behind a backlog of more than
    17,000 applications made by our Afghan allies for special
    immigrant visas--a backlog that forced President Biden's
    administration to speed up visa processing, bring in temporary
    help, and work around the clock to protect our allies during
    the withdrawal.
        Of all the errors in this flawed report, its worst sin is
    that it refuses to let facts get in the way of a good story.
    The report repeatedly claims the State Department waited too
    long to initiate the U.S. noncombatant evacuation operation.
    But the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, Ross
    Wilson, has testified that in initiating this evacuation
    operation too soon, quote, ``would have complicated our ability
    to get out. If we had left earlier, several thousand SIV
    applicants that we got out would not have been able to leave
    the country. We would have not been able to provide support to
    American citizens trying to get out. Our eyes and ears about
    what was happening around us would have been drastically
    degraded,'' unquote.
        Secretary Blinken, do you agree that Ambassador Wilson's
    testimony reflects the conditions on the ground at the time,
    and after you initiated the noncombatant evacuation operation,
    were there any additional steps that you personally took to
    ensure that our personnel and allies had the help and resources
    they needed.
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, thank you. I agree with Ambassador
    Wilson's assessment. And, once the evacuation was underway, the
    NEO was underway, we surged resources to the Embassy, including
    dozens of consular officers to make sure that we could process
    anyone getting to and into the airport, American citizens and
    others eligible to come to the United States.
        And I have to tell you, Congressman, I have immense pride
    in the people of my any Department. I had hundreds raise their
    hand and volunteer, including dozens who ran into the burning
    building of HKIA airport during the evacuation to look out for
    their fellow citizens, to look out for our Afghan partners, and
    to do everything possible to bring them out of harm's way.
        Mr. Amo. Well, Secretary, I am grateful for your
    leadership. And I frankly just wanted to give you an
    opportunity to correct the record on any claims that we have
    heard today and really just, you know, communicate some lasting
    thoughts about this as you depart the State Department.
        Secretary Blinken. Look, all I can say is we don't have
    time to go through everything. I think we have addressed a
    number of these questions throughout this hearing, and I am
    always happy to pursue these conversations. I just hope that
    somehow we can find ways to work effectively together to shed
    more light than heat on these very difficult issues. I think
    that is the spirit in which we should approach things.
        And, for my part, I have been determined to learn the
    lessons from this experience, not only to learn them but to act
    on them. And we have made the State Department stronger and
    better able to respond to crises than it was when we found it
    or it was during the Afghan evacuation. And I think that spirit
    is the one that I would hope would apply to everything we do.
        I have worked so well with so many members of this
    committee on both sides of the aisle. I hope that that
    continues even in places where we have deep disagreements. We
    can question each other's judgments. That is totally
    appropriate. I hope that we can get out of the business of
    questioning each other's motives.
        Mr. Amo. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
        And, with that, I yield back.
        Mr. Self [presiding]. The gentleman's time has expired.
        I recognize Mr. Lawler from New York.
        Mr. Lawler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, have you read this report in full?
        [Chart shown.]
        Secretary Blinken. I have read the executive summary of the
    report. I haven't read the entire report yet. I have read the
    executive summary----
        Mr. Lawler. I hope that you will take this copy with you on
    your flight to the Middle East and read it because this is your
    legacy. This is your legacy.
        Starting with the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan that
    resulted in the death of 13 U.S. servicemembers, creating 13
    Gold Star families, families our Vice President hasn't even
    been bothered to meet with. Then the Russian invasion of
    Ukraine. The terrorist attack on Israel. The illicit oil trade
    between China and Iran to the tune of $200 billion under your
    watch. That is what is funding Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis,
    and other terror networks in the region. China threatening
    Taiwan. This is your legacy, and this stems from this
    disastrous withdrawal.
        So I hope you read the report in full and reflect upon
    that. You talk about the Doha Agreement. It is conditions-
    based. This administration had no problem reversing policy
    decisions that it disagreed with President Trump on.
        In fact, Joe Biden revoked 94 executive orders to open up
    our southern border and create an absolute calamity; 70,000
    Americans die every year from fentanyl overdose, as this
    administration has allowed fentanyl to pour into our country--
    drug trafficking, gangs, human trafficking, women and children
    being sold into prostitution. Not a care in the world. This is
    the legacy.
        So don't sit here and tell us, having not read the report,
    that you disagree with it or it is not true, saying to my
    colleague from Florida, ``Oh, it is not true we left people in
    Israel after October 7.'' It most certainly is.
        I had constituents calling in a full-pledged panic, and we
    called the State Department, and we are told, ``There is
    nothing we can do.'' Don't tell us that that didn't happen.
