The State Department failed to evacuate hundreds of U.S.-sponsored journalists out of Afghanistan despite President Joe Biden's promise to get them out safely.
On Tuesday, Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas released a statement criticizing the Biden administration for failing to get hundreds of State Department journalists out of Afghanistan ahead of the arbitrary August 31 deadline of withdrawing troops out of the country.
"It is absolutely disgraceful the U.S. State Department claimed they evacuated their local employees when in reality they abandoned hundreds of USAGM journalists and their families," Rep. McCaul said in a statement, as per Fox News. "Some of these journalists were given express assurances by the Biden Administration that they would be treated as locally employed staff - but were not."
Rep. McCaul confirmed that his office continues to work with one of the journalists stranded in Afghanistan. The Republican representative recounted how for two weeks the journalist had been appealing for him and his wife and infant child to be assisted in fleeing Afghanistan, but was ignored. Rep. McCaul then called upon President Biden and the State Department to "rapidly find ways to get these people to safety and away from the threats President Biden and Secretary Blinken enabled."
About 600 more journalists with U.S.-sponsored news organizations under the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) were left in Afghanistan and about 70 U.S. lawmakers have appealed to President iden on August 25 to ensure the safe evacuation of the journalists out of the country before the arbitrary August 31 withdrawal deadline.
In a letter sent to the president, lawmakers underscored how "the 550 USAGM employees and their families are no different from journalists you have already doggedly worked to evacuate. They have been and continue to be a target for the Taliban due to their association with the United States government."
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalists reportedly were unable to get on the final flights out of Afghanistan on Monday. The media organization's president Jamie Fly told the Washington Post that several senior Biden administration officials reassured him that the journalists will be given access to the Kabul airport, but that did not happen.
He lamented that the Biden administration "would have tried to do more over the last several weeks to assist journalists who made a decision that it was best for them to leave the country. But they consistently failed to do that."
The Gateway Pundit reported on the "harrowing ordeal" that Afghan allies and journalists have encountered at the Kabul airport, where they were turned away by U.S. troops and whose personal information were turned over to the Taliban forces which they feared reprisal from. But State Department spokesperson Ned Price told NBC News and other reporters that the Biden administration is "working on all possible options to effect their safe departure from Afghanistan."
