Marc Haerling

NEW: I resigned in protest from Chairman McCaul’s House Foreign Affairs investigation into the Biden-Harris Admin’s disastrous & deadly Afghanistan withdrawal. Resignation letter below. Despite my repeated urging, McCaul failed to seek answers on & accountability for the debacle. While the Committee’s investigation has indeed unearthed further evidence detailing the Biden-Harris Admin’s responsibility for the horrific events of August 2021 & for the dangerous global fallout which followed, McCaul & his team have also been derelict in their duty to pursue answers for the Abbey Gate Gold Star families, to seek the proper documents, to bring in the proper witnesses, to ask the tough questions, to fully pursue the truth without fear or favor, & to do everything in the Committee’s power to ensure that a deadly humiliation like this never happens again. McCaul & the Committee made promises to the Abbey Gate Gold Star families & to the American public at large — & those promises simply have not been kept. I did not come lightly to this decision to resign & to blow the whistle publicly, but I could not be a part of this sham any longer & my conscience simply will not allow me to be silent — after a year of pushing the Committee to do the right thing & to run a serious investigation that relentlessly searches for the truth, it has become undeniably clear to me that McCaul & his team are unwilling to take even the most basic steps necessary to ensure that President Biden, VP Harris, & all the top Biden-Harris diplomatic & national security & military leaders are made to answer for the horrors which unfolded & continue to unfold in Afghanistan & around the world. The Committee’s disappointing lack of courage & lack of moral clarity just cannot go unremarked. From the troubling handling of the hearings with General Milley & General McKenzie & Zalmay Khalilzad to the refusal to drag in key witnesses at the State Department & CENTCOM & elsewhere, and from the refusal to properly investigate the ISIS-K attack at Abbey Gate to the failure to look into dozens of obvious & important leads, McCaul & his team have allowed a crucial opportunity for a real & deserved reckoning to potentially slip away. I feel a significant obligation to the Abbey Gate Gold Star families, to all Gold Star families from this two-decade war, to all the U.S. service members who fought & especially those who died in Afghanistan, & to the American public — they all deserve to know how this Committee has refused to fulfill its important obligation to thoroughly expose the Biden-Harris Admin’s duplicity & its atrocious decision-making during America’s retreat & defeat in Afghanistan. House Republicans had (and, for at least a few more months, still have) a congressional majority which empowered them to run serious & credible oversight investigations — the power to compel sworn witness testimony, the power to force the production of hidden documents, the power to issue subpoenas — but, with regard to the investigation into the Biden-Harris disaster in Afghanistan, McCaul has failed to wield this awesome power with anything resembling strength or consistency. As I repeatedly made clear to the Committee, I fear that those in the halls of power — the White House, State Dept, intel community, Pentagon — have failed to learn the needed lessons from America’s defeat in the war in Afghanistan. Washington has a widespread culture of unaccountability, & that has been especially true related to this war. I fear that this Committee’s investigation will embolden, rather than remedy, that perverse culture. If those responsible aren’t held accountable, and if necessary lessons aren’t learned, I fear there will be even more Gold Star families in the future as a direct result. As I did as a reporter, an author, and a now-former senior investigator on Capitol Hill, I will continue my fight for the truth no matter what. The stakes are simply too high to do otherwise. More to come.