        This administration had no problem trying to renegotiate
    the Iran nuclear deal, no problem lifting sanctions on Iran,
    allowing for the illicit oil trade.
        So, when you say that the previous administration
    negotiated the Doha Agreement and, therefore, we were bound by
    it, that is complete and utter bullshit. And you know it. You
    absolutely had the ability, based on the conditions on the
    ground, to keep our troops there, to ensure the safety and
    well-being of American citizens, and to make sure what happened
    did not.
        Mr. Secretary, on August 26, 2021, who was the President of
    the United States?
        Secretary Blinken. Joe Biden.
        Mr. Lawler. On August 26, 2021, who was the Secretary of
    State?
        Secretary Blinken. I was.
        Mr. Lawler. Okay. Take responsibility. Don't shirk in your
    responsibilities. Don't try to shift blame. The reality is you
    guys allowed the conditions on the ground to deteriorate. You
    did not hold the Taliban to account, and as a result, 13 U.S.
    servicemembers are dead, and the world is a tinderbox. We are
    in the most precarious place since the leadup to World War II.
    That is your legacy. Period. Full stop.
        And, if Israel listened to this administration and didn't
    go into Gaza and didn't go it into the south, Sinwar would
    still be alive. And, if Israel listened to this administration,
    Nasrallah would still be alive, and Assad would still be in
    power in Syria, and Iran would be stronger than ever. That is
    your legacy.
        This Congress has passed the SHIP Act and the Abraham
    Accord Special Envoy. You didn't fill the special envoy, and
    you didn't enforce the SHIP Act. You have had over a year to do
    both. That is your legacy. You leave the world worse off today
    than it was when you inherited it.
        Mr. Self. The gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Lawler. Enjoy reading this----
        Mr. Self. I recognize the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms.
    Wild.
        Mr. Lawler [continuing]. Because this is your legacy.
        Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr.----
        Secretary Blinken. I have a very different legacy, one that
    I will be happy to reflect on. I won't have the time to do it
    today because of course you don't provide any time to do it. It
    is very nice to make a speech, leave me no time to respond----
        Mr. Self. The chair has recognized Ms. Wild.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. That is the way this works
    out, Mr. Chair.
        Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Secretary Blinken, let me just say that hearings such as
    this one probably will aid you in getting over this job very
    quickly. I do think that you have served commendably. I think
    also that you have been handed an unprecedented set of world
    affairs and that you have handled them very well, and I thank
    you for that.
        I, too, along with so many of my colleagues, want to
    express my tribute and my thanks to our Gold Star families,
    and, of course, to our servicemembers who lost their lives in
    all of Afghanistan's war, not just on the day that we withdrew.
    But that is really at the heart of what we are discussing
    today, Americans who wore our country's uniform, those who were
    injured, those who lost their lives, and, of course, their
    families that served alongside them. And I do still wish--I say
    to all the families--that your loved ones had not been there on
    that day. I personally feel strongly that we should not have
    been in that war at that time. And I am sorry for your losses
    and that that happened.
        Secretary Blinken, I do want to ask you the same question I
    asked Ambassador Khalilzad when he testified here a few months
    ago because I think it really gets to the underlying reality of
    why we are here today. Why over the course of 20 years in
    Afghanistan did administrations of both parties fail to
    correctly assess the level of dedication and cohesion of the
    Afghan forces and their political leadership?
        Secretary Blinken. That is a critical question. I hope that
    the bipartisan commission that is looking into the 20 years of
    Afghanistan gets at exactly that. And, as someone who served in
    several of those administrations, I also take responsibility
    for that, that we did not, I think, see with clarity--not only
    the durability of the Afghan Government and the Afghan security
    forces, but see with clarity how difficult if not impossible it
    would be for us from the outside to somehow build a cohesive
    country and society. And that is something that, as you said,
    took place over multiple administrations, and I think that is a
    critical question that we get a better understanding of. And my
    hope is that the commission will look into that.
        Ms. Wild. Well, thank you. I hope so, too. You know, I have
    grave concerns about the politicization of intelligence that
    somehow seems to fit a predesigned agenda over several decades
    of U.S. military involvement. That is by no means any kind of
    critique of our troops, ever. It is the people who were making
    decisions at a much higher level. And I worry that we have a
    cherry-picking of intelligence and data. And I hope that is
    something that the commission will also look at because I think
    it is vital to make sure that we don't end up in any more
    forever wars.
