Updated on: December 6, 2025 / 9:33 PM EST / CBS/AFP
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday refused to say whether the Pentagon will release video of the early-September operation that targeted survivors of a missile strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean.
“We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see,” Hegseth said in a Q&A after addressing a defense forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. “Whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible about reviewing that right now.”
Eleven people died in the Sept. 2 missile attack on the alleged drug boat. The Washington Post reported last week that a second missile was later launched on the vessel, killing two survivors of the initial strike. The White House confirmed the boat was struck by a second missile but both the White House and Hegseth have denied that Hegseth ordered the follow-up attack.
Hegseth reiterated that the second strike was ordered by Navy Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command who led the Sept. 2 mission. “In this particular case, it was well within the authorities of Adm. Bradley,” Hegseth said.
On Thursday, members of Congress were shown video of the second strike and briefed on the incident in a closed-door session by Bradley and Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sen. Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters after the briefing that Bradley said he had not been ordered to leave no survivors.
The initial Post report quoted an anonymous source saying Hegseth had verbally ordered that everyone on the boat be killed, saying, “The order was to kill everybody.” Hegseth on Saturday vehemently denied issuing any such kill order. “You don’t walk in and say ‘Kill them all.’ It’s just patently ridiculous,” he said, calling the reporting an attempt “to create a cartoon of me and the decisions that we make.” He added that he “fully support[s] that strike” and “would have made the same call myself.”
Sources told CBS News that the two survivors were attempting to climb back onto the boat before the second missile struck. Two sources familiar with the video shown to lawmakers said the survivors were waving overhead before the second strike killed them; one source said the gestures could be interpreted either as calling for help or trying to wave off another strike. Some legal experts have questioned whether the second strike could constitute a war crime.
The Sept. 2 strikes were the first in a series of attacks on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The Pentagon says at least 87 people have been killed in 22 vessel strikes. The administration has not provided evidence publicly that the vessels were trafficking drugs, releasing only unclassified video of the strikes so far.
President Trump said Wednesday he would support releasing all footage of the Sept. 2 strikes. “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’ll certainly release, no problem,” he told reporters. Hegseth, however, remained noncommittal when asked repeatedly Saturday whether the Pentagon would release the second-strike video. “We are reviewing it right now,” he said.
During his speech, Hegseth defended the campaign against what he called “narco-terrorists” and said the strikes would continue. “We’ve been clear, if you’re working for a designated terrorist organization, and you bring drugs into this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you,” he said. “…We are killing them. We will keep killing them so long as they are poisoning our people with narcotics so lethal they’re tantamount to chemical weapons.”