According to new reporting from The Washington Free Beacon and other sources, President Biden and his State Department took action in June to end operations of an entity created by Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that could have provided emergency resources to Americans overseas in crisis situations.
As the Taliban was routing Afghan forces with its sights set on Kabul, Biden's Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon issued a memo authorizing "discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR)," according to The Free Beacon:
The Biden State Department moved in June to cancel a program overseeing the protection and evacuation of American citizens stationed overseas in the case of an emergency, just as the Taliban was taking over Afghanistan, according to an internal State Department memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and multiple sources familiar with the matter.
The State Department's Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau was set up to provide "aviation, logistics, and medical support capabilities for the Department's operational bureaus, thereby enhancing the secretary's ability to protect American citizens overseas in connection with overseas evacuations in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster," according to the memo.
Sounds like the kind of support that the State Department might have found handy this week as it found itself in the inconvenient position of relying upon the goodwill of the Taliban to allow U.S. citizens, Afghan allies, and others deemed at-risk under Taliban rule to access the American airlift taking place at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport.
The Biden administration pushed back on the allegations that it had dissolved a program that could have assisted in the boondoggle now unfolding in Afghanistan, claiming "that not only would the proposed Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau not have introduced any new capabilities to the Department, it was never formally established," according to Fox News:
A State Department official stressed to Fox News that none of the capabilities provided by the bureau have gone away. That official characterized the bureau as being in its early stages at the time, saying Secretary of State Antony Blinken had requested a review on it soon after he joined the department earlier this year.
But, as the memo says, the Biden administration authorized the "discontinuation" and "termination" of the CCR bureau, not just a review as the State Department now insists.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a warning that the American government "cannot ensure safe passage to the Hamid Karzai International Airport" despite assurances from Pentagon brass 7,000 miles away that Americans would be evacuated, again apparently based on concessions from Taliban commanders.
Based on Wednesday's remarks from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley — taken with President Biden's refusal to accept responsibility for the humiliating fall of Afghanistan and resulting crisis — suggest that oversight from Congress or other authorized commission will be the only way for Americans to get the answers as to what Biden knew (or didn't know) and did (or didn't do) that created the fiasco that's now plain to see.
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