        How do you account--and I know we are running out of time--
    but can you comment on the intelligence failures, specific to
    Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. Look, I think this is collective, which
    is to say the State Department had knowledge and perspective on
    this; the Defense Department, having worked with the Afghan
    military for 20 years, had perspective and knowledge; and, of
    course, the intelligence community did. So the judgments that
    we reached, I would say, were collective judgments. And, as I
    said before, and we have said repeatedly, as we looked at the
    preponderance of views, there was not--and no one anticipated
    the collapse of the government, the collapse of the Afghan
    forces--when it happened or as quickly as it happened.
        Ms. Wild. Can I just stop you real quickly? Because I
    wanted to ask you, were you personally surprised by President
    Ghani's decision to flee.
        Secretary Blinken. I was because I think, as I mentioned
    earlier, I was on the phone with him late at night on the 14 of
    August. And he told me--we were working on trying to get an
    agreement to move forward between the Taliban and the
    government to negotiate some kind of transitional government as
    a way of averting all of this and moving Afghanistan to a
    better place. He told me that he was determined to try to do
    that, but if the Taliban refused, he was going to stay and
    fight. That was on August 14. He was gone on August 15.
        Ms. Wild. Well, thank you. I do hope we as a country learn
    from this experience. There is obviously a great deal of
    information to be gathered and, hopefully, will be gathered in
    a nonpartisan or a bipartisan manner so that we can learn in
    the future.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Self. The gentlelady yields. I recognize myself for 5
    minutes.
        You have mentioned probably five times today the fact that
    your intel failure to know what was going to happen. There is
    an old book you need to read; it is called ``Groupthink.'' It
    examines disasters exactly like this in the past. It probably
    is worthwhile reading. Because that is what happened.
    ``Groupthink.''
        Now, those of us on this committee who served in
    Afghanistan and Iraq understand that evil still stalks the
    world. We saw it. And many of my colleagues on this committee
    served far deeper into Afghanistan and Iraq than I did. But
    evil still stalks the world. And I have also heard you say
    several times here about humanitarian assistance.
        There is an old military political concept that says
    military use is a failure of diplomacy. It is the last bastion
    of it.
        Well, as expected, Mr. Secretary, this has been an
    interesting back and forth, as I knew it would be. And, since I
    am fairly low on the totem pole here, we have plowed that
    ground well. I want to talk about the consequences of this in
    the world following the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
    I think one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle
    talked about repercussions. There have been many. I will just
    mention two.
        Following this botched withdrawal and the Taliban takeover,
    our adversaries have been on the march around the world,
    encouraged by this error, this strategic error. Words fail to
    capture the magnitude of the consequences that have been
    suffered across the globe because of this withdrawal.
        Yet, according to President Biden himself, the emergency
    evacuation that cost 13 American servicemembers' lives, left
    behind 7 billion at the low end of military equipment, was an
    extraordinary success. Yet, our perceived weakness following
    Afghanistan--I think it was 2 months later Putin started moving
    troops toward Ukraine--also set the scene for the horrific
    attacks on October 7. Hamas terrorists and thugs obviously
    invaded Israel in an unprovoked assault that left Israel men,
    women, and children dead, wounded, and hostage, and Americans
    as well I might add.
        That was a critical unforced error by Hamas. Since that
    day, Iranian hegemony has faltered. Hamas has lost its leaders
    in uncontested control over Gaza. While Hezbollah's senior
    leadership has been eradicated, setting their ambition back for
    decades--and I will stop here and say that both UNRWA and
    UNIFIL did not do their job in Gaza and in southern Lebanon to
    disastrous consequences.
        We now find ourselves in the midst of yet another serious
    issue, which is Syria. The fall of Bashar al-Assad. Both Russia
    and Iran have lost leverage in the Middle East. And, while it
    is good that his reign of terror is over--gassing, torturing,
    slaughtering thousands--there is still looming questions like,
    who is keeping the lights on in Syria today, and who is going
    to control the levers of government in tomorrow?
        Amid the chaos, our steadfast ally, Israel, remains strong.
    They have significantly weakened Hamas and Hezbollah, directly
    diminishing Iran's influence in this region. Without Israel's
    chutzpah and determination, the threats to the United States in
    the Middle East would be far greater.
        Israel over the past few days has done the necessary work
    of destroying the military power of rump Syria so whoever does
    emerge to rule Syria cannot threaten Israel. According to the
    White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby, it
    is an open question who is currently running Syria.
        Yes, Iran and Russia have failed, but I--have lost
    influence in the area, but I am very eager for the leadership
    of the incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. And I
    want to make sure that is Mike Waltz, the incoming National
    Security Advisor, not our recently failed Vice President
    candidate.
        So a couple of questions for you. First of all, Mr.
