Samantha Power ordered staff not to answer questions without a lawyer.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
In June, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s office (SIGAR), dispatched letters to Secretary of State Blinken and Samantha Power complaining that the State Department and USAID were stonewalling its investigation of waste, corruption and terror cash.
“Two SIGAR audits are also being hindered by a lack of cooperation from State and USAID. The first evaluates your agencies’ compliance with the laws and regulations prohibiting transfers of funds to members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network,” the letter to Power complained.
The Haqqani Network, which is allied with Al Qaeda, gained control of Kabul security and played a key role in preventing Americans from being evacuated and in the seizure of American military equipment left behind, even as the Biden administration described the Islamic terrorists responsible for the murder of Americans as “partners”. Despite claiming to no longer have ties to Al Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s leader, was recently taken out at a Haqqani Network safe house. And, afterward, Haqqani members quickly evacuated Zawahiri’s family.
Any funding going to the Taliban, the Haqqanis and Al Qaeda must be investigated.
In a recent interview, Special Inspector General John Sopko noted that his office was aware of the, “close to $800 million that we’ve spent in Afghanistan since the collapse of the government last August”.
“I guess people don’t realize that,” he told reporters. “And I think people should realize that.”
Samantha Power’s policy of relying more heavily on local aid groups has made it that much more difficult to track where USAID’s money goes. And may be one reason that USAID has been stonewalling the Afghanistan watchdog.
Instead of turning over the information, Blinken and Power’s people have lawyered up.
“A State official has informed SIGAR that department staff have received internal direction to not engage with or speak to SIGAR without prior clearance from State legal counsel,” the open letter that was also sent to members of Congress revealed.
Illegally refusing to cooperate with an inspector general and then using State Department lawyers to impede any investigation in a matter involving possible terrorist financing is shocking.
It should be major news. Instead there’s been little coverage and less interest.
Beyond terrorism financing, the State Department and USAID have spent months stonewalling the inspector general’s office on matters such as “the settlement of Afghan refugees” and wouldn’t even reveal “funding information regarding its ongoing programs in Afghanistan, citing ongoing consultation with its legal counsel.” Instead of cooperating with the watchdog’s audit, USAID argued that it would use its “internal process to conduct cost audits.”
That is not the way organizations with clean hands behave.
Last month, Rep. Mike Turner sent a letter to the Biden administration asking him to order the State Department to begin cooperating with the Afghanistan investigation.
Senator Chuck Grassley sent one to Samantha Power warning that stonewalling the Afghanistan special inspector general is in violation of “federal law requiring federal employees to comply with IG investigations”.
“Instructing federal employees to obtain permission to cooperate with an IG investigation is clearly at odds with federal law,” Grassley wrote. “It is also reported that you have refused to permit SIGAR employees to travel internationally to conduct on-the-ground research.”
Samantha Power’s abuses were notorious during the Obama administration and like the behavior of most of the Obama vets, they have only become more shameless under Biden.
In response to a question about the State Department’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation, spokesman Ned Price made matters worse by replying that a SIGAR report on the collapse of the Afghan military “does not reflect the consensus view of the State Department or of the U.S. Government.”
The seeming admission by a Biden administration appointee that the State Department was retaliating against an inspector general for blowing the whistle on its disaster received no attention despite making the whole thing even more illegal.
Price is not just another government apparatchik, he was formerly Obama’s special assistant at the NSC and resigned when Trump came into office. His comments at the press conference and the lack of response from the Biden administration made it clear that he was speaking for the White House. By authorizing the stonewalling, the Biden administration was also undermining the oversight authority of the House and Senate. And was clearly doing so deliberately.
SIGAR recently dispatched its latest quarterly report to Congress noting that the Biden administration had authorized “transactions and activities involving the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network so long as the transactions are for the official business of the U.S. government or certain international organizations, or for NGOs working on certain humanitarian projects.”
It also included the false claim by Biden’s DIA head made to Congress in May that “the Taliban have held to their word about not allowing al-Qaeda to rejuvenate.”
Al-Zawahiri’s death in a Haqqani safe house makes it clear that the Taliban remain aligned with Al Qaeda.
As the United States approaches $800 million in spending in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, there is no way to know how much of the money is going to Islamic terrorists. And the State Department and USAID have violated federal law on obstructing audits and investigations while experiencing no consequences either in the form of legal sanctions or media pressure.
The Biden administration is determined to prevent any scrutiny of taxpayer money going to terrorists. And after having authorized such deals, it’s won’t let SIGAR peek over its shoulder.
The question is no longer what Biden, Blinken and Power are hiding, but how bad it is.
Walter Sieruk says
The Taliban are murderers, and they are also liars. To put it in another way, the Taliban are both serial killers and mass murderers combined as well as pathological liars.
Other than all those horrendous things be even more clear and specific is the question, which is “Who are the Taliban ?” The answer is the Taliban warrior Muslim savages who are maliciously brutal cruel dangerous and murderous because the follow as bloody and deadly Qu ‘ran based Islam.
From all the new information gathered sad and reality is that the Taliban had quickly reconquered Afghanistan fact that the jihadists of the Taliban base their violent and deadly beliefs behavior entirely on the Qu ‘ran. This does lead to an important question: “Is the Qu ‘ran the Word of God or is it a fabrication of a man. Thus, is the Qu ‘ran the truth or a fiction and a hoax ?”
