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By Dan Gooding and Gabe Whisnant
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Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that newly shown video of a second U.S. strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean was “one of the most troubling scenes” he has witnessed in public service.
Himes viewed the unedited footage during a closed-door briefing with Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who allegedly ordered the September strike that killed two surviving crew members. Bradley later began a similar briefing for senators.
Meanwhile, Senator Tom Cotton, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Bradley "was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all. He was given an order that, of course, was written down in great detail,” Cotton said as he exited a classified briefing.
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Why It Matters
The information the Pentagon is expected to provide comes at a potentially crucial moment in the unfolding congressional investigation into how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth handled the military operation in international waters near Venezuela. There are mounting questions over whether the strike may have violated the law.
Lawmakers are seeking a full accounting of the strikes after The Washington Post reported that Bradley ordered an attack on two survivors of the September 2 strike, to comply with Hegseth's directive to “kill everybody.” Legal experts say the attack amounts to a crime if the survivors were targeted, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding accountability.
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What To Know
The briefing in a secure facility at the Capitol is with congressional leaders, including the Republican chairs and ranking Democrats of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, and separately to the GOP chairman and Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Lawmakers will be seeking answers to questions such as what orders Hegseth gave regarding the operations and what was the reason for the second strike.
Democrats are also demanding that the Trump administration release the full video of the September 2 attack, as well as written records of the orders and any directives from Hegseth. While Republicans, who control the national security committees, have not publicly called for those documents, they have pledged a thorough review.
President Donald Trump has stood behind Hegseth as he defends his handling of the attack, but pressure is mounting on the defense secretary.
Hegseth has said the aftermath of an initial strike on the boat was clouded in the “fog of war.” He has also said he “didn’t stick around” for the second strike, but that Bradley “made the right call” and “had complete authority” to do it.
The scope of the investigation is unclear, but there is other documentation of the strike that could fill in what happened. Obtaining that information, though, will largely depend on action from Republican lawmakers — a potentially painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the president.
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he and Wicker have formally requested the executive orders authorizing the operations and the complete videos from the strikes. They are also seeking the intelligence that identified the vessels as legitimate targets, the rules of engagement for the attacks and any criteria used to determine who was a combatant and who was a civilian.
Military officials were aware that there were survivors in the water after the initial strike, but carried out the follow-on strike under the rationale that it needed to sink the vessel, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
What remains unclear — and what lawmakers hope to clarify in their briefing with Bradley — was who ordered the strikes and whether Hegseth was involved, one of the people said.
Republican lawmakers who are close to Trump have sought to defend Hegseth, standing behind the military campaign against drug cartels that the president deems “narco-terrorists.”
Also on Thursday, the Defense Department inspector general was expected to release a partially redacted report into Hegseth's use of the Signal messaging app in March to share information about a military strike against Yemen’s Houthi militants.
The report found that Hegseth put U.S. personnel and their mission at risk by using Signal, according to two people familiar with the findings. The Pentagon, however, has cast the report as an exoneration of Hegseth.
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What People Are Saying
Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: “The investigation is going to be done by the numbers. We’ll find out the ground truth.”
Democratic Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal said of Hegseth: “He may not have been in the room, but he was in the loop, and it was his order that was instrumental and foreseeably resulted in the deaths of these survivors.”
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement Thursday: "I am deeply disturbed by what I saw this morning. The Department of Defense has no choice but to release the complete, unedited footage of the September 2nd strike, as the President has agreed to do.
"This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump Administration’s military activities, and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested – and been denied – fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation. This must and will be the only beginning of our investigation into this incident."
What's Next
Both the House and Senate are continuing their questioning of the Pentagon's actions, while tensions continue to build between the U.S. and Venezuela over a potential armed conflict on land.
This article contains reporting by The Associated Press.
Update: 12/4/25, 1:37 p.m. ET: This article was updated with new information and remarks.
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