Afghanistan Withdrawal: State Department Closed Crisis-Planning Bureau

With relative ease, the State Department leadership swatted away the scandal of its decision to dismantle, just weeks before the Taliban overran Afghanistan, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), a new organization that would’ve been tasked with coordinating the mass evacuation of Americans from foreign hot spots. Throughout the Afghan-withdrawal crisis, State Department officials put initial reporting on the matter to rest with a simple explanation: that the bureau was never formally established, and that, had it been, it would have brought no new capabilities to bear on the evacuation of Kabul.

But when Brian McKeon, the deputy secretary of state to whom Antony Blinken delegated the CCR portfolio, testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today, he might have to answer more questions about this, because without the CCR bureau, the department has no significant contingency-planning capabilities for future crises, as was the case before the bureau’s establishment late last year — whether such crisis is in Baghdad, Taiwan, or somewhere else entirely. Puzzlingly, McKeon and Blinken terminated the CCR months after State told Congress exactly that — that the department lacks the ability to carry out its duty to plan the mass evacuation of Americans from dangerous situations around the world.

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Jimmy Quinn

Jimmy Quinn is the former national security correspondent for National Review.

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With relative ease, the State Department leadership swatted away the scandal of its decision to dismantle, just weeks before the Taliban overran Afghanistan, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), a new organization that would’ve been tasked with coordinating the mass evacuation of Americans from foreign hot spots. Throughout the Afghan-withdrawal crisis, State Department officials put initial reporting on the matter to rest with a simple explanation: that the bureau was never formally established, and that, had it been, it would have brought no new capabilities to bear on the evacuation of Kabul.

But when Brian McKeon, the deputy secretary of state to whom Antony Blinken delegated the CCR portfolio, testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today, he might have to answer more questions about this, because without the CCR bureau, the department has no significant contingency-planning capabilities for future crises, as was the case before the bureau’s establishment late last year — whether such crisis is in Baghdad, Taiwan, or somewhere else entirely. Puzzlingly, McKeon and Blinken terminated the CCR months after State told Congress exactly that — that the department lacks the ability to carry out its duty to plan the mass evacuation of Americans from dangerous situations around the world.