Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declined on Tuesday to show members of Congress the unedited video of a boat attack in September that included a second strike to kill survivors, amid bipartisan pressure for more transparency around the U.S. military’s operations in international waters.
Mr. Hegseth, who along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered separate classified briefings for all members of the House and Senate, said officials planned to share the video of the Sept. 2 strike with members of the congressional national security committees, but not more broadly.
“Of course, we’re not going to release a top-secret, full unedited video of that to the general public,” Mr. Hegseth said after the meeting with senators, which was held in the secure briefing room designed to handle top-secret intelligence.
The briefings unfolded as members of both parties have raised questions about the nature and legality of the attacks at sea, and expressed concern that they were not being given adequate information about them.
President Trump has claimed the strikes are aimed at targeting narco-traffickers seeking to bring fentanyl, which he described this week as a weapon of mass destruction, into the United States. But lawmakers have repeatedly been told that the boats the military has struck since September were carrying cocaine, not fentanyl.
There have also been escalating questions about the rules of engagement for the operation, including the legality of the first attack, which included a second strike to kill survivors.
Earlier this month, a small group of congressional leaders and senior lawmakers viewed video of the Sept. 2 strike that showed a fiery explosion that destroyed most of a vessel in the Caribbean Sea. As the smoke cleared from the first strike, two survivors could be seen clinging to the hull of the capsized vessel, trying unsuccessfully to flip it and climb on top.
It was in that moment, according to lawmakers and congressional staff who saw the video or were briefed on it, that the commander of the operation gave the order to hit the boat a second time, killing the two men.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, was among the lawmakers who saw the unedited footage; he said he had asked Mr. Hegseth to allow all lawmakers to see it.
“He said he’d think about it,” Mr. Schumer said on Tuesday. He added that instead, Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Rubio, who is the acting national security adviser, “came to this briefing empty-handed.”
“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?” he added. “Every senator is entitled to see it.”
Most Republicans exiting the briefing backed the Trump administration’s decision to limit access, citing concerns about the sensitivity of the classified video.
“If you don’t like the classification, talk to the White House about it,” Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a Republican who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said after the meeting.
Mr. Trump initially said he had “no problem” publishing the video of the follow-up strike, but he has since reversed himself, leaving lawmakers in both parties frustrated about the lack of transparency.
Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, said he would try to force the issue by seeking to quickly pass legislation that would require the Defense Department to release the video publicly.
“I found the legal explanations and strategic explanations incoherent,” Mr. Schiff said of the briefing. “But I think the American people should see this video and all members of Congress should have that opportunity. I certainly want it for myself.”
Mr. Schiff and others’ effort would need to surmount considerable obstacles as Republicans continue to defer to the Pentagon and Mr. Hegseth’s decision to closely guard access to it. The annual defense policy bill expected to pass this week includes a provision that seeks to compel the administration to give Congress unedited video of the strikes as well as the execute orders that initiated the campaign. Mr. Hegseth did not respond to questions about whether he intends to comply with the demand.
Speaker Mike Johnson declared after exiting the briefing that the United States was engaged in a “noninternational armed conflict.” He echoed the legal rationale the Justice Department laid out in a memo that concluded that extrajudicial killings of people suspected of running drugs were lawful as a matter of Mr. Trump’s wartime powers.
Mr. Johnson said the cartels “operate with impunity, engage in violence and terrorism that presents a clear and present danger to the security of America and threaten other nations in our hemisphere.” The speaker added that Mr. Trump “has both the authority and the obligation” to strike the suspected drug boats.
Mr. Trump has designated certain cartels as terrorist organizations, and many Republicans argued that the strikes were lawfully targeting members of those organizations or people tied to them.
But Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, one of the few Republicans to call for the Pentagon to show lawmakers the unedited video of the Sept. 2 strike, said Congress was still trying to discern whether the attacks were lawful.
The Trump administration, he said, must “still deal with the reality that the vast majority of the drugs that are coming in and killing people, particularly fentanyl, is coming across the southern border.”
Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump must make the request for Congress to authorize the offensive.
“We spent 20 years without debate, without the authorizations, without the oversight,” added Mr. Crow, who deployed three times to Afghanistan and Iraq. “We’ve seen how this turns out. It doesn’t work out well.”
House Democrats plan to force a vote on two separate measures later this week aimed at stopping Mr. Trump from carrying out additional attacks on boats at sea or striking targets inside Venezuela without express approval from Congress. They mirror similar attempts in the Senate to force Republicans to go on the record on the campaign that has to date struck 25 vessels and killed 95 people.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing Georgia Republican who is resigning in January, said that she had signed on to one of the efforts to assert congressional authority under the War Powers Act. But she signaled on Tuesday that she might be reconsidering, saying she “was very impressed by the briefing we got today.”
Robert Jimison covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on defense issues and foreign policy.
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