Days after a Washington Post report raised questions about a September strike by the US military on a ship suspected of drug trafficking in the Caribbean, lawmakers in Congress have pledged to investigate further.
It was a rare moment of bipartisan concern over a controversial Trump administration action, raising speculation that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was narrowly confirmed to his post in January, may be on shaky ground.
“Members are very concerned,” Republican Rep. Mike Turner said in a television interview Thursday morning. He added that his colleagues were questioning the accuracy of the information provided to them by the Trump administration.
By Thursday afternoon, however, after senior members of Congress reviewed the footage and heard from the admiral in charge of the operation, familiar partisan divisions had begun to resurface.
Republicans defended the ship attack operation and praised Hegseth.
Democrats condemned what they saw and called for more investigations.
At the heart of the divide is a fundamental disagreement over the legality and morality of the Trump administration’s ongoing military counternarcotics campaign in the Caribbean, including its decision to designate drug traffickers as “terrorist organizations” and to use lethal force against civilians without outside legal oversight.
Since that first attack in September, the United States has carried out 21 similar attacks that have caused more than 80 deaths.
The Post reported last Friday that the United States launched two attacks against the ship in question and that the second killed two survivors of the first, who were in the water, clinging to the “smoking wreckage.”
The newspaper also claimed that before the attack, Hegseth had given the order to “kill them all.” In comments Tuesday, the secretary said he witnessed the first attack but had left the room before the second occurred.
After being informed by Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Frank Bradley, who oversaw the operation and gave the order for the second strike, neither congressional lawmakers said they had heard evidence that Hegseth, in fact, issued a “kill everyone” order.
However, that was where the consensus ended.
Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he found the video of the second attack “deeply troubling.”
“The fact is that we killed two people who were in deep distress and had neither the means nor obviously the intention to continue their mission,” he told reporters after the briefing.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas disagreed, calling the attacks “completely legal and necessary.”
“I saw two survivors trying to turn over a ship loaded with drugs bound for the United States so they could continue fighting,” he said.
For now, these differing descriptions from partisan lawmakers and the Washington Post’s original reporting are all the American public has on which to base their own conclusions.
However, that may change. Donald Trump has said he supports releasing the video of the second attack, as the Pentagon has done in many of its operations in the Caribbean in recent months.
If the video is as disturbing as some Democrats say, it could change public opinion that has also been largely divided along partisan lines.
By Thursday afternoon, however, Hegseth’s seemingly fragile position seemed more secure, especially after an inspector general report left him largely unscathed.
It did find that it put military personnel and objectives at risk by what is discussed classified information via an unsecured app: the so-called Signalgate controversy that dominated headlines earlier in the year.
But the conclusion was that he did not transmit secret information because he himself claims to have declassified it.
For now, two potentially damaging stories have been disabled. However, it may not be long before Hegseth is back in the spotlight.
