Hegseth says he will not publicly release video of the boat attack that killed survivors in the Caribbean

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will not publicly release unedited video of a strike that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the Caribbean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday.

Hegseth said members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees would have the opportunity this week to review the video, but he did not say whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it, even as the defense policy bill calls for it to be presented to Congress.

“Of course we are not going to release a top-secret, complete, unedited video to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters as he emerged from a closed press conference with senators.

Top Cabinet officials overseeing national security in President Donald Trump’s administration were on Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the rapid escalation of U.S. military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela, but it left lawmakers wondering about the broader goals of the campaign.

Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others, briefed the House and Senate amid congressional investigations into the September military strike that killed two survivors. Overall, they defended the campaign as a success that prevented drugs from reaching American shores.

Rubio told reporters that the campaign is a “counter-drug mission” focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that operate in our hemisphere, undermine the security of Americans, kill Americans, and poison Americans.

But lawmakers have focused on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they examine the rationale for a broader U.S. military buildup in the region that increasingly appears directed at Venezuela. On the eve of the briefing, the US military said late Monday that it had attacked three more boats believed to be smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.

Senators from both parties said officials left them in the dark about Trump’s goals when it comes to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro or sending U.S. troops directly to the South American country.

He watches: Pentagon leaders brief lawmakers on US boat strikes, raising debate over legality

The closed sessions come as the United States builds warships, flies fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seizes an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who has insisted that the real goal of US military operations is to force him from office. The Republican Trump administration has not requested any authorization from Congress to take action against Venezuela. But lawmakers who object to military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward a potential vote this week.

All of this raises sharp questions that Hegseth and others will be pressed to answer. Experts say the administration’s go-it-alone approach, without Congress, has led to problematic military actions, none more so than in a strike that killed two people who climbed to the top of part of a boat that was partially destroyed in an initial attack.

“If the war is not against Venezuela, we are just using armed force against civilians who are committing crimes,” said John Yu, a law professor at Berkeley who helped craft the George W. Bush administration’s legal arguments for aggressive interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Then this question, this concern, becomes really clear. You know, you’re shooting civilians. There’s no military purpose to it.”

However, during the first few months, Congress received little information about why or how the U.S. military was waging a campaign that destroyed more than 20 boats and killed at least 95 people. At times, lawmakers learned of strikes from social media after the Pentagon posted videos of boats catching fire.

Congress is now demanding — including in language included in the annual military policy bill — that the Pentagon release video of that initial process to lawmakers.

Request to post videos

For some, the footage has become a case model illustrating the flawed rationale behind the entire campaign.

“The American public needs to see this,” said Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who has been an outspoken critic of the campaign. “I think shooting unarmed people floundering in the water, clinging to debris, is not who we are as a people.” He added, “You can’t say you’re at war and say, ‘We’re not going to give any kind of due process to anyone and blow up people without any kind of proof.'”

Hegseth told lawmakers last week that he was still deciding whether to release the footage.

However, there are also several prominent Republicans who support the campaign. Senator Jim Risch, the GOP chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last week called the attacks “completely legal, 100% legal under US law and international law” and claimed that many American lives had been saved by ensuring that drugs did not reach the United States.

But as lawmakers delved into the details of the Sept. 2 attack, inconsistencies emerged in the Trump administration’s explanation of the attack, which the Pentagon initially tried to dismiss as a “completely false” account.

The changing rationale for the strike

Trump said the strike that killed the survivors was justified because people were trying to turn the boat around. Several GOP lawmakers also made that argument, saying it showed the two survivors were trying to stay in the fight, rather than surrender.

He watches: Democratic congressman is “deeply concerned” about the legality of boat strikes after seeing the video

However, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who ordered the second strike while commanding the Special Forces soldiers who were carrying it out, acknowledged in private briefings on Capitol Hill last week that although the two people tried to turn the boat around, they were unlikely to succeed. That’s according to several people who were present at the briefings or aware of them and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.

Bradley told deputies that the two people climbed on top of the overturned boat, did not make any radio or phone calls for support and were waving. The Navy admiral consulted with a military lawyer, then ordered a second strike because he believed the drugs were in the boat’s hull and the mission was to make sure they were destroyed.

Did the survivors “drown”?

Experts say the strike appears to conflict with the Pentagon’s manual on the laws of war, which states that “orders to fire on a sinking ship would be clearly unlawful.”

“The boat was damaged, the boat capsized, and the power to the boat went out,” said Michael Schmidt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. “I don’t really care if there’s another boat coming to rescue them. They’ve drowned.”

The argument at the heart of Trump’s campaign — that drugs destined for the United States amount to an attack on American lives — has led lawmakers to try to analyze whether laws have been violated and, more broadly, what Trump’s goals are with Venezuela.

Along with Hegseth and Rubio’s briefings on Tuesday, Bradley is also expected to appear in classified briefings with the Senate and House Armed Services committees on Wednesday.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said he wanted to “really understand what the action was, what intelligence they were acting on, whether or not they were following the laws of war and the laws of the sea.”