Dec. 8 (UPI) — Congress is planning to vote on a new defense spending bill with a provision to persuade Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth into releasing unedited video of U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean.
The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on the annual Pentagon spending and policy bill this week, with a request that the Defense Department turn over “video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command.” The Senate is expected to take it up by the end of the month.
Inside the National Defense Authorization Act, Hegseth could face a 25% cut to his travel budget if his department fails to hand over unedited, classified video to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Lawmakers have differing opinions about what happened during a Sept. 2 military strike on an alleged drug boat, where a second strike killed two survivors on board. Hegseth and Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who ordered the strike, have faced scrutiny over the attack. The first hit killed all but two people aboard the boat, before a second strike was ordered, killing the survivors and sinking the vessel.
“I was told, ‘Hey, there had to be a reattack, because there were a couple of folks who could still be in the fight with access to radios.’ There was a link-up point of another potential boat, drugs were still there … I said, ‘Roger, sounds good,'” Hegseth has said regarding the attack.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, of the House Armed Services Committee, called Hegseth’s description “ridiculous.”
“They ought to release the video,” Smith said. “If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false and people will get a look at it and they will see.”
Lawmakers have only seen portions of the video, with Democrats calling the survivors helpless, saying they should have been rescued to comply with international law, as Republicans claimed the survivors were trying to “flip” the boat “so they could stay in the fight.”
There have been 22 attacks on vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, killing more than 86 people. The Trump administration started attacking what it called boats operated by a designated terrorist organization on Sept. 2.
Last week, President Donald Trump told reporters he would consider releasing the video.
“I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem,” Trump said.
Hegseth countered over the weekend, saying he was more concerned about exposing the U.S. military and its “bespoke capabilities, techniques, procedures” in the video.
“I’m way more interested in protecting that than anything else,” he said at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “So, we’re viewing the process, and we’ll see.”