U.S. Navy Adm. Frank M. Bradley, right, accompanied by Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left, walks to a meeting with senators on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, in Washington. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
WASHINGTON — Senior members of Congress viewed video Thursday of a controversial Sept. 2 attack on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean, including a follow-up strike that Democrats said they found highly troubling and Republicans maintained was lawful and justified.
Sen. Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by the footage top military officers showed to lawmakers in classified briefings on Capitol Hill and called for a public release of the complete, unedited video.
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Navy Adm. Frank M. Bradley, a top Special Operations commander who oversaw the attack, met top Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees as well as top lawmakers on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.
“This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities, and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested — and been denied — fundamental information, documents and facts about this operation,” Reed said in a statement afterward.
Reed did not respond to reporters’ questions as he left the briefing. Republican Senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, the chairman of the committee, also did not comment.
Both said last week that they would conduct “vigorous oversight” into the Sept. 2 attack after The Washington Post reported Bradley had ordered a second strike on the boat despite identifying survivors in order to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive to kill everybody aboard the vessel.
Lawmakers from both parties said Bradley at the closed-door briefings denied that he was given any order, written or oral, to “kill them all” or “grant no quarter,” rejecting reports that Hegseth had ordered follow-up strikes to kill any survivors.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described the strikes on Sept. 2, four in total, as “entirely lawful and needful and they were exactly what we would expect our military commanders to do.”
“I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States back over so they could stay in the fight,” he said.
Rep. Jim Himes, of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, had a different interpretation of the video, saying he saw “two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.”
He said the footage was “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”
The Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Rick Crawford, of Arkansas, shot back that those who were troubled by the videos had “clearly never seen the Obama-ordered strikes, or, for that matter, those of any other administration over decades.”
He said there was “no doubt” in his mind that the Pentagon had conducted the strikes in a “highly professional manner” to protect the U.S. from dangerous drug cartels.
The White House has defended the operation and President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was open to releasing video footage of it. Hegseth said Tuesday that he “did not personally see survivors” after the first strike and said Bradley had made the correct decision to sink the boat.
In a joint statement, Himes and Rep. Adam Smith, of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said nothing they heard or saw at the briefing Thursday convinced them that the decision to strike the boat a second time was justified.
They described watching two shipwrecked individuals who had “no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat.”
“We believe the full video, difficult as it is to watch, should be released publicly,” they said. “The briefing left us with more questions than answers, and Congress must continue to investigate this matter and conduct oversight.”
