Ensuring Accountability for Key Officials in the Biden-Harris Administration Responsible for Decisionmaking and Execution Failures Throughout the Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution, which is clearly just another attempt by Republicans to politicize their investigation. It was not a bipartisan investigation. It was their investigation into the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan. For what purpose? Solely to attack the Biden administration in an election year and deflect the scrutiny of their own partisan claims.

Mr. Speaker, we had a committee markup just yesterday. Why avoid regular order? Well, I will tell my colleagues why. If this resolution had gone through committee, we would have been able to go line by line and address either their misleading or outright falsehoods that were made throughout the text.

We could have made clear, for example, how Republicans cherry-picked testimony to reinforce their own predetermined, meaning they made a determination before it was concluded, narrative about the Biden administration while omitting any facts showing that former President Trump initiated the withdrawal; that President Trump's actions undercut U.S. leverage in negotiating with the Taliban; and that President Trump's order to withdraw more and more troops set it into an irreversible motion.

The majority's investigation and this resolution, of course, is not concerned about the facts. What it is really concerned about is the politics.

Why do I say that? That is evidenced by the fact that Republicans released their partisan, misleading report, a report into which, I might say again, Democrats had no input and didn't even see until just hours before Republicans made it public, so it was their secret.

It is evidenced by Republicans' rush yesterday to baselessly hold Secretary Blinken in contempt, even though the Secretary of State, who was with President Biden, engaging in high-level diplomacy with world leaders at the U.N. yesterday, has stated time and time again that he is willing to testify.

Why? What is the rush? What is the urgency? It is not to get answers. It is not to get the facts. The withdrawal was completed more than 3 years ago. Why? The majority wanted to make a spectacle before the November elections. It is clear.

Nothing underscores their partisan theater more than Republicans, get this, naming Vice President Harris over 200 times in their report, and we don't know when the majority added it or not, I believe it was at the last second, and 5 times in the resolution. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle put that in there, despite the fact she is mentioned only three times in over 3,000 pages of transcript interviews. She was mentioned three times.

Vice President Harris was only mentioned twice in the Republicans' interim report in 2022. I wonder what changed. I wonder why, all of a sudden, the majority wants to put her name in it more. Could it have something to do with the elections that are coming up in less than 45 days?

This did not need to be a partisan exercise. No one has claimed on our side of the aisle, or any party, that the withdrawal was perfect. There are clear lessons to be learned.

The State Department even admitted it. The State Department did its own investigation. However, facts are facts, and witnesses consistently made it clear that the Biden administration developed a plan after the Trump administration failed to do so.

I remind Members that the former President initiated this withdrawal when he went from 14,000 troops, upon his taking office, down to 2,500 troops by the end of his term. Multiple witnesses told us that the former President did not have a plan in place to evacuate our Afghan allies or our American citizens, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to talk about that.

Witnesses also told us that the dynamic situation on the ground changed dramatically when Afghan President Ghani fled the country, leading to the collapse of the Afghan Government and the military.

I remind my colleagues that President Ghani was here in Washington, D.C., in a meeting with leaders. I was there, and the Republican leadership was there, where he had said that he and the Afghan Government would stay and that they would be there to monitor things. Just a week later, they fled.

Witnesses of the GOP investigation repeatedly told us that while the situation in Kabul was chaotic, the administration's response was not. Our military and diplomats adapted quickly to facilitate the largest airlift in U.S. history to relocate over 120,000 people, and that is why President Biden said it was a success and pulling out of Afghanistan was the right thing to do.

Despite what my Republican colleagues say, our withdrawal did not begin the moment that President Biden took office, though planning for it did.

It was the Trump administration's flawed deal with the Taliban that Republicans don't want to talk about. It is called the Doha deal. It is the deal that initiated our withdrawal and forced the Afghan Government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners back into the battlefield, which the Republicans don't want to talk about either. This fundamentally changed the power dynamic in Afghanistan. That is not in their report. They don't want to talk about that.

Testimony reaffirmed that Trump's troop drawdowns were not conditions based, but that he even erratically ordered a full withdrawal in his last days of office, a decision that the military leaders essentially overruled. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to talk about that.