    Secretary, are you confident that the leader of HTS will be
    able to keep his word to protect Christians and Islamic women
    in rump Syria?
        Secretary Blinken. Mr. Chairman, I am not confident, I am
    encouraged by the fact that they have said the right thing, but
    what we have to focus on is whether they do the right thing,
    including protecting minorities.
        Mr. Self. The second question is, do you expect Syria to
    descend into a terrorist enclave.
        Secretary Blinken. We certainly need to do everything
    possible to avoid that. And the coming days, the coming weeks
    will be critical to that. That is why--and by the way, I very
    much appreciate you keeping this hearing on time, along with
    Chairman McCaul. I need to leave to get on a plane to go to the
    region to see King Abdullah of Jordan. And I appreciate that
    there are some other members here who have not yet had a chance
    to ask questions. I am happy to take those questions for the
    record and get back to you quickly.
        Mr. Self. Mr. Secretary, I yield back to the chairman, and
    he will recess this----
        Chairman McCaul [presiding]. Thank you, sir.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Moskowitz.
        Mr. Moskowitz. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
        I will be quick, Mr. Secretary.
        First, let me thank Chairman McCaul for his bipartisan work
    on this committee. This has been one of those bright spots of
    this Congress.
        I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your sacrifice and
    your service to the country. These jobs are unforgiving and
    have deep impacts on everybody's individual families. And so I
    want to thank you for your service.
        I want to thank the Gold Star families for being here and,
    like I have before, apologize to them for what happened to
    their loved ones in Afghanistan.
        I am not going to go into all of this stuff that has been
    said by 30 people. But I do want to say this, Mr. Chairman, you
    know, the official Twitter account of this committee put out a
    tweet at 11:27, and it says, ``At this committee's final
    hearing of this Congress, we brought in Secretary Blinken to
    testify on the disastrous Biden-Harris withdrawal from
    Afghanistan after months of stonewalling. Sadly, many of the
    Democratic seats are empty at this important hearing.''
        I don't know what intern put this out, but it is
    misinformation, and it is literally a lie. First of all, if you
    look at the picture, half the seats on that side of the aisle
    are empty. And I am not blaming them. That is how these
    committees work. We all know this. People come in and out of
    these hearing rooms.
        But let me give you the numbers: 20 of the 23 Democrats on
    this committee were here today; 23 of the 28 Republicans were
    here today. Of the ones that were here, 17 Democrats asked
    questions; 17 Republicans asked questions.
        So the official account of this committee is making it
    appear that we don't care about what happened in Afghanistan.
    It is not true. And that tweet should come down.
        Because, while our enemies are trying to divide us abroad
    in social media, we are just giving them a gift by saying,
    ``Hey, half the party, half the country doesn't care.''
        There were major mistakes made in Afghanistan. I have said
    that in previous hearings. So I appreciate everyone going on
    their soapbox about morality and truth and facts in trying to
    hold the Secretary to that high standard. Then we got to do it
    ourselves in this committee.
        Mr. Secretary, a lot of things were said. I know you have
    to leave. I just wanted to give you the balance of my time to
    close about your legacy.
        Secretary Blinken. Thank you. Look, I have to leave it to
    others to make those judgments. But, from my perspective, we
    have worked from day one to reengage, reenergize, and even
    reimagine our alliances and partnerships around the world. We
    have done just that. And, as a result, we are in a much
    stronger position than we were to deal with a multiplicity of
    challenges, more complicated than any time in the 32 years that
    I have been engaged in this work.
        We demonstrated that with the work of bringing more than 50
    countries together in support of Ukraine as it dealt with the
    Russian aggression. We have demonstrated that in building
    extraordinary convergence that we have never seen before in
    terms of purpose and action when it comes to dealing with the
    challenges posed by China, among European allies and partners
    and among partners and allies in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
        We have seen that in bringing countries together to tackle
    everything from COVID to fentanyl to food security. Across the
    board, that is a result of our engagement, of our diplomacy, of
    bringing countries together in common purpose and in ways that
    advance the national interest. That is how I have seen it.
    Others are free to make their own judgments about it. But I
    think, in doing that, one of the sources of our strength and
    success is the ability to work closely with Congress.
        We are stronger at home because we have made remarkable
    investments in things like infrastructure, the CHIPS and
    Science Act, the IRA. That goes directly to our strength
    abroad. Other countries see that. They see that we have
    reinvested in our own competitiveness. They want to work with
    us. They want to engage with us. They want to partner with us.
