Democrats Call for Releasing Video of Deadly Boat Strike in the Caribbean

Top Democratic lawmakers who have seen the footage said Sunday that making the video public would provide transparency around the strikes that killed two survivors on Sept. 2.

Top Democrats called on Sunday for the release of classified video of the U.S. military’s first operation targeting a boat in the Caribbean in early September, an attack that has faced heavy scrutiny in part for its follow-up strike that killed two survivors.

Democrats and Republicans have offered starkly different descriptions of the video, which was seen by some members of Congress but has not been made public. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said it was “simply not accurate” that the video of the Sept. 2 strike on the boat carrying 11 individuals showed the survivors trying to flip a capsized boat, rescue its cargo and continue trafficking drugs, as Republicans in Congress have maintained.

“It seems pretty clear they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it, because it’s very, very difficult to justify,” Mr. Smith, who saw the footage last week, said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who, like Mr. Smith, saw the video in a closed-door briefing last week, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the two survivors “were barely alive, much less engaging in hostilities,” when the follow-up strike took place.

“When you actually watch the video, you realize they don’t have a radio,” he said. “They’re barely hanging on.”

Top Democrats, including Mr. Himes, have said they are confident in U.S. intelligence indicating that the boats struck in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific were involved in drug trafficking. But Mr. Himes said on Sunday that he did not believe the Trump administration knew the identity of all 11 people killed in the attack on the boat on Sept. 2.

President Trump said on Wednesday that he would have “no problem” making the classified video public. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he might not release the footage because he did not want to “compromise sources and methods.”

“We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see,” Mr. Hegseth said at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.

Mr. Smith pushed back on Mr. Hegseth’s reasoning, saying the video was “no different than any of the dozen plus videos” that Mr. Hegseth and the Defense Department have posted on social media.

On Sunday, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the lawmakers briefed on the video last week, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the footage of the attack showed two survivors “sitting or standing on top of a capsized boat” before the second strike killed them.

“They weren’t floating helplessly in the water,” Mr. Cotton added, and therefore “remained valid targets.”

Mr. Cotton said he would support the release of the classified video, but gave no indication that he would press the Pentagon to do so.

“I would trust Secretary Hegseth and his team to make the decision about whether they can declassify and release the video,” he added. “But again, there’s nothing remarkable about the video, in my opinion.”

Mr. Cotton also said he did not learn in the briefing last week with Adm. Frank M. Bradley, commander of the boat strike operation in early September, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whether the boat the Pentagon struck on Sept. 2 was ferrying narcotics to the United States. “That didn’t come up in my briefing,” he told NBC.

“When we have an opportunity to strike one of these boats, or the intelligence gives us high confidence that everyone on the boat is a valid target because they are associated with these cartels, then I think we need to strike it,” he added.

The Trump administration has so far carried out 22 known attacks on boats suspected of trafficking drugs. The total number of people killed reached 87 last week with a strike on Dec. 4 on a vessel in the eastern Pacific.

U.S. Southern Command said the boat was operated by a “designated terrorist organization” and carrying narcotics, but provided no evidence for the allegations.

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