Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) clashed Tuesday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken over reports the State Department gave to the Taliban lists of Americans and Afghan allies the U.S. was trying to evacuate.
“Did the State Department give the Taliban a list or a multiple list of Americans or Afghans we wanted to leave?” Cruz asked Blinken at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing about the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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“These reports and the idea that we would do anything to endanger our citizens or anyone else at a time when we were trying to save their lives [are] “Wrong,” Blinken said, but later added that “in limited cases” the U.S. gave a manifesto to people at a checkpoint to prove it was expected.
Cruz was referring to a Politico report, confirmed by Fox News, that U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of U.S. citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies in an effort to grant them the entrance to the airport, which provoked the indignation of military officers behind the scenes.
A source confirmed to Fox News that the issue appeared in a classified briefing on Capitol Hill and that U.S. officials did not hand out a list of “each person,” but have shared names in chunks with the Taliban. they wanted a specific group to come “.
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In addition, the source told Fox News that the delivery of names “was essentially doomed” to some people who had permission to travel to the airport but were not on the specific lists provided.
Cruz asked how many names were on the list, but Blinken said “it doesn’t matter” and he wouldn’t put any numbers on it.
“Senator by definition, it was in limited cases with a bus or a group of people to get them through a checkpoint. They went through the checkpoint,” he said.
The questioning came amid several grids received by Blinken at the hearing, where he defended the Biden administration’s handling of the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan and the struggle to remove Americans and allies from the Taliban-controlled country.
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Prior to the hearing, Cruz had dismissed Democrats ’efforts on the committee to blame the Trump administration arguing that Trump had made the initial deal to withdraw troops in May this year.
“Mr. Secretary, Joe Biden is the President of the United States, Kamala Harris is the Vice President of the United States. You are the Secretary of State of the United States,” he said. “The same that [former President] Jimmy Carter is the owner of the hostage crisis disaster in Iran, yourselves. “
Andrew Mark Miller and Hillary Vaughn of Fox News contributed to this report.