Cait Conley served as the White House's top counterterrorism official during the Afghanistan withdrawal, a surge in Iranian-backed terrorism, and record antisemitic violence, and now she wants voters in a key New York swing district to send her to Congress.
Conley, an Army veteran and former Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, won the Democratic primary in New York's 17th Congressional District and will challenge two-term Republican incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler in one of the most closely watched House races in the country. She held the NSC post from April 2021 through March 2023, a window that included some of the worst national security failures of the Biden presidency. Now a national security expert is publicly demanding she answer for that record before asking voters to promote her.
Cale Brown, chair of POLARIS National Security, told Breitbart News that any candidate who cites Biden-era service as a credential owes the public a full accounting of what happened on their watch. His challenge to Conley is specific: explain the Afghanistan withdrawal, explain the erosion of American deterrence, and explain how Iran's terrorist proxies grew stronger while she held a senior counterterrorism role.
Brown did not hold back about the stakes. In a statement, he laid out the case directly:
"Candidates who cite their service in the Biden-Harris Administration as a qualification for higher office should be prepared to answer for the defining national security decisions made during their tenure. The Afghanistan withdrawal was the most consequential foreign policy failure in a generation, and voters deserve candid answers from those who served in senior national security roles at the time: what went wrong, what they would have done differently, and why they should be entrusted with future leadership."
The withdrawal he referenced ended in catastrophe. In August 2021, four months after Conley started at the NSC, a terrorist attack outside the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans. The Biden administration's evacuation plan has been faulted for failing to anticipate the swift collapse of Afghanistan's government and for not ensuring adequate security for American troops and citizens against terror threats, Fox News reported.
Conley has not commented publicly on the withdrawal since launching her congressional campaign. That silence is notable given that her own LinkedIn profile describes her NSC responsibilities as including efforts to "counter Middle East terrorism, and non-state actor threats."
President Biden himself omitted the 13 fallen service members from his 2022 State of the Union address, a decision that drew sharp criticism at the time. Conley's role in the broader policy apparatus that produced these outcomes remains unexamined by her campaign.
The Afghanistan debacle was not the only national security failure that unfolded during Conley's tenure. Iran's financial support for Hamas spiked after the May 2021 conflict. By early 2022, Hamas's leader stated Iran had provided $70 million to develop missiles and defense systems. Israeli sources put the broader figure even higher, stating Iran increased overall annual funding to Hamas from $100 million to $350 million in 2022.
In December 2021, while Conley still held the counterterrorism portfolio, Iran unveiled the Shahed-136 drone. That weapon system has since proven devastatingly effective. In March 2026, Iran announced that Shahed-136 drones destroyed a U.S. E-3 AWACS surveillance aircraft and damaged multiple refueling tankers, causing over $1.3 million in losses. A CNN military analyst, former Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, called the loss of the surveillance aircraft a "serious blow to surveillance capabilities." A Center for a New American Security report described the AWACS as the "'quarterback' of the battlefield" and an "indispensable asset for U.S. military operations."
Brown connected these dots explicitly in his statement, pressing Conley to account for "policies that eroded American deterrence during this period, particularly those that enabled Iran's aggression, strengthened its terrorist proxies, antagonized Israel, and fueled the rise of anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish communities at home and abroad."
Middle East terrorism showed a "relatively steady increase in the number of incidents and fatalities" from October 2022 through October 2023, a period that culminated in the October 7 attack, which occurred shortly after Conley left her NSC post in March 2023. The trend line moved in one direction during her entire tenure: worse.
The domestic picture was equally grim. Anti-Defamation League data shows antisemitic incidents in the United States climbed relentlessly during and after Conley's time at the NSC. The ADL recorded 2,717 incidents in 2021. That number jumped 36 percent to 3,697 in 2022, the highest total since the organization began tracking in 1979. By 2023, the figure exploded to 8,873 incidents, a 140 percent increase from the year before.
Conley described her job as countering Middle East terrorism and non-state actor threats. The numbers tell a story of a problem that got dramatically worse while she held that responsibility. Brown's point is straightforward: voters deserve to hear her explain the gap between the job description and the results.
Congressional races across the country are drawing intense scrutiny this cycle, with candidates' records and personal histories facing heightened attention. In New York alone, Rep. Lawler has addressed questions about his own past as the competitive reelection fight heats up.
Conley's endorsement list raises its own questions. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pat Ryan, both New York Democrats, have backed her candidacy. Both also voted for a House amendment that would have cut off U.S. aid to Israel, according to the official House vote record.
J Street, the left-leaning advocacy group, also backs Conley. After that House vote, J Street expressed support for the members who voted for the amendment and stated there is "broad agreement" among Democrats that the United States should take a "fundamentally different American approach" to its relationship with Israel. Conley has not said whether she would have voted for the amendment herself.
AOC's growing influence within the Democratic Party has made her endorsement a signal of where a candidate stands on national security and the U.S.-Israel relationship. For voters in a swing district like NY-17, that alignment may matter more than Conley's campaign would prefer.
Conley won the Democratic primary with about 52 percent of the vote, the New York Post reported, after surviving roughly $1 million in outside spending from a PAC suspected of Republican funding. The Cook Political Report rates NY-17 as a tossup, making it one of the top House battlegrounds this fall.
Her campaign has described Conley as a "fourth-generation Hudson Valley native" and emphasized her Army service and cybersecurity work at the Department of Homeland Security. Her communications director, Maddy Rosen, has said Conley is "focused on hearing directly from voters."
But hearing from voters is a two-way exchange. And so far, Conley has offered no public answers about the period of her career that should matter most to anyone evaluating her fitness for office: the two years she spent at the center of American counterterrorism policy while threats multiplied, deterrence eroded, and allies were left exposed.
Brown closed his statement with a line that doubles as a standard any serious voter should apply. The Washington Examiner noted the race's national significance, and Brown framed the accountability question in equally broad terms:
"Experience matters, but judgment matters more, and the American people have the right to examine both."
With Congress facing mounting pressure to demonstrate accountability and transparency, that standard applies to everyone seeking a seat, especially those who want credit for serving in an administration that left American credibility diminished and American adversaries emboldened.
Voters in NY-17 aren't just picking a representative. They're deciding whether a record of failure should be repackaged as a qualification.