The annual defense policy bill on track to clear Congress in the coming days would compel the Pentagon to provide lawmakers with the specific orders behind the strikes that the United States military is taking on boats in international waters, as well with unedited video of the attacks.
The inclusion of the provisions, tucked into must-pass legislation that sets defense policy and provides a pay raise for U.S. troops, signals bipartisan frustration on Capitol Hill that members of Congress are being kept in the dark about crucial aspects of the operation.
For months, the top Republicans and Democrats on the congressional national security committees have tried without success to compel the Defense Department to share critical information about the attacks, which the Trump administration says are targeting narco-terrorists bringing drugs to the United States.
The legislation aims to force the Pentagon to be more forthcoming. It would withhold 25 percent of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget if he failed to give the congressional national security committees a copy of the execute orders behind the strikes, or to outline how he planned to facilitate future briefings about the operation with lawmakers in accordance with federal law.
The bill also would require that the Defense Department hand over to Congress “unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations” in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
Mr. Hegseth has posted edited footage of the strikes on social media, but has so far refused to share the full videos with lawmakers. Some senior members of Congress viewed video of the first strike on Sept. 2 in a classified briefing last week, but have not viewed unedited footage from any of the other 21 known strikes the Pentagon has carried out over the last three months.
Similarly, while the Pentagon has provided lawmakers with summaries of the orders behind the attacks, officials have not provided the actual orders, known as EXORDs, as requested by the House and Senate defense committees, according to a spokesman for Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The new demand and threat to withhold money from the secretary’s office reflected mounting concern among top lawmakers in both parties over the lack of transparency around the open-ended military campaign that has killed at least 87 people.
Mr. Reed said in a floor speech last week that Mr. Hegseth’s unwillingness to answer basic questions on the strikes and provide documents to Congress on the operations, as required by law, was troubling.
