Media Should Demand Probe Of Afghan Vetting, Not Hegseth Texts

If America’s corporate media truly cared about the truth, they would stop hyperventilating about their self-made “Signalgate” distraction and start demanding accountability for every person responsible for lying about vetting tens of thousands of Afghans.

Instead, corporate media outlets are triumphantly heralding an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report that essentially draws the conclusion that the fake Signalgate non-scandal may have, possibly, perhaps had some distant chance of putting U.S. troops in danger.

Signalgate was the incident earlier this year where serial fabricator and propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic was accidentally added to a group chat of defense and security officials. Despite media hysterics, the most interesting content in the chat was Vice President J.D. Vance, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others debating foreign policy. The OIG report found that Hegseth did not share classified information in the Signal chats, contrary to what the media had asserted.

But why aren’t the media demanding accountability over the Afghan resettlement program under Operation Allies Welcome?

Any honest member of the media would be up in arms about being systematically lied to regarding the nonexistent “vetting” process that was fabricated by the Biden White House. They don’t care, however, because their only goal is to attempt an ouster of Hegseth, no matter what, no matter the cost.

If one of the costs of ignoring Biden’s Afghan “vetting” debacle to focus on Hegseth is dead American troops — as we saw over Thanksgiving when one of these Afghan migrants allegedly murdered one West Virginia National Guardsman stationed in Washington, D.C., and critically wounded another — well, that’s of little concern to the media.

The American people deserve a tandem report from the War Department’s OIG, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) OIG, and the State Department’s OIG detailing every single person responsible for not vetting the Afghans, bringing them here anyway, and perpetuating the lies that they were vetted. Real accountability would entail prosecutorial recommendations for each and every one of those people and deportation of every Afghan brought here under those circumstances.

Information about the lack of vetting has been out for years. In 2022 a DHS OIG report titled “DHS Encountered Obstacles to Screen, Vet, and Inspect All Evacuees during the Recent Afghanistan Crisis” noted that important information “such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing.”

It also found that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States.”

“The safety and the security of the American people is the highest priority for the U.S. Government,” the report stated. “Preventing criminals, suspected terrorists, or other nefarious actors from entering the United States requires thorough screening and vetting. CBP’s use of incomplete or inaccurate data would not have yielded positive matches from intelligence databases if the individuals had derogatory records under a different name or DOB.”

Because some evacuees “were unable to provide sufficient identification documents,” the report noted, the Biden administration “may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities.”

Well, that’s obvious now. But it was obvious then too.

Operation Allies Welcome started in August 2021, and by October, officials knew that standard vetting procedures were “not being followed for Afghan evacuees,” according to a memorandum from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

One month prior to that, Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted no vetting was being done on the front end, stating the focus was on evacuating anyone and everyone — while asserting that vetting was being done on the back end. Even then, unvetted Afghans were apparently free to roam and allegedly perpetrate sexual assaults while on U.S. military installations, like Fort Pickett, Virginia, according to a letter then-Rep. Mark Green sent to Blinken.

Notably in 2021 only 16 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted no on a bill that further neutered vetting requirements for Afghan evacuees.

When the DHS OIG report was published on Sept. 6, 2022, the Biden administration disputed the findings and rejected recommendations for DHS, saying, “CBP provided evidence to the OIG that all individuals were screened, vetted, and inspected” and that it “provided documentation and evidence that it (1) established recurrent vetting processes for all paroled Afghan nationals and (2) will carry out vetting for the duration of their parole period.”

Then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the report “did not take into account the key steps in that rigorous … and multi-layered screening and vetting process the U.S. government took before at risk Afghans were permitted to come to the U.S.”

What the evidence reveals, however, is that the Biden administration’s assertions were little more than thinly disguised propaganda.

What’s needed now is accountability, both for the members of the Biden administration who presided over and lied about the Afghan “vetting” scandal and the self-described “journalists” who are more concerned about palace intrigue and text messages than actual threats to their own countrymen.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.