The annual defense policy bill, which must be approved by the United States Congress in the coming days, requires the Pentagon to provide lawmakers with the specific orders behind attacks that the country’s armed forces carry out against ships in international waters, as well as previously unseen videos of those attacks. The text, inserted into mandatory legislation that sets defense policy and grants pay increases to U.S. troops, reflects bipartisan unease with the lack of transparency on crucial aspects of the operation.
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For months, top Republicans and Democrats on Congress’s national security committees tried unsuccessfully to force the Defense Department to share key information about the attacks, which President Donald Trump’s administration said targeted “narcoterrorists” bringing drugs into the United States.
Now the legislation seeks to force the Pentagon to be more transparent. It would withhold 25 percent of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget if he fails to provide congressional national security committees with a copy of the execution orders underlying the attacks, or if he fails to explain how he intends to facilitate future briefings on the operation. The bill would also require the Department of Defense to turn over to Congress “unedited video footage of attacks against designated terrorist organizations” in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.
Hegseth posted edited versions of the attacks on social media but has so far refused to share the full videos with lawmakers. Some senior Congressional officials saw video of the first attack, which took place on September 2, during a private session last week, but did not have access to previously unreleased versions of the 21 other attacks carried out by the Pentagon over the past three months. The Defense Department also provided only summaries of the attack orders, without making available the official documents — the so-called EXORDs — requested by the House and Senate, according to the office of Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
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The new demand — and threat to strip resources from the secretary’s office — reveals growing concern among influential lawmakers in both parties about the lack of transparency surrounding the open and indefinite military campaign, which has already killed at least 87 people. Reed said in a speech last week that Hegseth’s unwillingness to answer basic questions about the attacks and provide documents to Congress about the operations, as required by law, was concerning.
— This suggests that they know that this operation, and the tortuous legal justification they are using to legitimize it, does not stand up to scrutiny — he said, adding that he and Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, gave Hegseth “more than enough time to answer reasonable questions in good faith” but that the defense secretary “refused.”
The two senators had warned in October that the Pentagon was bypassing Congress as it continued to expand its campaign against suspected drug traffickers at sea. They released two letters sent to Hegseth demanding more information about the attacks and said the secretary had not responded.
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U.S. federal law requires the Department of Defense to send execution orders to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees within 15 days of the Secretary of Defense issuing the orders – something that has not been done in the case of attacks on ships. The law also states that if top Republicans or Democrats on the committees specifically request one of these orders, the department will have 30 days to comply — another deadline the Trump administration has ignored.
The new requirements were added during final negotiations to reconcile versions approved by both chambers of the proposed defense policy, worth about $900 billion. The House is expected to approve it this week. The Senate is expected to vote on it next week and send it to the president’s desk. The bill requires the videos and other documents to be sent to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, meaning they will not be made public — unless they are made public later.
But calls are growing among Democrats for the video of the September 2 attack to be made public. The attack, which marked the start of a government crackdown on traffickers at sea, has received increased scrutiny, in part because of a second offensive that killed two survivors. While Trump said he would have “no problem” releasing the video, Hegseth signaled over the weekend that he had no plans to make it public.
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The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington – who viewed the footage last week during a confidential session – told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday:
— It seems pretty clear that they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it, because it’s very, very difficult to justify.
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