On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) reacted to testimony from Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction John Sopko that he cannot guarantee American money isn’t going to the Taliban and that the Biden administration has blocked his oversight efforts by stating that he disagrees with some of Sopko’s findings.
Co-host Jim Sciutto asked, “We learned today that the watchdog overseeing…U.S. aid to Afghanistan told Congress he cannot guarantee that U.S. aid is not being funneled to the Taliban. He also says he’s gotten an unprecedented lack of cooperation from the State Department on the investigation. What’s your reaction to that, as someone who served there, to know that this aid could be going to the Taliban leadership?”
Crow responded, “I disagree with some of the findings actually of our Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. We certainly have to conduct oversight. We have to make sure that our sanctions programs are working effectively. But listen, the Afghan people are largely the people who are suffering here. I’ve been supportive of aid programs. I’ve been supportive of some of our efforts to unfreeze funds to funnel those to the humanitarian organizations, to NGOs, and the like to make sure that we’re preventing famine. Because, ultimately, if we want to keep the Taliban in check, and if we want to fight against extremism, we’re going to do that by supporting people in those regions, by supporting human rights, and supporting the dissidents and opposition folks who are still in Afghanistan, not by closing them off and shutting them off. So, yeah, we have to conduct oversight. We have to make sure it doesn’t make it into the hands of extremists with the Taliban. And there’s a way of doing that. We actually do that with North Korea. We do that with Venezuela. We have a long history of being able to do that.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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