Trump had also frozen the SIV program, leaving the Biden administration with a backlog of more than 17,000 cases to start addressing, and they did. That is not in the majority's report. The majority doesn't want to talk about that either.

Republicans are trying desperately to clean up a candidate who clearly has a flawed record, Trump's record, on this withdrawal, but President Trump himself has bragged that the Biden administration couldn't stop the process if they wanted to. In this case, President Trump, a rarity, was accurate.

Witnesses said that if the withdrawal was reversed, then the only condition in the Doha deal that the Taliban had honored, to stop firing on U.S. troops, would be broken. We would be back at war, and we would have had to send more troops back into Afghanistan.

The President had two options upon taking office: End America's 20- year war in Afghanistan, or massively surge troops for an undeterminable amount of time. As President Biden has said, yes, he made the right decision not to send another generation of Americans to spill blood in Afghanistan. That was the right decision.

Our country owes a deep debt of gratitude to the 2,461 Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan, including the 13 servicemembers tragically killed in the ISIS-K attack at Abbey Gate.

They deserve honest oversight of our longest war, which spanned four administrations. An honest oversight would look over all four, as we thought on our side of the aisle, was the appropriate thing to do if we really wanted to get the facts and make sure that we correct things that took place over that long 20-year time.

This resolution and the report it affirms are not oversight or accountability, they are really election season props to use for political gain.

Thankfully, the nonpartisan Afghanistan War Commission will provide that serious oversight that is necessary, and there is legislation that Congress can pass now to move forward with something impartial and something that will have real credibility. It is something that I believe could really console all of the families of those who lost their lives for our great country in Afghanistan.

We reported bipartisan legislation by Representative Titus to authorize the coordinator for Afghan relocation efforts. I know negotiations continue on legislation by Representative Crow to improve how the State Department responds to crises. It is responsible legislation.

The Afghan Adjustment Act and the Afghan Allies Protection Act, which are longstanding, bipartisan proposals, would keep the faith with the Afghans who fought and worked alongside us. If we are going to do these kinds of reports, they should be bipartisan.

I deeply regret that this is one of the final bills we are likely to take up before election. I don't think it is by accident. We are getting out of here tomorrow. The last thing we are going to be doing is this. I know Republican leadership wanted to make sure of that-- politics.

Even before we voted to keep our government open, this is what my colleagues want to do. This is an unfounded, partisan attack. We should be focused on and at least have the vote on the CR to keep this government open. The American people deserve better.

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, let me quickly rebut my dear friend before I yield to Mr. Sherman.

Number one, it sounds like nothing was done by the administration or anyone else for the last 2, 3 years. The administration has provided over 20,000 pages and made over 15 witnesses available over this entire Congress.

Secretary Blinken has said he did not want to testify. He said he is willing to testify. The first time he was subpoenaed to come was when he was in Egypt negotiating a cease-fire and return of hostages. I think everyone has known that this particular week is U.N. week, so that is not something that is secret. The record is clear on that.

The fact of the matter is, Secretary Blinken has testified over 14 times in Congress to Members of Congress, four of which were in our committee. Delay the investigation? I think not.

Then he is questioning whether or not our memo doesn't cite transcripts. In our memo, 43 of 59 total pages were cut and pasted directly from witnesses' testimony.

What we asked for was transparency for the people, and for some of those transcripts, I had to almost beg for them to be made public. It wasn't automatically made public.

Lastly, Jen Psaki had nothing to do with these decisions. That is just politics.

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Mr. MEEKS. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

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Mr. MEEKS. First, let me just say this because I heard this at the hearing the other day.

When we were in charge, we held the first hearing after the withdrawal for a Cabinet Secretary on September 21. Who was that witness? Tony Blinken. The administration sent several Cabinet officials to Congress to discuss the withdrawal. We held hearings with Members because our position was trying to work in a bipartisan way and trying to make sure that we were going to get to the facts and understand so that we would never have this situation again after 20 years.