        And, because we have been so attentive to our alliances and
    partnerships, we now have countries that, before, were looking
    to do things on their own without us, that are now united with
    us in common purpose. That doesn't just happen. It happens
    because we have extraordinary men and women at the State
    Department, among other places, who are out there every single
    day building those alliances, building those partnerships, and
    then using them when we need to deal with challenges like
    Russia and Ukraine, like China, like some of the other
    challenges we face around the world. Thank you.
        Mr. Moskowitz. Thank you.
        I yield the balance of my time back, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields. The chair recognizes
    Mr. McCormick.
        Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for
    being here, Mr. Secretary. I know that your main responsibility
    as the Secretary is to execute the President's foreign policy.
    As an Afghan veteran and as a guy whose got tons of friends
    that served over there even longer than I did, got years away
    from their family, the guys who lost their limbs, the families
    who sacrificed, the people who lost their lives, my hat's
    always off for those families who are Gold Stars. And, even the
    families who just served and made that sacrifice away from
    their families, I really have great respect.
        I know we were there for about 20 years in Afghanistan. So
    you can't take responsibility for 20 years, but you can take
    responsibility for this 4 years. I know that we spent about 2
    trillion of that dollars while that wasn't on your watch. That
    is also a lesson learned that we had to live with. I know 2,462
    lives roughly passed because of that war that we sacrificed as
    Americans, but most of those are not on your watch.
        What I do want to hold you and our leadership accountable
    for is the stuff we left behind very specifically. Yesterday, I
    had the Ambassador of Pakistan in my office, and we were
    talking about terrorism in his Nation, and how we create
    stability in that region. I am a foreign affairs guy. That is
    my region. And they had over 600 terrorist attacks in their
    nation last year. And I was like, why? Why so many? He said
    because a lot of the weapons that we left behind in Afghanistan
    are now being used for attacks in Pakistan and other areas
    around there, and it is munitions we left behind.
        I personally thought it was a horrible withdrawal. I talked
    with--I have already had, you know, a breakdown. He went down
    and step by step went through the process of the withdrawal.
    But, quite frankly, it wasn't just the $4 billion of our troop
    supplies that we left behind, but the 90 billion that we had
    given to the Afghanis that was then used now to sustain their
    country and the evil empire that is basically spreading
    terrorism throughout the region.
        I don't really accept the premise that they are not
    harboring bad guys. I know we have terrorist cells, and I know
    that they are training. We have been briefed on that. We don't
    need to get into specifics. But I, quite frankly, think in a
    real sort of way the equivalent of equipment that we left over
    there, which is probably similar to what we just gave to
    Ukraine in aid and to fight a first world army, the Russians,
    is now being used to spread terrorism throughout the world, and
    that is on us. The United States is literally sponsoring
    terrorism around the world using the weapons that we gave them
    we didn't hold accountable for.
        And one thing we learned in the military, whether it was 16
    years in the Marine Corps, 4 years in the Navy, or training
    with the Army, accountability is our first step. We take
    responsibility for what we do.
        How would you answer to that?
        Secretary Blinken. So, two things, Congressman, I
    appreciate very much appreciate the question. First, the
    weapons you are referring to built up over 20 years. The hard
    reality is that, in order to avoid extending the war,
    escalating the war, sending tens of thousands of Americans back
    into Afghanistan, it would have been impossible to take out all
    of those weapons, all of that equipment.
        Much of it was dismantled or otherwise made inoperative.
    Much of it that remained is almost certainly inoperative
    because it had to be maintained, and they don't have the
    capacity maintain it. But I grant you there are no doubt some
    number of weapons or equipment that, yes, are being used by the
    regime. But the Taliban Government itself is not in the
    business of--for all of the horrific things that it is doing
    inside Afghanistan to its people--is not in the business of
    exporting terrorism in this moment. And that at least is a good
    thing.
        And so I don't see this equipment such as it is being used
    for that purpose. It is very regrettable that equipment was
    left behind. But I think it is a reality of 20 years, trillions
    of dollars of equipment to the Afghanis.
        Mr. McCormick. So I would disagree with one premise, and
    this is where I think the crux of this issue is because I want
    to learn from this: We should never set a data or a time to be
    political about anything we do. This is about the survival of
    our troops, what is best for our investment, return on
    investment. And I think we got locked into a date.
        If I can learn anything from this, we got locked into a
    date that let us make some really bad decisions planning-wise
    that left a lot of equipment behind. And, quite frankly, when I
    was there, we had fewer people there than we have Spain. We
    never fought a war in Spain. And we are so in a hurry to say,
    ``I want this feather in my cap that I got out of
    Afghanistan,'' that we forgot to do it right. When you forget
    to do it right, shame on us.
        And I think we should never be locked into a date or a time
    or a situation where we are not in control because we are the
    biggest, baddest country on the planet. And shame on us for not
    doing it right because I think that costs us a lot of
    reputation.
