US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon will not release the redacted video of a US military strike that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the Caribbean, as Congress questions the incident and the overall buildup of US military forces near Venezuela, the Associated Press reported.
Hegseth said members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees would have the opportunity to review the video this week, but did not say whether all members of Congress would have access to it.
“We are certainly not going to release to the general public a top-secret, full, unedited video,“ Hegseth told reporters as he emerged from a closed-door briefing with senators.
Administration officials responsible for national security today defended a campaign against suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean as a success, saying it had prevented drugs from reaching American shores.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the campaign was a “counternarcotics mission“ that was “focused on disrupting the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that operate in our hemisphere, undermining the security of Americans, killing and poisoning them“.
Lawmakers focused on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they reviewed the case for a broader U.S. military presence in the region. On the eve of the briefings, the US military said it had attacked three more boats believed to be carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific, killing eight people.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth came to the briefing "empty-handed" without the video of the September 2 raid.
"If they can't be transparent on this, how can you trust them to be transparent on all the other issues that are going on in the Caribbean?" he said.
Senators from both parties said officials had left them in the dark about Trump's goals for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro or sending US forces directly to the South American country.