Schumer to Demand Pentagon Release Caribbean Operation Videos

The Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, announced on Tuesday that he will demand from the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, access to the unedited videos of the second attack on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean on September 2, in which two survivors of a first attack were killed. "What the hell is going on in the Caribbean? How far are you willing to go?" Schumer questioned during a press conference at the Capitol, referring to the Pentagon's activities in the Caribbean near the coast of Venezuela. The senator made clear his plans to demand from Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio full transparency regarding the videos of the September 2 second attack and the context of the orders issued during the operation. Schumer's call to the Trump administration comes a day after the president left it up to Hegseth to decide whether or not to publish the full video of the attack, which has put the high-ranking military officials who participated in the decision-making at the center of the controversy. Initially, Trump had assured that the video would be shared in full publicly, but yesterday he backtracked and left the final decision in the hands of the Secretary of War. Last week, the Senate interrogated Admiral Frank Bradley, head of special operations during the September 2 attack, and the military man confirmed that the attacked boat was accompanied by another vessel heading to Suriname. The more than 25 attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific carried out by the US Southern Command since September have left more than 80 people dead and have heightened tensions between Washington and Caracas, which considers the Trump administration's aggressive anti-drug campaign to be in fact a covert attempt to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro.