WASHINGTON — Members the Senate Foreign Relations Committee plan to press National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster on the administration's anti-Islamic State strategy in an informal meeting on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told reporters about the meeting in an impromptu interview Tuesday. The remarks come amid a bipartisan chorus of lawmakers calling for President Trump's strategies in multiple hotspots.
"I'd just like to see it, I know there was a 30-day review, but we haven't seen any evidence of any documents that were produced," Corker said of the Islamic State strategy. "We know they've been focused on Iraq and Syria, and we have really good sense of where that's going. What we haven't seen is the overall ISIS strategy, and it's time that we see that."
"McMaster is coming into our committee tomorrow to have an off-the-record discussion, and that's one of the things we'll be talking to him about," Corker said, adding later: "It will be a wide-ranging discussion and (ISIS) will be one of the things asked about."
The meeting is one in a series of closed, informal meetings between members of the committee and members of the Trump administration, said committee spokeswoman Micah Johnson. The committee previously held similar discussions with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Congress used the 2017 federal spending bill, which Trump signed last week, to remind him of its war powers. It withholds $2.5 billion of wartime funding in exchange for the counter-Islamic State strategy, it requires the administration update Congress on the Islamic State fight every 90 days, and it calls on the president to provide a strategy for Syria.
After Trump initiated a missile strike on a Syrian airfield last month as a direct response to a deadly chemical attack on civilians days before, Democrats have led the call for Trump to produce the strategy he promised on the campaign trail.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters in mid-April that the U.S. plans to focus on defeating ISIS without getting more deeply involved in Syria's civil war.
In late February, Mattis reportedly presented the White House with a classified plan to defeat ISIS, telling Congress last month the "skeleton plan" includes "economic, diplomatic, military, covert means." At the time, he said the plan would be done "in the next couple of months, if that long."
Trump is reportedly mulling the deployment of as many as 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and Corker said he expects the administration to send Congress the plan for that too — "not just to add troops, but how they will be successful there."
Note: This story was updated to include comments from Sen. Ben Cardin and Senate Foreign Relations committee spokeswoman Micah Johnson.
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @reporterjoe
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
