Top bipartisan lawmakers support releasing video of controversial boat strikes

By Alison Main, CNN

(CNN) — Top bipartisan lawmakers who were briefed last week on a September “double-tap” strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean say they would support the release of video from the attack, with some Democratic lawmakers actively calling for it to be made public.

“I think it’s really important that this video be made public,” Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, noting that Republicans and Democrats who saw the clip have described it differently, along party lines.

“And so this is an instance in which I think the American public needs to judge for itself,” Himes said.

The comments come after Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley was on Capitol Hill last week for private meetings with lawmakers of both parties to defend the secondary strike on the ship. As part of those meetings, lawmakers saw video of the second strike, which killed surviving crew members on an alleged drug boat.

President Donald Trump said last week that his administration would “certainly” release video of the follow-up strike “no problem,” while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Saturday that officials were “reviewing” whether to release the video.

“We’ve got operators out there doing this right now, so whatever we were to decide to release we’d have to be very responsible about it,” he said at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

Trump had posted video of the initial strike to his Truth Social platform shortly after the September 2 operation and before reporting emerged of a second strike that fueled further controversy about the administration’s targeting of alleged drug boats and whether the strikes are illegal and constitute a war crime.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he doesn’t have any problem with the video being made public, and that he trusts “Secretary (Pete) Hegseth and his team to make the decision about whether they can declassify and release the video.” He maintained, however, that there was “nothing remarkable” about it.

Cotton also defended the administration’s justification for authorizing follow-up attacks on the boat, arguing that the survivors of the first strike were “not incapacitated in any way,” and “it was entirely appropriate to strike the boat again to make sure that its cargo was destroyed.”

“They were not in the water, surviving only because they had a life jacket or hanging to a plank of wood. They were sitting on that boat. They were clearly moving around on it,” he also said.

On the other hand, Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with ABC News’ “This Week” that the boat had been “clearly incapacitated” after the first strike, and “any claim that the drugs had somehow survived that attack is hard to really square with what we saw. So, it was deeply disturbing.”

Himes said while he has “no doubt” that the ship’s crew was “involved in the running of drugs,” he believes they were “barely alive, much less engaging in hostilities” and questions remain about whether the ultimate destination for the drugs was the US or Europe.

He also said while the US intelligence community may know the identities of some people on board, they “certainly” don’t know all of them.

“I have enough confidence in the intelligence community to know that these are probably not guys out fishing or guys out to, you know, being tourists and stuff. They are almost certainly running drugs,” he said, contending that knowing the identities is essential to ensuring the US military is going after leaders of the illicit drug trade and not “taking out the equivalent of the corner drug dealer in the Bronx.”

Cotton also made the case for Hegseth’s apparent absence from the room when Bradley authorized follow-up attacks on the ship, explaining that the secretary has “many other matters that he had to tend to, and he trusts Admiral Bradley.”

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