(NewsNation) — The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee is set to hear Secretary of State Antony Blinken speak on the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal on Wednesday.
Thirteen U.S. service members and 170 Afghans died in a suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate entrance of Hamid Karzai International Airport during the withdrawal.
Lawmakers have been demanding answers about how such a significant operation could have gone so wrong.
A committee aide tells NewsNation that members of the Foreign Affairs committee plan on asking Blinken about the role he played in the chaotic evacuations, as well as who had top authority over the withdrawal and why the State Department kept the U.S. Embassy open.
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The committee says the hearing is a culmination of three years of investigations into the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
Blinken was asked to testify before the committee several times. Republican representatives tried earlier this year to hold him in contempt of Congress for not complying with a subpoena to appear.
The State Department, meanwhile, says they have provided Foreign Affairs committee members with large amounts of information and that Blinken has testified before Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times.
A report by GOP representatives on the Foreign Affairs Committee was released in September, accusing the Biden administration of failing to see warning signs about how quickly Kabul would fall to the Taliban, as well as delaying an evacuation, NewsNation’s partner The Hill reported.
White House officials, in response, said House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, was cherry-picking details and not placing enough blame on President-elect Donald Trump.
The Taliban overtook Kabul only days into the evacuation from Afghanistan, and an estimated 100,000 partners of U.S. government efforts were left behind, The Hill reported.
Reuters contributed to this report.