        With that, I yield.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired. We are
    going to try to keep this brief. I know the Secretary has to go
    to the Middle East to meet with the King of Jordan.
        Mr. Moran from Texas is recognized.
        Mr. Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here today. I want to
    start with where Mr. Moskowitz left off just a second ago.
    Speaking about the withdrawal, he said, and I quote, ``There
    were major mistakes made in Afghanistan.''
        First of all, do you agree with statement by Mr. Moskowitz?
        Secretary Blinken. I do.
        Mr. Moran. Could you specify mistakes that you believe were
    made in the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. I think the most fundamental mistake
    was, again, not recognizing that the fragility of the Afghan
    Government, the Afghan security forces, and not anticipating
    across the government--and I take responsibility for this,
    along with the other departments of government--in recognizing
    that there was potential, more than a potential likelihood of a
    very quick collapse by both the government and the security
    forces.
        Mr. Moran. How would you advise a President in the future
    under similar circumstances to do something different? What
    different advice would you give to him or her?
        Secretary Blinken. I think we have to do what we did, but,
    obviously, we didn't see this piece of it, which is to
    continuously question the assumptions, to continuously prod and
    push on any assumptions, including about the durability of the
    government or the military forces.
        Mr. Moran. Do you think it was a mistake to withdraw even
    though the conditions preceding in the Doha Agreement had not
    been met by the factions in Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. I do not. I believe it was the right
    thing to do to end America's longest war. I believe that our
    country is actually better for it, stronger for it. I believe
    our adversaries have seen that we were not going to get bogged
    down into another decade of war in Afghanistan, and that has
    been a good thing.
        And, again, I just remind you that the basic choice, to the
    extent there was a choice, was between ending the war and
    leaving or escalating it. Because part of the Doha Agreement
    was a commitment by the Taliban not to attack our forces
    between the time the agreement was signed and the withdrawal
    date that was set in the Doha Agreement was reached. Once that
    was breached, they would go back to attacking us, our partners.
    Our military determined we would have to send tens of thousands
    of forces back to Afghanistan. That was the choice.
        Mr. Moran. I think I heard you say earlier that you didn't
    think there was a connection between the botched withdrawal and
    the aggression, the increase in aggression, by Russia as
    against Ukraine earlier. Did I hear you correctly say that?
        Secretary Blinken. That is correct.
        Mr. Moran. When the withdrawal occurred, former U.S.
    Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder warned a few days after
    President Biden's unconditional surrender to the Taliban that,
    quote, ``Moscow and Beijing will look closely at how we react
    in one situation to set the stage for the other.''
        So did you disagree with that then, or do you disagree with
    that now?
        Secretary Blinken. So what we saw, first of all, is that,
    of course, Russia had amassed all of these forces well before
    the withdrawal or the decision, actually, to go forward with
    it. We saw that take place in the spring.
        Second, Russia has a long experience with Afghanistan. It
    probably knows better than anyone the folly of getting bogged
    down in that country.
        And what we have seen since is the United States marshaling
    more than 50 countries coming to the defense of Ukraine and
    doing tremendous damage to Russia's efforts in Ukraine.
        Mr. Moran. Let's look at what the Chinese said about this.
    On the second anniversary of the withdrawal, Chinese Foreign
    Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, quote, ``On this date 2
    years ago, the whole world witnessed the 'Kabul moment' when
    the U.S. hastily withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. What
    happened in Afghanistan marked a military, political, and
    counterterrorism failure of the U.S. in Afghanistan.'' That is
    a quote by a Chinese Government official.
        Do you think that our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the
    way that we handled it precipitated additional aggression by
    China toward Taiwan?
        Secretary Blinken. I don't. In fact, we have seen this
    buildup for more than a decade.
        And, again, as I said earlier, in 2008, we had 200,000
    troops between Afghanistan and Iraq. That is when the Russians
    invaded Georgia. In 2014, we still had 12,000 troops in
    Afghanistan. That is when the Russians first invaded Ukraine.
        These decisions are made for their own reasons. And with
    Russia and Ukraine or with China and Taiwan, this long predated
    any things we decided or did in Afghanistan.
        Mr. Moran. I want to ask real quickly, as my time expires,
    about before and after our withdrawal.
        So, if we are looking before and after the withdrawal, do
    you think that the situation in Afghanistan is better inside
    Afghanistan today or before withdrawal as it relates to, No. 1,
    the safety and security of women and young girls?
        Secretary Blinken. I think the situation is worse for women
    and young girls. There is no question about that----
        Mr. Moran. What about the access and opportunities for
    education for women and young girls, today or before the
    withdrawal?
