Former U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, 72, has thrown down the gauntlet at Pete Hegseth for his refusal to release video footage from the Sept. 2 strike on a suspected drug trafficking boat near Trinidad.
“I think primarily he doesn’t want to release it, and the excuses that he’s given to not release it just seem to be vague,” he told host Jacqueline Alemany on MS NOW’s The Weekend on Saturday.
The retired general also described Hegseth’s excuse that the video might show classified information as “just not true,” after the defense secretary confirmed this week that he wouldn’t release the footage to the public or to congress.
The Sept. 2 attack saw Special Operations forces kill all 11 people on board a boat, with a second missile deployed after two people initially survived the first hit.
While some lawmakers are concerned that the second strike could have been illegal, Hegseth is refusing to allow the footage to be shown to any members of congress outside of relevant committees.
Pointing out how Hegseth has released plenty of footage and intel from other boat strikes, Hertling said, “What he’s now concerned about is classification of earlier strikes and how they can’t be redacted easily.”
“And what I’ll tell you from dealing with these kind of videos in combat, you can easily classify them,” Hertling continued. “You can take off things or blur them out. That would that would hinder any kind of issue that the secretary is concerned about.”
Hertling added that, considering the footage has been around for months, the defense department has had “plenty of time to edit those videos or redact the classified information.”
Driving his point home, Hertling stated that Hegseth’s claimed security concerns could easily be fixed, and said of the risk of releasing classified information: “That’s just not true. I can attest to that. And anybody that’s seen these kind of combat videos—or what some call war porn—will tell you that it’s easily done.”
While Hegseth is keeping the boat strike footage from public view despite Trump’s earlier assurance that it would be released, certain lawmakers have already seen the video.
Earlier this month, a closed briefing was held during which Admiral Mitch Bradley and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine showed the footage to a select group, including the House Intelligence Committee leader Jim Himes.
Speaking to reporters after the classified meeting, Himes said: “What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.
“You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion, the destroyed vessel, who are killed by the United States.”
Fellow Democrat Jack Reed later shared a statement, writing in part: “I am deeply disturbed by what I saw this morning. The Department of Defense has no choice but to release the complete, unedited footage of the September 2nd strike, as the President has agreed to do.”
