OAN Staff Cory Hawkins
12:07 PM – Tuesday, December 16, 2025
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon will not be releasing the classified and unedited video of the September 2nd U.S. military strikes on a boat carrying narcoterrorists and cocaine in the Caribbean. However, select congressional committees would be allowed to view it privately, if they so wish, he added.
The strikes in question occurred at the start of September, targeting a suspicious vessel believed to be carrying narcotics, according to military officials. The strikes ended up killing 11 people, including two survivors in a follow-up strike.
On Tuesday, Hegseth made the remarks to reporters after briefing lawmakers on Capitol Hill, citing longstanding Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) policy against releasing such classified, unedited operational footage to the public.
However, Hegseth emphasized that “appropriate” congressional committees would be allowed to view it privately at their convenience.
“In keeping with long-standing Department of War policy … Department of Defense policy, of course, we’re not going to release a top secret full unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth, 45, reported after briefing senators on the U.S. military’s continuous lethal strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who has repeatedly clashed with Hegseth in the second Trump administration, later weighed in, theorizing that the Pentagon must have “serious concerns” about what the unedited video reveals — deliberately withholding it from the public to conceal the truth.
“They released all the videos that they liked, and then they got to one specific video that they know creates some problems for them. And for that reason, they don’t want it released,” Kelly said. “Obviously, they have issues with what is in that video. And that’s why they don’t want everybody to see it. What we also need is open hearings so the American public can learn about this directly from the people that they employ.”
Pushing aside the Arizona Democrat’s conspiracy theories, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declared that the U.S. military’s actions were “entirely appropriate,” after seeing the classified video.
“The individuals on that vessel were not helpless castaways. They were drug runners on a capsized drug boat and, by all indications, attempting to recover it so they could continue pushing drugs to kill Americans,” Johnson reported.
“It is hard to square the widespread routine prompt posting of detailed videos of every strike with a concern that posting a portion of the video of the first strike would violate a variety of classification concerns,” Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), who attended the briefing, told reporters on Capitol Hill.
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