Afghanistan Watchdog: Biden Admin ‘Unreasonably Refusing to Provide Information’

John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR), wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, and the heads of several congressional committees on Wednesday complaining that the Biden administration abruptly stopped cooperating with his investigations after he issued a report critical of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“It is my duty to report that the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are unreasonably refusing to provide information and assistance requested by SIGAR,” Sopko wrote, citing the relevant laws requiring those agencies to cooperate.

Sopko documented a “repeated and continuing refusal to provide information and assistance requested by my office,” especially on three sensitive matters: the swift collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan after President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal of military forces in August 2021, compliance with “laws and regulations prohibiting the transfer of funds to the Taliban,” and humanitarian aid for the Afghan people.

Sopko pointed out that Congress clearly and unambiguously required the State Department and USAID to cooperate with his investigations when his office was established, and three previous administrations have done as Congress directed.

“It is shocking that State and USAID officials are choosing at this particular juncture to violate the law, obstruct SIGAR’s oversight work, and refuse to cooperate with our oversight requests,” he wrote.

“Billions of dollars have been spent in Afghanistan and billions more continue to be spent,” he noted. “Congress and American taxpayers deserve to know why the Afghan government collapsed after all that assistance, where the money went, and how taxpayer money is now being spent in Afghanistan.”

NBC News on Wednesday confirmed that Biden administration officials have decided they no longer need to cooperate with SIGAR, and they are slow-walking the information they see fit to provide:

Information from State and USAID dried up months ago, according to three congressional officials and a government official familiar with the process. Biden administration officials argued that the U.S. is no longer involved in reconstruction in Afghanistan, so SIGAR is outside the inspector general’s jurisdiction, the officials familiar with the process said.

In one case, in response to an Oct. 1, 2021, SIGAR request for information, the State and USAID general counsels wrote back nearly seven months later arguing “activities involving humanitarian and development assistance remain outside SIGAR’s current mandate.”

The Associated Press (AP) noted that cooperation with SIGAR abruptly ended “amid a spat over what the Biden administration believes to have been an overly critical report about the American pullout.”

The Biden State Department “complained that the special inspector had not given the administration a chance to respond” to the report, which State described as “unfairly negative” and unrepresentative of “the administration’s view of the events surrounding the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban takeover.”

The special inspector’s May report on the Afghanistan withdrawal was indeed hard on Biden and quite unsparing in its criticism of actions taken by former President Donald Trump as well. For that matter, it drew a line through baffling decisions made throughout the 20-year mission in Afghanistan leading up to the utter debacle of Biden’s pullout.

There was plenty of blame to go around, but SIGAR was particularly tough on Biden for losing so much American military hardware during his chaotic and poorly-timed withdrawal, and for responding poorly to the Taliban during and after its lightning-fast conquest of Afghanistan.

SIGAR’s legal counsel found the Biden administration’s arguments about the inspector’s alleged lack of jurisdiction “astonishing” in May and repeated the relevant and unambiguous laws establishing SIGAR’s authority, to no apparent effect. 

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, slammed the Biden administration’s “decision to withhold critical information from SIGAR based on shaky legal interpretations” as “just another transparent attempt to sweep President Biden’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan under the rug.”

“President Biden’s decision to order a unilateral withdrawal that left more than 800 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans behind enemy lines deserves a robust investigation and oversight, not further cover-up attempts,” McCaul said on Thursday.

State Department spokesman Ned Price responded to a question about Sopko’s complaint on Wednesday by once again complaining about SIGAR’s May report on Afghanistan withdrawal.

“Many parts of the U.S. Government, including the State Department, have unique insights into developments in Afghanistan last year that were not captured in the report. And we don’t concur with many aspects of the report,” Price argued.

Price was also asked about one of the three topics Sopko has been stonewalled on: the danger of humanitarian aid falling into the hands of the Taliban. 

Price repeated the statement made by several other top U.S. officials this week that the Taliban has not yet made an official request for assistance with the devastating earthquake that hit eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday.

“I imagine the humanitarian response to the earthquake will be a topic of conversation between U.S. officials and Taliban officials in the coming days, certainly going forward. But I am not aware that any such conversations have taken place just yet as we are focusing our efforts and our discussions on our humanitarian partners in the first instance,” Price said.