The chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (Ala.), will end the panel’s inquiry into the U.S. military’s controversial Sept. 2 alleged drug boat attack in the Caribbean, where the two survivors were killed in a follow-up strike.
The classified briefings from the Pentagon and the video of the Sept. 2 operation, which Democrats and some law-of-war experts have deemed a violation of international law, were “sufficient to convince” the Alabama Republican that the U.S. military’s action was legal, Rogers’s spokesperson told The Hill.
The commitee’s spokesperson said that Rogers is not dropping the inquiry “arbitrarily,” noting that he “sought and received the informat…
The chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (Ala.), will end the panel’s inquiry into the U.S. military’s controversial Sept. 2 alleged drug boat attack in the Caribbean, where the two survivors were killed in a follow-up strike.
The classified briefings from the Pentagon and the video of the Sept. 2 operation, which Democrats and some law-of-war experts have deemed a violation of international law, were “sufficient to convince” the Alabama Republican that the U.S. military’s action was legal, Rogers’s spokesperson told The Hill.
The commitee’s spokesperson said that Rogers is not dropping the inquiry “arbitrarily,” noting that he “sought and received the information needed through the briefings and the video and wants our members to have access to that too.”
“He’s also been clear that this information needs to be shared with the rest of HASC’s members, and we expect that to happen next week,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Rogers, along with the commitee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), launched the investigation following a recent report from The Washington Post alleging that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered troops to “kill everybody” aboard the vessel.
The announcement of the probe came shortly after the chair of the Senate Armed Services Commitee, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), kick-started a similar probe along with the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
The U.S. military said it killed 11 “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean on Sept. 2. The first strike killed nine individuals. The second strike, which was authorized by Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the mission last week, killed the remaining two survivors who were in the water after the boat was severely damaged. The third and fourth strikes sank the vessel.
On Tuesday, Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine, held a classified briefing in Congress with the so-called “Gang of Eight.” The closed-door session did not assuage the concerns of some Democrats, who said afterwards that Hegseth said the Pentagon is still in the “review process” when it comes to potentially releasing the footage of the Sept. 2 attack.
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