Jerry Dunleavy, a former journalist and author of a book detailing first-person accounts of the withdrawal, posted his resignation letter Monday to the social media site X. He described himself as a whistleblower, criticizing the Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee as suffering from “investigative paralysis.”
“I did not come lightly to this decision to resign and to blow the whistle publicly,” Dunleavy wrote in a post accompanying screenshots of his four-page resignation letter.
Efforts to pursue investigative leads were “repeatedly stymied by our chief investigator and by senior staff, and unfortunately, sometimes by indecision from you, Mr. Chairman,” Dunleavy wrote in the letter, referring to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
In a phone call with The Hill, Dunleavy said he was motivated to speak out publicly ahead of the November election to raise an urgency to go after interviews with key administration officials and dig deeper into the responsibility of the military generals and commanders while Republicans are still in the majority in the House.
“There is definitely a significant bias from the chairman, downward, toward not really looking to hold the military commanders and generals accountable for what happened,” Dunleavy said.
He described committee members treating retired Gens. Mark Milley and Kenneth McKenzie with “kid gloves” during a March hearing. Milley served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during both the Trump and Biden administrations and McKenzie is the former commander of United States Central Command.
Dunleavy further said that the committee has taken “zero steps” to look at Vice President Harris’s role in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and “I have received pushback from my superiors related to taking action on this.”
Emily Cassil, a spokesperson for committee Republicans, responded to Dunleavy’s resignation by saying McCaul “pours his heart and soul into getting answers for our Gold Star families and Afghanistan veterans” and pointed to the committee’s expected publication in September of its final report looking at the decision making surrounding the U.S. pullout.
Separately, a Republican committee aide pushed back on Dunleavey’s assertion that the vice president was off limits, adding that her role in the withdrawal would be addressed in the September report.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