What did we do? We had hearings with people from the Bush administration, from the Obama administration, and from the Trump administration to look at the entire 20-year period of time, not playing politics, not looking at a month or two because they all were interconnected. It wasn't about politics for us.

As clearly stated here, there was no delay. The administration was cooperative. The fact of the matter is, this Congress, the 118th Congress, doesn't end until December 31.

If it is about the facts, if it is about learning the lessons, the Secretary has already said he is willing to testify.

He didn't want to turn his back on his responsibility as the Secretary of State, where he is now in a meeting, unfortunately.

I know maybe some of my Republican colleagues don't want him to talk to President Zelenskyy about what is going on in Ukraine and Russia's invasion into Ukraine. That is what he is doing. Maybe some of my Republican colleagues don't want him to have that discussion.

Well, I think my side of the aisle wants him to have that discussion because that is his job; to have a discussion to try to have a cease- fire and return of hostages, to talk to our allies in the Indo-Pacific and NATO that is now stronger than ever because of Joe Biden. That is his job. That is what he is doing. Maybe some don't want him to do that.

Mr. Speaker, the first question in closing is the decision that had to be made because of what the Trump administration had done, was whether to withdraw, as Mr. Sherman has indicated, or to escalate or to stay or to try to bring in more troops. As the generals have testified, if we were going to stay, we were going to need more than the 2,500 that were there.

How long would we stay there?

How many more lives would we lose?

Because the fighting, the generals did say, would resume after the deadline. Yes, Joe Biden decided no more American lives are we going to lose. He made the right decision.

This resolution, as I have said all along, is nothing more than political theater designed to score cheap points rather than address the real issues at hand, the real issues.

It is a distortion of the facts and a disservice to the American people, a disservice to our servicemembers, a disservice to our diplomats, all of whom put their lives on the line during our 20-year war effort there, and their sacrifices should not be used as a political football.

We should be working on real solutions, supporting our Afghan allies, ensuring that we learn the right lessons, and providing accountability that is based on truth, not partisan narratives. There is time for us to still do that.

I urge my colleagues to reject this resolution. Reject it, but let's commit to the American people. Let's commit to those servicemembers and the Gold Star families who have lost their loved ones.

Let's commit to them that today, we are going to work together in a meaningful way that honors their sacrifice, that honors those who serve and uphold the values that we all stand for.

Let us commit to come with a real report, not a partisan one. We can do that. We can do that today. We can stand together today on behalf of the people of the United States of America and those great soldiers.

How do I know that we can do that?

Because the United States of America is the greatest country that this planet has ever seen. It is that when we do things together.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a partial minority staff report. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, DC, September 9, 2024.

Dear Democratic Members of the Committee:

I am transmitting the attached memorandum prepared by Committee minority staff summarizing the findings of the Committee on Foreign Affairs' investigation in the 118th Congress into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I have long voiced my concerns about Republican attempts to politicize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In keeping with the partisan tenor of this investigation, Committee Republicans have indicated they will soon release a partisan, majority report on the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Majority did not involve the Minority in this report, nor have they even provided a draft copy to us. This comes on the heels of former President Trump using a ceremony to honor 13 American servicemembers killed in an ISIS-K terrorist attack as a campaign event to call the Biden-Harris Administration culpable, though Republicans knew for months that the attack was not preventable and that, even though a witness told our Committee he thought he had the ISIS-K bomber in his sights, he did not. And it follows the Chairman's subpoena to Secretary of State Blinken this week compelling testimony Secretary Blinken has already provided to us, including as the first cabinet official to publicly testify about the withdrawal in September 2021. The majority has also threatened to subpoena National Security Advisor Sullivan after baselessly accusing him of misconduct and, for months, has cherry-picked witness testimony to exclude anything unhelpful to a predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal.