The jihadists, as those of the Taliban, use many verses from the Qu ‘ran as the main source of justification for their violence, mayhem and murders. As found in For example, 2:191. 4:89. 5:33. 9:5,111,123. 47:4. There, the answer is clearly given on pages 145 through 157 in THE ISLAMIC INVASION by Robert Morey in which he wrote a section on the Quran with its self-contradictions. Just two of the many he cited are the following “The Quran differs on whether a day is a thousand years or fifty thousand years in God’s sight’ and “Who was first to believe? Abraham or Moses [Sura 6:14 versus 7:143]? The above is inconsistent and illogical. Further, Morey wrote about “The fact that Judaism and Christianity broke up into different sects was used in the Quran to prove that they are not of God [Suras 30:20-32. 42:13, 14]. Yet Islam has broken up into many warring sects and therefore cannot be true if the Quran is right.”
Moreover, Morey in his book shows many more contradictions and absurdities in the Qu ‘ran, there are and how Muhammad incorporated extra Biblical and Jewish folklore along with pre-Islamic Arabian myth and parts of Zoroastrian and Hindu stories into the Quran.
Furthermore, the Muslims claim that “the Quran is the direct, literal word of God unmodified in any way by the Prophet who uttered them at the bidding of God.”
In addition , in the book UNVEILING ISLAM by Ergun Mehmet and Eethi Caner has shown that the Quran was modified in the following account on pages 45. “Muhammad felt the need to improve on the words of Allah, since he changed Allah’s wisdom for his own on several occasions. A hadith tells of the nonchalant emendations of Muhammad:’ On a number of occasions he [a scribe] had, with the Prophet’s consent changed the closing words of verses. For example, when the prophet had said ‘God is mighty and wise ‘ Adbollah b. Abi Sarh suggested writing down ‘Knowing and wise’ and the Prophet answered that there was no objection. Having observed a succession of changes of this type, Adbollah renounced Islam on the grounds that revelations, if from God could not be changed at the prompting of a scribe such as himself. After his apostasy he went to Mecca and joined the Qorayshites.’ Other writers reveal that later Muhammad and his people did go war with the Qorayshites and he personally killed Abdollah. Obviously Abdollah knew too much and Muhammad wanted Abdollah’s knowledge to die with him.”
In conclusion, the Qu ‘ran is not only a fiction, it’s also a hoax. therefore the foundation of the Taliban is a hoax.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden even had the gall attempt to blame Donald Trump for the calamities in Afghanistan after Trump left Office even though when Trump was President the American causality rate for the American dead in that land when trump the American President
Biden even said, “Former President Donald Trump said he would ‘bring our troops back home.’ I followed through, and we now are out of Afghanistan. I didn’t plan the exit well, but at least we finally left.”
That’s right Biden “didn’t plan it well.” Biden’s exist “plan” was terrible and that’s an understatement. It was a horrendous catastrophe.
About Joe Biden and the catastrophe, he created in Afghanistan, it’s worse than terrible.
Just think of all those Americans and out good Afghans friends he abandoned in Afghanistan to be encountered captured tortured and murdered by the bloodthirsty Taliban.
To make matters even worse Biden admitted many unchecked and unvetted “refugees” into and throughout the United States, a number of them, not doubt are criminal and secret jihadists scheming and waiting for the time they consider engaging in murderous violence.
The innocent people who will be murdered by them will guilty and likewise Biden will also then have their blood on his sinister wicked and destructive hands.
All that evil in Afghanistan would never have happened if that President Pretender, Joe Biden just threw away and totally destroyed nearly twenty years of progress accomplished by the blood sweat and tears and even the deaths of many Americans as well as those blood, sweat and tears of America’s allies.
Also, Biden threw away more than trillion of the American taxpayer’s money that was invested in for the betterment and development of Afghanistan.
This tragic scenario didn’t actually have to had happen in Afghanistan because the generals of the Pentagon who are strategic military advisers to the President strongly counseled Biden not to have a sharp, sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan but instead have and start a gradual drawback of the US armed forces after September 11, 2021.
The problem was that the arrogant conceited and stupid Joe Biden refused to heed or listen to the wise council of the intellects of the Pentagon. Therefore, is this complete catastrophe with the Taliban total takeover of Afghanistan.
In the ancient but wisdom filled book by Sun Tzu entitled THE ART OF WAR, it is written “He will win who has the military capability and is not interfered with the sovereign.”
That awful incompetent and probably even treasonous villain, Joe Biden, ruined everything.
Walter Sieruk says
On the night Television program Sean Hannity 8/17/21 on Fox News, the former United States President Donald Trump was interviewed by Hannity and Mr. Trump had spoken about this Biden withdraw from Afghanistan and Trump, truthfully declared that “Nobody had ever handled a withdrawal worse than Joe Biden.”
He further stated that “This is the greatest embarrassment in the history of this country” and Trump then mentioned how the other countries are watching all this and that “China is laughing at us.” because “China does not respect us anymore.”
It’s all very obvious that this awful lack of respect of all the fault of that terrible man, Joe Biden.
Donald Trump had also well said “What is now happening in Afghanistan is unbelievable”