MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Certain lawmakers are seeing video today of a controversial strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat, but the footage has yet to be released to the public. As NPR's Quil Lawrence reports, two survivors of an initial hit were targeted and killed as they clung to burning wreckage and waved in distress.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: President Trump is using language from the so-called war on terror to justify ongoing strikes on alleged drug traffickers at sea. His defenders say destroying drug boats is like hitting al-Qaida targets. Many military and civilian lawyers call these killings execution without trial or simply murder. Video of the September 2 strike, according to lawmakers who have already seen it, shows shipwrecked survivors being killed as they cling to their overturned boat. President Trump said he'd have no problem releasing that video to the public. Then he deferred to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Now Hegseth says that won't happen.
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PETE HEGSETH: Of course, we're not going to release a top-secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public. HASC and SASC and appropriate committees will see it.
LAWRENCE: The HASC and SASC are the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which will view the full video today. Reactions from a few lawmakers who have already seen it mostly fell along partisan lines. Republicans saw a legitimate strike. Democrats saw a potential war crime.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: It was deeply troubling.
LAWRENCE: Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said the other issue is what role these boat strikes play in the Trump administration's campaign to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
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SCHUMER: Policies in the Caribbean are unclear. We don't know what the limits are. We don't know where they'll stop. We don't know what the ultimate goal is. The president says different things at different times and contradicts himself.
LAWRENCE: Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair magazine that the boat strikes are about pushing out Maduro. Underscoring that point, last night, Trump ordered what he called a, quote, "total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela." He called Venezuela's oil fields stolen and said the oil must be returned to the United States. The president did not provide any further explanation to back up his allegations.
Quil Lawrence, NPR News.
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