        Secretary Blinken. Worse. No question about that.
        Mr. Moran. And the opportunities to enter the workforce for
    women, today or before withdrawal?
        Secretary Blinken. Worse.
        Mr. Moran. Do you think a leave-behind force, even a small
    force, may have created stability in the region? Or would that
    not have been something you----
        Secretary Blinken. That was not the choice. The choice was
    not leaving 2,500 people there. The choice was whether we were
    going to send tens of thousands ofAmericans back indefinitely
    with no guarantee of better results.
        It is also remember to important that, by December 2020,
    the Taliban either controlled or contested territory that had
    75 percent of the population of Afghanistan. Life for them
    then, including women and girls, was not good. But I agree with
    you, it has gotten worse.
        Mr. Moran. Do you agree we need to take additional steps to
    protect the lives of women and young girls in Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. Yes, we are doing--I agree we need to
    maximize every effort to do that.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Moran. I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The chair recognizes Mr. Moylan.
        Mr. Moylan. Thank you----
        Secretary Blinken. Mr. Chairman, I am very sorry to
    interrupt, but, as we said before this hearing, I had a hard
    stop at 2 o'clock. I----
        Chairman McCaul. I agree.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. Have to get on a plane----
        Chairman McCaul. If we could keep this limited. We have Mr.
    Moylan and Mr. Van Orden----
        Secretary Blinken. I am happy to take--I very much respect
    the members and their questions. I am happy to take the
    questions and respond within the next week.
        Chairman McCaul. Why don't we ask--both of you, I want to
    give you the opportunity to ask one question.
        Mr. Moylan. One question. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank
    you, Mr. Chairman.
        General Miller was our last commander of U.S. Forces in
    Afghanistan, Mr. Secretary, and he came before this committee.
    And the important thing that General Miller wanted to relay to
    us was about the characterization of your State Department's
    attitude toward the military, Mr. Secretary.
        General Miller was saying to this committee that there was
    this assumption, the State Department's assumption, that we
    don't need the military. It was the State Department's
    assumption, according to General Miller, that, ``Why don't you
    know this, General? You are withdrawing. Why don't you get out
    of here, all of you? Just go away.''
        That is General Miller, our last commander of U.S. Forces
    in Afghanistan, what he felt important to share with this
    committee.
        Now, Mr. Secretary, in institutions like the State
    Department, your State Department, such attitudes often come
    from the top. I am an Army (ph) officer myself, and all look to
    the leadership.
        So is it your assumption, sir--did you assume to your State
    Department that your embassy in Afghanistan did not need the
    military?
        Secretary Blinken. Absolutely not. And on the contrary,
    Congressman.
        First of all, I have tremendous respect for General Miller,
    everything he has done, everything he has put at risk himself.
        Second, I have had the incredible honor of serving this
    country in various capacities--State Department, White House,
    National Security Council--for the better part of 30 years now.
    And throughout those 30 years, one of the things I take the
    most pride and pleasure in is the work that I have been able to
    do with our military. I have----
        Mr. Moylan. I understand----
        Secretary Blinken. And so----
        Mr. Moylan [continuing]. That, Mr. Secretary.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. My Department, in my time,
    certainly in terms of my own instructions to them, has done
    nothing short of do everything possible to strengthen and
    continue this essential collaboration.
        Mr. Moylan. Mr. Secretary----
        Secretary Blinken. We can't do our jobs without the United
    States military.
        Mr. Moylan. I will take back my time.
        In this case, Mr. Secretary, I understand what you are
    saying here and now. But General Miller, our last commander of
    U.S. Forces, this is what he had to say to us.
        And, sir, you may be saying this now, but, however, the
    example that your employees understood is different than what
    you are telling me. And it is as if there was an absence of
    leadership that put the State Department employees in America,
    and America, at risk.
        And I am sorry to say, sir, that this type of attitude that
    your State Department has had regarding----
        Chairman McCaul. I would ask the gentleman to please
    expedite the question.
        Mr. Moylan. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman.
        Basically, sir, it didn't work out, according to General
    Miller, our last commander of U.S. Forces.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields back.
        The chair recognizes Mr. Van Orden.
        Mr. Van Orden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
    having me on your committee, and thank you for your leadership
    throughout the years.
        Mr. Secretary, thanks for coming here.
        I am just going to establish some bona fides. I am going to
    ask you a couple quick--series of questions, and then I am
    going to actually give you the chance, sir, to make sure that
    you could leave your last hearing by doing something good for
    your legacy.