The Republican majority has taken particular pains to avoid facts involving former President Trump--including his committing the United States to a full, date-specific withdrawal in a deal he negotiated with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government or any reference to the rights of Afghan women and girls; his unilateral announcements to withdraw troops, often a surprise to many of his own senior officials, which undercut U.S. leverage because those announcements were divorced from Taliban compliance with the deal; and his forcing the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters back to the battlefield before a final Taliban offensive ultimately took Kabul. When former President Trump took office, there were approximately 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Days before leaving office, the former President ordered a further reduction to 2,500. President Trump initiated a withdrawal that was irreversible without sending significantly more American troops to Afghanistan to face renewed combat with the Taliban. All witnesses who testified on this issue agreed that the United States would have faced renewed combat with the Taliban had we not continued the withdrawal. Rather than send more Americans to fight a war in Afghanistan, President Biden decided to end it.

Republicans' partisan attempts to garner headlines rather than acknowledge the full facts and substance of their investigation have only increased with the heat of an election season, and after recent public criticisms about the investigation from former majority staff. With the ascendance of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, the GOP performance has reached a crescendo--Republicans now claim she was the architect of the U.S. withdrawal though she is referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of the Committee's interview transcripts.

American taxpayers have funded this Committee's oversight, and American people deserve the truth. We owe it to them to highlight the facts elicited in this investigation without undue spin and with respect for the seriousness of the subject and the witnesses who have voluntarily testified to us about it. If information we receive is hidden, twisted, or used as a political cudgel it will undermine the Committee's ability to undertake credible oversight going forward. This is why I pressed the Chairman during a November 2023 hearing to release all closed-door interview transcripts from this investigation--five of which remain unreleased--and why I am now transmitting the attached memorandum to complete the picture on what this investigation has yielded.

In the September 2021 Committee hearing I referenced with Secretary Blinken following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, I called to mind some numbers to help us find perspective on the work we were undertaking then and now:

800,000--the number of Americans who served with the U.S. military in Afghanistan since 2001.

2,461--the number of American military personnel who died in Afghanistan, including the 13 brave Americans who were killed by ISIS-K as they facilitated the evacuation of more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan over the course of 17 days.

66,000--the number of Afghan National Security Forces killed in the conflict.

47,245--the number of Afghan civilians killed since 2001.

And finally, 20--the number of years we sent our brave men and women to fight a war in Afghanistan, from which disentangling ourselves was never going to be easy.

It strikes me now as it did during that hearing that many of those critical of withdrawal effort simply have a fundamental objection to President Biden fulfilling his pledge to be the last Commander-in-Chief to preside over the war in Afghanistan. They are masking their displeasure with criticisms but have failed to offer feasible alternatives. We must continue to wrestle with these matters not to rewrite the past or assign partisan blame, but to identify lessons that can help us better fight and end wars in the future. Sincerely, Gregory W. Meeks, Ranking Member. ____

[From the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Sept. 9, 2024] Minority Staff Memorandum on the Committee's Investigation in the 118th

Congress Into the United States' Withdrawal from Afghanistan TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary

Investigation Background Executive Summary

For two decades after the heinous attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States military fought valiantly in Afghanistan to degrade Al Qaeda, decimate its leadership, and deny the use of Afghan territory to conduct terrorist operations against the United States. Over that same time, United States diplomats and development professionals worked assiduously to help the Afghan government and people establish good governance; respect human rights, particularly of women and girls; and foster independent media, civil society, and economic development. The United States spent approximately 2 trillion dollars in Afghanistan from 2001- 2021. That expenditure reinforced--but could not substitute for--the work of millions of Afghans to push back against corrupt and violent actors and define their own future.

After achieving our core security objectives, the United States increasingly risked continuing its war in Afghanistan as an untenable, and unnecessary, end in itself. This risk spurred both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden to take actions during their respective administrations to fully withdraw the U.S. military from Afghanistan. President Biden completed that objective and ended the United States' so-called ``forever war'' in Afghanistan.

During the course of the Committee's investigation into this U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, witness testimony reinforced--with remarkable consistency--the following chronology of facts:

Amidst a steady, multi-year surge in Taliban territorial gains across Afghanistan, the Trump Administration initiated a deal with the Taliban--signed in Doha in February 2020-- that committed the United States to a full withdrawal of military personnel and contractors by May 1, 2021 and laid out brief conditions to which both sides agreed in order to complete the withdrawal. The deal required the Taliban to cease threatening the security of the United States or its allies, but nothing in it required the Taliban to respect the rights of women and girls or the Afghan constitution. The agreement also compelled the Afghan government--itself not a party to the deal--to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, which fundamentally altered the power balance in the country.

