US lawmakers push to release video of controversial double-tap strike in Caribbean

The pressure is on in Washington to release footage of a September 2 double-tap strike on a suspected drug-running vessel in the Caribbean, an operation now central to a fierce debate over legality, transparency and the boundaries of America’s militarised anti-narcotics campaign.

On Sunday, Democrats and Republicans both said publicly they would support releasing the video. But after viewing the footage behind closed doors, they walked out seeing two different realities: Democrats say the survivors posed no threat, Republicans say the strike was justified. Classic Washington split-screen.

Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the vessel had been “clearly incapacitated” in the initial strike and that survivors were unarmed and unable to call for help.

“They ought to release the video,” he told ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false… It seems pretty clear 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.”

Jim Himes, who leads House Democrats on intelligence, echoed the call: the public should see what it means when “the full force the United States military is turned on two guys who are clinging to a piece of wood and about to go under”.

Several Republicans also signalled they’d back release, though while defending the strike.

Senator Tom Cotton said he didn’t find the footage “distressing or disturbing”, comparing it to “dozens of strikes” carried out in the Middle East. Senator John Curtis added that officials should “err on the side of transparency”: Americans want facts, not spin.

Former President Donald Trump, whose administration has approved at least 22 similar strikes, said last week he’d have “no problem” with publication. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, however, told an event in California that officials were still weighing whether release would be “responsible”.

The controversy deepened after The Washington Post reported that the military launched a second strike on two survivors clinging to wreckage, allegedly after Hegseth instructed commanders to leave no survivors. Hegseth has called the report “fake news”, “fabricated” and “inflammatory”.

Legal experts aren’t convinced. Tom Dannenbaum of Stanford University told Al Jazeera that because the US is not in an armed conflict in the Caribbean, the operation “qualify as murder in violation of domestic criminal law, and extrajudicial killings in violation of international human rights law”.

At least 87 people have died in the campaign since it began in September. To date, the administration has released no evidence that the targeted boats carried narcotics or cartel operatives, or were headed for US shores.