One of the many oddities of the huge buildup of American forces off Venezuela is the speed at which the Pentagon has released short clips of what it has identified as drug boats being struck and destroyed by American missiles — part deterrence, part bravado, and, to the many legal scholars questioning the legality of the operation, part evidence of extrajudicial killings.
So it was striking that on Tuesday, just as the Pentagon released three more videos, bringing the known death toll on the boats to 95, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced there was one the public would never see. It is the video of the now-famous “second strike” on a boat in September that killed two survivors clinging to the remains of an overturned vessel.
“We’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” he told reporters after a classified Senate hearing, citing “longstanding Department of War policy.”
It would hardly be the first time national security was invoked by the government to withhold something that might prove embarrassing, or even legally incriminating. Some members of Congress who have seen the full video have called it shocking, while others describe it as grotesque.
But Mr. Hegseth’s decision, weeks after President Trump said he had “no problem” with releasing the video, only to backtrack, is a glimpse into the depth of the administration’s concern that becoming too transparent about what is happening on the high seas could turn the American public against the strikes. Mr. Hegseth’s critics argue it suggests a coverup underway.
“Pete Hegseth happily releases a video after each strike,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “He recognizes when the American people see this video, they will be repulsed. It is basically the summary execution of two people clinging to wreckage.”
The Pentagon has refused to say why, after the release of roughly two dozen videos of boats being struck in the Caribbean and the Pacific, there is a national security concern about this one. Video of the first strike was released hours after the incident happened; at the time, the Pentagon made no mention of the fact that it had seen two survivors, or that they had been killed in a follow-up strike. Both international law and the military’s own code prohibit killing survivors who no longer pose a threat or are clinging to a shipwreck.
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In briefings for select members of Congress a few weeks ago, senior military officials suggested that the two survivors may have remained in the fight, and were waving, either to a nearby boat or to a plane or drone above. It is possible that Mr. Hegseth is basing his national security concern on that set of acts, though it is unclear whether an adversary would learn anything from watching the survivors appealing to be rescued. In the video, they are killed by an American missile just moments after waving for help.
More likely, members of Congress who viewed the video say, the concern is that the two survivors can be seen close up, perhaps from video taken by a nearby drone. “It’s very personal,” said Senator Chris Coons, the Delaware Democrat who has been highly critical of the Pentagon’s changing story about the second strike, and its refusal to make the video public. “We need to all pause and reflect on what is being done on our name.”
“It’s pretty striking that a secretary of defense who has posted, gleefully, video of strikes of drug boats, now says we cannot post a strike of a drug boat,” he concluded.
The government has released shifting information on the boat strikes, about issues big and small.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that every boat destroyed saves 25,000 lives in the United States, which has experienced a wave of fentanyl-related fatalities in recent years. The White House has offered no basis for that conclusion. Heroin is trafficked out of Venezuela, but not fentanyl, which this year is expected to be the cause of roughly 75,000 American deaths. Clearly, the numbers don’t add up.
In the case of the early September strike, the government’s description of the boat’s route has changed. Original accounts suggested it was headed to the United States, perhaps via a Caribbean island. Now officials say it was headed to Suriname, which is southeast of Venezuela. From there the suspected drugs would have likely gone to Africa or Europe, intelligence officials have told Congress.
And now the same is happening with the administration’s statements of its strategic objectives as the president tightens the noose on Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro. Last week, Mr. Trump declared that the reason for the American military buildup was the country’s release of “killers” into the United States. At other moments, he has said the mission was about drugs.
Apparently Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, didn’t believe those explanations. She suggested in a profile in Vanity Fair published this week that the chief motive was regime change. “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” she told Chris Whipple, who has written extensively on occupants of her office.
And then, on Tuesday night, hours after Mr. Hegseth defiantly declared the video of the boat strike would never be made public, Mr. Trump suggested the real objective was to get Venezuela to return “all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
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