President Trump ordered a drawdown to 8,600 U.S. troops within 135 days of the signing of the so-called ``Doha Deal,'' as the agreement stipulated. He then unilaterally ordered further drawdowns--to 4,500 troops by September 2020 and, after tweeting on October 7, 2020 his intent to have all U.S. troops home by Christmas, to 2,500 troops by January 2021--despite the Taliban's lack of full compliance with the Doha Deal. Trump's own lead negotiator and U.S. diplomatic and military personnel testified to their uncertainty and surprise around these unilateral troop drawdowns and a lack of any commensurate interagency withdrawal planning process.

Upon taking office on January 20, 2021 after a delayed presidential transition, President Biden ordered a comprehensive interagency review of Afghanistan policy to determine whether and how to complete the U.S. troop withdrawal set into motion by his predecessor. Top U.S. military officials recommended keeping a small force of at least 2,500 troops in country until an indefinite time when conditions on the ground might improve, but U.S. civilian and military officials agreed that the Taliban would resume attacks on U.S. forces--the one Doha Deal term the Taliban had largely respected--if the withdrawal stopped or reversed. On April 14, President Biden announced the United States would complete its troop withdrawal by September 11, 2021.

In doing so, President Biden directed his Administration to undertake deliberate withdrawal preparations, refine counterterrorism efforts to prevent the reemergence of threats, and determine the nature of a continued U.S. diplomatic presence in Afghanistan--all of which, according to witnesses, agencies subsequently did. Throughout 2021, the Biden Administration dramatically accelerated processing of Afghan Special Immigrant Visas (SIV), which had come to a virtual halt by the end of the Trump Administration. The Biden Administration also launched civilian evacuation flights in July 2021 under Operation Allies Refuge to facilitate departures of SIV applicants wanting to leave. State Department officials noted that, despite more than 19 specific warnings from March-August 2021 telling American citizens to leave Afghanistan and offers to help, including financial assistance for plane tickets, many Americans in Afghanistan were uncertain or unwilling to leave, and that there was no mechanism to track their whereabouts if they did not volunteer that information.

Throughout late spring and summer of 2021, the Taliban launched attacks on several provincial capitals in Afghanistan, which fell in what U.S. officials described as unexpectedly rapid succession as Afghan security forces surrendered or fled. On August 15, the U.S. Charge d' Affaires in Kabul, in line with standard operating procedure and plans in place, asked the Department of Defense to initiate a non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) and moved U.S. embassy operations to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Senior military officials had pressed for closing the U.S. embassy and starting a NEO sooner, but State Department leadership emphasized the risk these actions could have on U.S. interests and an already precarious Afghan government. Proving State Department officials' point, on the same day the Department initiated the NEO, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country despite earlier pledges he would not. His departure triggered the collapse of the Afghan government and security services.

The acute shift in power in Kabul prompted a chaotic security situation and spike in demand from Afghan allies, SIV applicants, and Americans living in Afghanistan to leave. From August 15-31, 2021, U.S. military and diplomatic personnel worked shoulder-to-shoulder during the NEO to contact Americans and Afghan partners seeking to leave, negotiate with the Taliban on safe passage through territory it controlled, and facilitate the departure of more than 120,000 people. Consular processing by State Department officials occurred virtually nonstop throughout--unless the U.S. military closed the gates for security reasons--and resumed within minutes of the August 26 ISIS-K bombing at Abbey Gate that tragically killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and approximately 170 Afghans. By the early hours of August 31, the Biden Administration had facilitated the largest humanitarian airlift in U.S. history and ended the United States' longest war.

