(The Hill) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday declined to commit to releasing video of a controversial second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.
“We’re reviewing it right now to make sure sources, methods, I mean, it’s an ongoing operation, [tactics, techniques and procedures], we’ve got operators out there doing this right now,” Hegseth told Fox News’s Lucas Tomlinson, when asked about the deadly strikes, in a Q&A after he spoke at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi, Calif.
“So, whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible about, we’re reviewing that right now,” he added.
The follow-up strike on the alleged drug boat has been the subject of much controversy in Washington over the last few weeks.
On Thursday, Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, along with Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, visited Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers on the details surrounding the September strikes.
President Trump on Wednesday said he backed the release of the video of the second boat strike that killed leftover survivors in the early September operation.
“I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem,” Trump said to reporters.
“Every boat we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives,” he continued. “If you look at our numbers, the drugs coming out through sea are down 91 percent.”
The two survivors of the September attack seemingly did not radio for back up or look to have additional communication devices in the wake of their vessel being struck, Bradley told lawmakers Thursday, according to CNN.
Hegseth, at Saturday’s defense forum, outlined a new military focus on the Western Hemisphere while lambasting the decisions of former administrations. He also defended the strikes in the Caribbean.
“If you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you,” he said, adding that “fully” supports the strike — ordered by Bradley — telling the audience, “I would have made the same call myself.”