Lawmakers Sharply Divided As Congress Probes Killings At Sea

The first classified briefings of a deadly U.S. strike in the Caribbean produced a striking split screen on Capitol Hill, with a top Republican saying the unedited video showed nothing illegal while a senior Democrat called the recording “one of the most disturbing” he had ever witnessed.

Several senior lawmakers, including the leaders of the Armed Services panels, viewed the unedited footage in a closed-door briefing on Thursday with Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chair, and Adm. Mitch Bradley, the special operations commander who oversaw the operation on Sept. 2 that killed alleged drug smugglers.

Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said the imagery showed two people in the water “who are trying to flip their boat back over and continue on their mission” with smoke hanging over the scene, actions that he said justified a second missile that killed the survivors.

Cotton’s remarks stood in sharp contrast with Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, who emerged from an earlier briefing visibly shaken. Himes called the video “one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in my public service.”

“Anyone who saw the video I saw would have profound questions about what the United States did to the two distressed and, in my opinion, shipwrecked individuals,” Himes said.

Top lawmakers' responses to the closed-door briefing show an emerging partisan divide — despite a bipartisan push to investigate the incident. Democrats say the session confirmed their fears that President Donald Trump was intent on wielding the military in legally shady ways, while Republicans saw the operations as appropriate and in line with decades of counterterror drone warfare waged under both parties.

Cotton also said that Bradley contradicted a Washington Post reportthat Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal directive to kill all the survivors.

“Adm. Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order — not to give ‘no quarter’ or to ‘kill them all,’” Cotton told reporters. “He was given an order that, of course, was written down in great detail, as the military always does. There was no vocal order, either.”

Cotton offered the most detailed public description yet of the classified video, pushing back on reports that U.S. forces were operating under potentially illegal orders to execute survivors.

Cotton, who supports the Trump administration’s controversial Caribbean campaign, cautioned lawmakers against second-guessing or “sharpshooting” commanders. He said he did not need more information from the Pentagon about the incident after the two top officers delivered “a very thorough review of what’s happening.”

Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said in an interview he would seek broader access to the video and officials for the rest of his panel, after the top four leaders of the Armed Services Committees viewed the footage in one of Thursday’s classified briefings. Senators on and off the committee sought to attend Thursday’s meeting.

“Other members of the committee will want to be provided the same information,” he said. “We will certainly request that” from the Pentagon.

Ranking Senate Armed Services Democrat Jack Reed said the briefing left him “deeply disturbed” and said the Pentagon “has no choice” but to release the full, unedited video.

"This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities," Reed said. "This must and will be only beginning of our investigation into this incident."

Another staunch defense, though, came from House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), who likened the aggressive military operations against suspected drug smugglers to the shadowy drone strikes against terrorist groups that expanded during the Obama administration.

The GOP chair said in a statement that “there is no doubt in my mind about the highly professional” nature of the military campaign in Latin America. And he criticized fellow lawmakers who expressed concern over the video.

"Those who appear ‘troubled’ by videos of military strikes on designated terrorists have clearly never seen the Obama-ordered strikes, or, for that matter, those of any other administration over recent decades," Crawford said, referencing the Trump administration's designation of certain cartels as foreign terrorist groups.

The full footage of the operation was shared with top lawmakers for the first time Thursday, amid growing concern in both parties that the deadly operation might have represented a war crime or violated internal Pentagon rules. Lawmakers from both parties who received the brief vowed to continue seeking a fuller accounting of the events surrounding the lethal strike.

Caine and Bradley walked lawmakers through the legal and operational rationale behind the highly scrutinized operation.

A Nov. 28 Washington Post report said that senior Pentagon leadership ordered a second strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat to kill two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of an earlier strike.

Lawmakers in both parties have pledged to investigate the Sept. 2 operation, which some Democrats and legal experts believe may constitute a war crime.

Under the Department of Defense's Law of War Manual, it is forbidden to kill shipwrecked sailors or target enemy combatants who have surrendered or are unable to fight.

Caine and Bradley did not answer shouted questions from reporters after emerging from the briefing with Himes and Crawford.

Leo Shane III contributed to this report.