Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said he believes the U.S. military’s second strike on an alleged drug boat that killed two survivors off the coast of Venezuela was a legal action.
Rogers, a Republican from Saks who has represented Alabama’s 3rd Congressional District since 2003, still wants other members of the committee to see the classified video of the incident.
“The video and classified briefings from the Pentagon were sufficient to convince him this was a legal action,” an Armed Services Committee aide said in a statement provided by Rogers’ office to AL.com.
“But he’s also been clear that we need a classified briefing where the rest of HASC’s members can see the video, and we expect that to happen next week.”
Last week, Rogers and certain other lawmakers on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees watched the classified videos of the incident with U.S. Navy Admiral Frank Bradley, who ordered the strike.
The attack was part of the Trump administration’s military operation against drug boats in the Caribbean. At least 87 people have been killed in 22 known strikes, the Associated Press reported.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the lethal attacks are justified against what he calls “narco-terrorists.”
The Trump administration says the effort to stop cartels bringing drugs to the United States is a military conflict. But Congress has not authorized the use of the military in the effort.
The Dec. 2 incident is under scrutiny because of questions about whether the two survivors left after the first strike on the boat, which killed nine, posed any threat and were legitimate military targets.
The boat was in international waters between Venezuela and the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the two survivors were struggling to flip a capsized portion of the boat and waved as aircrafts passed overhead, according to according to lawmakers and others briefed on the attack.
An American aircraft fired fired three precision-guided Griffin missiles at the vessel and killed the two survivors, the WSJ reported, and close-up video shows the young men being blown apart.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said the public should see the video, the Associated Press reported.
He said he has spent “years looking at videos of lethal action taken, often in the terrorism context, and this video was profoundly shaking.”
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the boat survivors were valid targets and he saw “nothing remarkable” about the video.
Cotton also said he would not be opposed to the release of the video if the Pentagon declassifies it.
Hegseth said he’s still weighing whether to release the video, according to the AP.