Key findings underpinning this chronological narrative, the number of witnesses who testified to these facts, and illustrative examples of their testimony are included in this memorandum, along with further background on the investigation itself. But it is important to underscore at the outset what this factual narrative yielded in this investigation is not. First, it is not new--it comports with what Administration officials, the State Department's own After-Action Review on Afghanistan (AAR), and extensive press reporting have already said repeatedly over years about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. This narrative is also not without points of debate--such as over whether to retain a small force in Afghanistan, whether U.S. analysts should have better anticipated the fall of the Afghan government and rapid speed of the Taliban's takeover, or the precise timing of shifting from civilian-led evacuation flights to a NEO-- but no thorough policy process would be, nor do any Commander-in-Chief's decisions satisfy everyone. Finally, since it places the start of the withdrawal in the Trump Administration, this narrative is not a neat political tool with which to assail the Biden Administration.

As such, Committee Republicans have regrettably--and repeatedly--attempted to downplay or twist the facts they have heard in their own investigation, seeking instead to perpetuate a narrative of ``the Biden-Harris withdrawal'' as an ``unmitigated disaster of epic proportions'' for which the current Administration is singularly responsible. These attempts lack intellectual rigor and do not comport with the facts gleaned from witness testimony. But the testimony speaks for itself--and helps form a critical body of knowledge, along with the findings and recommendations in the State Department's After-Action Review and the ongoing work of the Congressionally-mandated Afghanistan War Commission, to help ensure that the United States can effectively prosecute--and responsibly end--wars in support of our national interests. INVESTIGATION BACKGROUND

In a January 12, 2023 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul signaled his intent to investigate what he described as the Biden Administration's ``catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan'' in the 118th Congress and issued a request for extensive documents and information on the withdrawal, the bulk of which was keyed to a timeframe beginning in January 2021. On January 18, 2023, the State Department confirmed in writing its intent to cooperate with the Chairman's investigation and to produce responsive documents and information to the Committee.

The Department subsequently made 59 separate document productions to the Committee, totaling 19,778 pages of both unclassified and classified content. The productions include underlying files to the Department's own Afghanistan After Action Review (AAR). After Chairman McCaul threatened to hold Secretary Blinken in contempt, the Department also made available to Committee members, in camera, a July 2021 Afghanistan dissent channel cable in what it characterized as an extraordinary accommodation, given the internal and carefully regulated nature of the Department's dissent channel to protect dissent cable drafters.

In addition, the Chairman requested closed-door transcribed interviews (TIs) with multiple current and former State Department officials--these requests comprised both career officials and Biden Administration political appointees, but only one non-career political appointee from the Trump Administration (Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad) who President Biden retained in his role as Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation. The Department subsequently facilitated transcribed interviews with all of these individuals. Separately, one former State Department officer (Samuel Aronson) agreed directly to be interviewed in response to a request from the Chairman. Additionally, one former U.S. military official (General Austin ``Scott'' Miller) and one former White House official (Jen Psaki) sat for transcribed interviews requested by the Chairman without obstruction from the current Administration.

Since June 2023, bipartisan Committee staff conducted a total of 18 TIs in unclassified and classified settings. The TIs have often lasted as long as 10 hours, spanning multiple issue areas. Department staff and, in some instances, private counsels have participated in the TIs per the wishes of the interviewee, all of whom have appeared voluntarily. Interviewees by title relevant to the withdrawal and/or evacuation and date of interview are below:

Former Deputy to Ambassador John Bass in Kabul, James (``Jim'') DeHart, June 16, 2023,

Former Acting Chief of Staff to Ambassador Carol Perez, Jonathan Mennuti, July 20, 2023,

Former Consular Affairs Lead in Kabul, Jayne Howell, July 28, 2023,

Former Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Afghanistan, Mark Evans, August 23, 2023.

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, this is a link to the full report summarizing the findings of the Committee on Foreign Affairs' investigation in the 118th Congress into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Https:// democrats-foreignaffairs.house.gov/_cache/files/a /0/a05d09c4_4b27- 4382_9818_0227a0156896/70CCFC2998DF 868322F60057FF59079D.hfac- democratic-staff-memo-afghanistan-investigation-final-for-posting.pdf.

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