In the days after a Washington Post report raised questions about a September strike by the US military on a suspected drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, lawmakers in Congress pledged to investigate further.
It was a rare moment of bipartisan concern about a controversial Trump administration action – prompting speculation that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was narrowly confirmed to office in January, might be on shaky ground.
“Members are very concerned,” Republican Congressman Mike Turner said in a television interview on Thursday morning. He added that his colleagues were questioning the accuracy of information provided to them by the Trump administration.
By Thursday afternoon, however, after senior members of Congress reviewed footage and heard from the admiral in charge of the operation, familiar partisan divisions had begun to reemerge.
Republicans defended the boat strike operation – and praised Hegseth.
Democrats condemned what they saw – and called for further inquiries.
At the heart of the divide is a fundamental disagreement over the legality, and morality, of the Trump administration’s ongoing anti-narcotics military campaign in the Caribbean, including its decision to designate narcotics traffickers as “terrorist organisations” and to use lethal force against civilians without outside legal oversight.
Since that first September attack, the US has conducted 21 similar strikes resulting in more than 80 deaths.
The Post had reported last Friday that the US launched two attacks on the boat in question and that the second had killed two survivors from the first strike, who were in the water, clinging to the “smoldering wreck”.
The newspaper also said that prior to the attack Hegseth had given an order to “kill them all”. In comments on Tuesday, the secretary said he witnessed the first attack but had left the room before the second strike took place.
After being briefed by General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Frank Bradley, who oversaw the operation and gave the order for the second strike, none of the congressional lawmakers said they had heard evidence that Hegseth did, in fact, issue a “kill everybody” order.
That, however, was where the consensus ended.
Jim Himes of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he found the video of the second attack “deeply, deeply troubling”.
“The fact is that we killed two people who were in deep distress and had neither the means nor obviously the intent to continue their mission,” he told reporters after the briefing.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas disagreed, calling the strikes “entirely lawful and needful”.
“I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States back over so they could stay in the fight,” he said.
For the moment, these differing descriptions from partisan lawmakers, and the original Washington Post reporting, are all the American public has on which to base their own conclusions.
That may change, however. Donald Trump has said he supports releasing the video of the second strike – as the Pentagon has done for many of its Caribbean operations in recent months.
If the video is as disturbing as some Democrats say, it could shift public opinion that has been similarly divided largely along partisan lines.
By Thursday evening, however, Hegseth’s seemingly tenuous position seemed more secure, all the more so after an inspector general report left him largely unscathed.
It did find he put military personnel and objectives at risk by discussing classified information over an unsecured app – the so-called Signalgate controversy which dominated headlines earlier in the year.
But the conclusion was he did not transmit secret information because he himself says he had declassified it.
Two potentially damaging stories have been defused, for now. It may not be too long, however, before Hegseth is in the spotlight once again.
