WASHINGTON β Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the Pentagon will not publicly release unedited video of a U.S. military strike that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the Caribbean, as questions mounted in Congress about the incident and the overall buildup of U.S. military forces near Venezuela.
Hegseth said members of the Armed Services Committee in the House and Senate would have an opportunity this week to review the video, but did not say whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it as well, even though a defense policy bill demands that the footage be released to lawmakers.
"Of course we're not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public," Hegseth told reporters as he exited a closed-door briefing with senators.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth walks Tuesday before briefing members of Congress on military strikes near Venezuela at the Capitol in Washington.Β
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said Tuesday night he ordered a blockade of all βsanctioned oil tankersβ into Venezuela.
In a post on social media announcing the blockade, Trump claimed Venezuela uses oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to escalate the military buildup.
βVenezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,β Trump said in a post on his social media platform. βIt will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before β Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.β
Trump's Cabinet members overseeing national security were on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to defend a campaign that has killed at least 95 people in 25 known strikes on vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
Overall, they defended the campaign as a success, saying it prevented drugs from reaching American shores, and they pushed back on concerns that it is stretching the bounds of lawful warfare.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the campaign is a "counter-drug mission" that 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."
Lawmakers have been focused on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they sift through the rationale for a broader U.S. military buildup in the region.
On the eve of the briefings, the U.S. military said it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio walks to a secure room in the basement of the Capitol to brief senators TuesdayΒ on military strikes near Venezuela in Washington.Β
Lawmakers in the darkΒ
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth came "empty handed" to the briefing, without the video of the Sept. 2 strike.
"If they can't be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?" the New York Democrat said.
Senators on both sides of the aisle said the officials left them in the dark about Trump's goals when it comes to Venezuelan President NicolΓ‘s Maduro or sending U.S. forces directly to the South American nation.
"I want to address the question, is it the goal to take him out? If it's not the goal to take him out, you're making a mistake," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who defended the legality of the campaign and said he wanted to see Maduro removed from power.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters TuesdayΒ at the Capitol in Washington.Β
The U.S. deployed warships, flew fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seized an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Maduro, who insists the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.
Maduro said on a weekly state television show Monday that his government still does not know the whereabouts of the tanker's crew. He criticized the United Nations for not speaking out against what he described as an "act of piracy" against "a private ship carrying Venezuelan oil."
Trump's Republican administration has not sought authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. The go-it-alone approach, experts say, led to problematic military actions, none more so than the strike that killed two people who climbed on top of part of a boat that was partially destroyed in an initial attack.
"If it's not a war against Venezuela, then we're using armed force against civilians who are just committing crimes," said John Yoo, a Berkeley Law professor who helped craft the George W. Bush administration's legal arguments and justification for aggressive interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "Then this question, this worry, becomes really pronounced. You know, you're shooting civilians. There's no military purpose for it."
Yet for the first several months, Congress received little more than a trickle of information about why or how the U.S. military was conducting the operations. At times, lawmakers learned of strikes from social media after the Pentagon posted videos of boats bursting into flames.
Hegseth now faces language included in an annual military policy bill that threatens to withhold a quarter of his travel budget if the Pentagon does not provide the video to lawmakers.
The US Capitol Building is seen Dec. 9 seen from the Washington Monument in Washington.Β
Demand for footage
For some, the controversy over the footage demonstrates the flawed rationale behind the entire campaign.
"The American public ought to see it. I think shooting unarmed people floundering in the water, clinging to wreckage, is not who we are as a people," said Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and outspoken critic of the campaign.
Senators were told the Trump administration won't release all of the Sept. 2 attack footage because it would reveal U.S. military practices on intelligence gathering, said Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She said the reasoning ignores that the military already released footage of the initial attack.
"They just don't want to reveal the part that suggests war crimes," she said.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., departs a briefing TuesdayΒ on military strikes near Venezuela at the Capitol in Washington.Β
Some GOP lawmakers are determined to dig into the details of the Sept. 2 attack. Adm. Frank Bradley, who ordered the second strike, was expected back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for classified briefings with the Senate and House Armed Services committees.
Still, many Republicans emerged from the briefings backing the campaign, defending their legality and praising the "exquisite intelligence" that is used to identify targets. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the strike "certainly appropriate" and "necessary to protect the United States and our interests."
