Updated: December 6, 2025 / 9:33 PM EST / CBS/AFP
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday declined to say whether the Pentagon will make public video of an early-September strike that targeted survivors of an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean.
Speaking at a Q&A after addressing a defense forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, Hegseth said, “We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see. Whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible about reviewing that right now.”
Eleven people were killed in the Sept. 2 missile attack on the vessel. The Washington Post reported last week that a second missile was later fired at the boat, killing two people who survived the initial strike. The White House has confirmed the boat was hit a second time; both the White House and Hegseth have denied that he 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, lawmakers were shown video of the second strike and briefed behind closed doors 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 instructed to “leave no survivors.”
A prior Washington Post report quoted an anonymous source claiming Hegseth had verbally ordered all people on the boat be killed, saying, “The order was to kill everybody.” Hegseth strongly denied issuing any such order on Saturday. “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 he “fully support[s] that strike” and “would have made the same call myself.”
Sources who spoke to CBS News said the two survivors were trying to climb back onto the boat before the second missile struck. Two people familiar with the video shown to lawmakers said the survivors were waving overhead; one source said the gestures could be interpreted either as calls for help or as attempts to ward off another attack. Some legal experts have questioned whether the second strike could amount to a war crime.
The Sept. 2 strikes were the first in a series of U.S. attacks on alleged drug-running vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The Pentagon says at least 87 people have been killed across 22 vessel strikes. The administration has not publicly released evidence that the targeted vessels were trafficking drugs, offering only unclassified strike footage 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 remained noncommittal Saturday when asked repeatedly whether the Pentagon would release the second-strike video. “We are reviewing it right now,” he said.
In 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.”