Congress plans to withhold one-quarter of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's travel budget until the Pentagon turns over videos of strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Latin America, Politico reported Monday.
The demand, which was placed in the final draft of the annual defense policy bill, calls for “unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command” to the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
The final draft of the defense bill was released on Sunday and is expected to be approved without changes, by the House later this week and then the Senate.
The clash over the footage comes as the administration has sharply expanded maritime interdiction operations in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, where the Pentagon says fast-moving smuggling boats and semi-submersible craft linked to cartel networks have surged in recent years. U.S. officials argue that the region has become a major transit corridor for cocaine and synthetic precursors bound for American cities, and they frame the stepped-up strikes as a necessary response to increasingly militarized trafficking groups.
But the escalation has drawn criticism throughout Latin America and among foreign-policy analysts in Washington who say the U.S. has repeatedly used counter-narcotics missions as a pretext for deeper military influence in the Caribbean Basin.
They note that the region sits astride key shipping routes, offshore energy reserves, and chokepoints near Venezuela, and argue that the administration’s rhetoric about “narco-terrorism” masks a broader strategic aim to project U.S. power, secure maritime lanes, and pressure unfriendly governments.
Rights groups in the region say the operations have functionally become an undeclared conflict with little public transparency.
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, last weekend briefed top members of Congress on national security committees and showed the unedited footage of the operation, Politico reported.
But lawmakers disagreed about what the video revealed, with some top Republicans who viewed the unedited footage saying it vindicates the administration's position and Democrats calling on the Pentagon to release it more broadly.
After the briefing, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., also said he wants rank-and-file committee members to see the footage.
The military has killed at least 87 people in the anti-smuggling operation since September.
The administration has said the actions are justified because the people are narco-terrorists who bring drugs into the U.S. Some experts have said the administration is on legally questionable grounds.
Newsmax wires contributed to this report.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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