WASHINGTON (AP) — On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the Pentagon’s decision not to publicly release the unedited footage of a U.S. military strike. This strike resulted in the deaths of two individuals who survived an earlier attack on a boat suspected of transporting cocaine in the Caribbean. The incident has sparked rising questions within Congress regarding both the strike and the increased presence of U.S. military forces near Venezuela.

Later that day, President Donald Trump escalated tensions by declaring a blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers heading to Venezuela. This nation heavily depends on its oil revenue to sustain its economy.

Hegseth indicated that members of the Armed Services Committees from both the House and Senate would have the opportunity to view the attack video this week. However, he did not clarify if this access would extend to all Congressional members.

“Releasing a top-secret, full, unedited video to the public is out of the question,” Hegseth stated to reporters after leaving a confidential briefing with senators.

On Tuesday, key members of Trump’s national security team appeared before Congress to justify a campaign responsible for at least 95 fatalities across 25 documented strikes on vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. They defended the campaign as effective in preventing drug trafficking to the U.S., countering concerns over its legality within the context of warfare.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the campaign is a “counter-drug mission” that is “focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are are operating in our hemisphere, undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans.”

Lawmakers have been focused on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they sift through the rationale for a broader U.S. military buildup in the region. On the eve of the briefings, the U.S. military said it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.

Lawmakers left in the dark about Trump’s goal with Venezuela

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth had come “empty handed” to the briefing, without a pledge to more broadly release the video of the Sept. 2 strike.

“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?” the New York Democrat said.

Senators on both sides of the aisle said the officials left them in the dark about Trump’s goals when it comes to President Nicolás Maduro or sending U.S. forces directly to the South American nation.

“I want to address the question, is it the goal to take him out? If it’s not the goal to take him out, you’re making a mistake,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who defended the legality of the campaign and said he wanted to see Maduro removed from power.

The U.S. has deployed warships, flown fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seized an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office. Maduro said on a weekly state television show Monday that his government still does not know the whereabouts of the tanker’s crew. He criticized the United Nations for not speaking out against what he described as an “act of piracy” against “a private ship carrying Venezuelan oil.”

Maduro’s government for years has evaded U.S. oil sanctions by smuggling its crude into global supply chains on a shadow fleet of unflagged tankers.

Trump’s Republican administration has not sought any authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. The go-it-alone approach, experts say, has led to problematic military actions, none more so than the strike that killed two people who had climbed on top of part of a boat that had been partially destroyed in an initial attack.

“If it’s not a war against Venezuela, then we’re using armed force against civilians who are just committing crimes,” said John Yoo, a Berkeley Law professor who helped craft the George W. Bush administration’s legal arguments and justification for aggressive interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Then this question, this worry, becomes really pronounced. You know, you’re shooting civilians. There’s no military purpose for it.”

Yet for the first several months, Congress received little more than a trickle of information about why or how the U.S. military was conducting the operations. At times, lawmakers have learned of strikes from social media after the Pentagon posted videos of boats bursting into flames.

Hegseth now faces language included in an annual military policy bill that threatens to withhold a quarter of his travel budget if the Pentagon does not provide unedited video of the strikes to the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services.

The demand for release of video footage

For some, the controversy over the footage demonstrates the flawed rationale behind the entire campaign.

“The American public ought to see it. I think shooting unarmed people floundering in the water, clinging to wreckage, is not who we are as a people,” said Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has been an outspoken critic of the campaign.

But senators were told the Trump administration won’t release all of the Sept. 2 attack footage because it would reveal U.S. military practices on intelligence gathering, said Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She said the reasoning ignores that the military has already released footage of the initial attack.

“They just don’t want to reveal the part that suggests war crimes,” she said.

Some GOP lawmakers are determined to dig into the details of the Sept. 2 attack. Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who ordered the second strike, was expected back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for classified briefings with the Senate and House Armed Services committees. The committees would also review video of the Sept. 2 strikes, Hegseth said.

Still, many Republicans emerged from the briefings backing the campaign, defending their legality and praising the “exquisite intelligence” that is used to identify targets. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the strike “certainly appropriate” and “necessary to protect the United States and our interests.”

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Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed reporting.