        I have served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq,
    including one where I held one of my friends' hands as he was
    dying, listening to his wife crying through a satellite phone
    into his ear because she knew she would never see her husband
    again.
        And the Gold Star Families here have my greatest sympathy.
    And we owe you a debt that does not go away. It is not a
    mortgage; it is not a 30-year commitment. It is forever.
        I am the longest-serving enlisted member of the United
    States military to ever be elected to Congress in the history
    of our Nation. I was responsible for writing contingency plans
    for the entire continent of Europe and making sure that they
    worked.
        So, with that said, I mean, I want you to know that,
    because a lot of the stuff that you said to my colleagues is
    either not true--and that is either on purpose or due to
    incompetence.
        I would encourage you to hand to your successor Joint
    Publication 3-68 and have them open up to chapter 5, page 1,
    paragraph C. Because what you told these guys about who can do
    this is just not true.
        So you said that there was a plan. When was it written?
        Secretary Blinken. Okay. You are referring to the--to the--
    --
        Mr. Van Orden. The NEO.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. NEO plan? Through the
    course of the spring.
        Mr. Van Orden. Okay. Through the course of the spring. That
    should have been done years before.
        Secretary Blinken. Well----
        Mr. Van Orden. When was it rehearsed?
        Secretary Blinken. Can I add to that--I am sorry,
    Congressman--just to be very precise?
        We have a team of people that go to every embassy,
    especially embassies of concern, every year, including
    Afghanistan----
        Mr. Van Orden. I know, sir. I have participated in those
    teams.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. To work on this.
        Mr. Van Orden. So did it include removing the military and
    leaving civilians to fend for themselves against terrorists and
    then reinserting the military in a panic to help rescue the
    Americans that you abandoned in Afghanistan? Was that an annex
    on the plan?
        Secretary Blinken. It was based on the premise----
        Mr. Van Orden. It wasn't. Okay.
        Secretary Blinken [continuing]. That the government
    wouldn't collapse----
        Mr. Van Orden. Did it include flying over 170,000 unvetted
    Afghans and distributing them throughout the country, including
    the 13,000 that you sent to my district in Fort McCoy,
    Wisconsin?
        No? Okay.
        Where are those Afghans, by the way? We don't know.
        And I was just given this now. What you just testified
    under oath is not true. The Ambassador who led the NATO--excuse
    me--led the NEO said they weren't operating on a plan. So you
    just lied under oath.
        Secretary Blinken. That is not true, Congressman.
        Mr. Van Orden. Okay.
        Did your plan include intentionally abandoning American
    citizens and green-card holders to terrorists in Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. Of course not.
        Mr. Van Orden. Did it include unintentionally abandoning
    American citizens and green-card holders to terrorists in
    Afghanistan?
        Secretary Blinken. No, of course not.
        Mr. Van Orden. Well, it happened, didn't it?
        Were American citizens and green-card holders left in
    Afghanistan? The answer to that is ``correct.''
        How many? You can't tell me.
        Secretary Blinken. And you know why that is----
        Mr. Van Orden. Hey, listen, man. I forgot to mention that,
    like my colleague Cory, I was one of the guys who went to go
    rescue American citizens. So I know you couldn't tell me. We
    knew, and you either didn't know or you lied.
        And here is my question. You are the Secretary of State
    now. Can you, with Secretary Mayorkas, grant a green card to
    someone who can absolutely, 100 percent be verified for saving
    hundreds and hundreds of American servicemembers and risking
    his life for over a decade, who is currently here under
    humanitarian parole? Can you guys do that?
        Secretary Blinken. I would be happy to work with you on
    that.
        Mr. Van Orden. His name is Azizullah Aziz.
        Secretary Blinken. Happy to pursue that with you,
    Congressman.
        Mr. Van Orden. Thank you very much, sir.
        And I will tell you right now: You get this done, it is
    going to go--it is going to be one of the best things you could
    possibly do to redeem your reputation and your legacy as
    Secretary of State.
        And, with that, I yield back.
        Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
        Let me just say thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here. I
    want to thank you for your service as well.
        I think that you will be pleased to know this will be the
    last time you will appear before this committee as Secretary of
    State and me as chairman.
        And there has been a lot of talk about legacy. I know we
    have been working on legislation together, called the Overseas
    Crises Response Implementation System and Immediate Strategy
    Act, or Overseas CRISIS. I hope that can be part of your legacy
    and mine, as we close the chapter on Afghanistan, sir.
        And I wish you Godspeed to the Middle East. And, again,
    thank you for your service.
        Pursuant to committee rules, all members may have 5 days to
    submit questions.
        Chairman McCaul. Without objection, the committee stands
    adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 2:25 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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