U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he left a closed-door meeting with top Trump officials on Tuesday with “more questions than answers” about their rationale for the ongoing strikes on alleged drug boats.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to Capitol Hill to provide separate classified briefings for the entire House and Senate as scrutiny mounts over the Sept. 2 “double tap” strikes.
But lawmakers weren’t shown the full unedited video of that operation during the briefings. And Hegseth confirmed Tuesday that the Pentagon will not release it to the American public.
But as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Blumenthal expects to view the video this week. The initial strike by U.S. forces killed all but two people on a boat near Venezuela. A second strike killed the survivors.
Blumenthal said he still wants the video to be released to the public, arguing there’s “no legal or policy reason for limiting” who can see it. He said Tuesday’s briefing didn’t offer much new information, and he still wasn’t given a sense about the rationale behind the strikes or the goals of the administration in pursuing this strategy.
“It was abjectly inadequate in providing any detailed rationale for the kind of strikes that are ongoing but also for whatever the end game or strategy is in amassing this armada in the Caribbean,” Blumenthal said in an interview after Tuesday’s briefing. “I left the briefing with no clear idea as to what the plan is, if there is one.”
Speaking to reporters after the Senate’s briefing, Rubio and Hegseth defended the ongoing “counter-drug mission” as successful.
The administration will continue to provide updates on the mission, “which is focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are operating in our hemisphere undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans,” Rubio said Tuesday.
The U.S. military has carried out about two dozen strikes against alleged drug boats, which have killed more than 90 people, as part of the administration’s ongoing effort against drug cartels. On Monday, the U.S. Southern Command said it launched another three strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed a total of eight people.
While Democrats and Republicans are offering different accounts about either the contents of the video or the briefings by Trump officials, there’s still a bipartisan push for the public release of the footage amid questions about whether the strikes were carried out legally.
But Hegseth told reporters Tuesday his agency won’t release the full video to the general public. The two Armed Services Committees, he said, will have the opportunity to view them Wednesday alongside Navy Admiral Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the operation.
“In keeping with longstanding Department of War policy, Department of Defense policy, of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth said Tuesday after the Senate briefing.
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, would have been permitted to view the video as a member of the House Armed Services Committee. But he will be out of town as he recovers from knee surgery. Courtney’s office said the scheduled surgery on Tuesday was successful and he’ll remain at the hospital overnight. He will then spend the rest of the week recovering at home.
Courtney and other Democrats on that committee had also requested that Hegseth release all audio and video footage of the strikes. They cited reporting from The Washington Post that Hegseth issued a “kill everybody” order. Hegseth has disputed that account, saying he left the room after the first strike. But in a recent interview, he said, “I would have made the same call myself” about the follow-up strike.
As the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, was one of only a handful of lawmakers initially authorized to view the classified video of deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean.
Himes had described parts of the video, which he says showed two survivors “clinging to a piece of wood and about to go under” after the first strike.
He said the people on the boat were “almost certainly running drugs” but that it was unclear if they were headed to the U.S. or elsewhere. He disputed characterizations that all 11 people on the boat were high-level targets or that they knew the identifies of everyone on board.
“I’ve spent years looking at videos of lethal action taken, often in the terrorism context, and this video was profoundly shaking, and I think it’s important for Americans to see it,” Himes said in a recent interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s not lost on anyone, of course, that the interpretation of the video, which six or seven of us had an opportunity to see last week, broke down precisely on party lines. And so this is an instance in which I think the American public needs to judge for itself.”
As Blumenthal prepares to see the video this week, he wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to issue a subpoena for all the video, orders and documents related to the strikes.
