WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department offered Wednesday to let the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee see a classified cable from U.S. diplomats in Kabul sent shortly before the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas had threatened earlier this week to make an unprecedented push to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress if he did not hand over the so-called dissent cable.
It was not immediately clear whether the State Department’s offer would placate the Republican lawmaker, who also wanted to see Blinken’s response to the cable.
State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Wednesday that McCaul, as well as Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, would be invited to the department to view the cable “with the appropriate personal information drafted”.
“President McCaul himself has said that’s what he’s interested in,” Patel said. “And so we sincerely hope that our offering here will be sufficient to satisfy your request for information.”
McCaul had planned for the committee to vote next week on a resolution to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress. It would then have proceeded to a full vote in the House, where Republicans have a narrow majority.
The State Department had previously briefed McCaul on the content of the cables, but he said he was not satisfied.
The vast majority of the 123 cables sent since 1971, when the dissident channel was created during the Vietnam War, have remained classified, according to the National Security Archives at George Washington University. The State Department has long protected the cables from public release.
