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Top Dem Says Video of Military 'Attacking Shipwrecked Sailors' Among 'Most Troubling Things' He Has Ever Seen
"Two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, were killed by the United States."
Dec 04, 2025
US Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed horror on Thursday after watching a video of the September 2 double-tap strike on a suspected drug trafficking vessel off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago.
Speaking to reporters after a briefing on the strike delivered by Adm. Frank Bradley, Himes (D-Conn.) called the video he saw of the attack "one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service."
Himes proceeded to describe the video, which showed the US military firing missiles at two men who had survived an initial attack on their vessel and who were floating in the water while clinging to debris.
"You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, [who] were killed by the United States," he said.
Himes then started to walk away before a reporter asked him to describe more of what he saw in the video. The Connecticut Democrat then said the video showed a clear "impermissible action," according to the laws of armed conflict.
"Any American who sees the video that I saw will see its military attacking shipwrecked sailors," he said. "Now, there's a whole set of contextual items that the admiral explained. Yes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in position to continue their mission in any way... People will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows, if you don't have the broader context, an attack on shipwrecked sailors."
Himes finished his talk with reporters by saying that Bradley told lawmakers there had not been a "kill them all" or “no quarter” order given to him by higher-ups. Asked by a reporter if he thought the full video should be released to the public, Himes said, "I do."
Himes' reaction to the video stood in stark contrast to the reaction of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who praised the military for its actions.
According to HuffPost reporter Jen Bendery, Cotton described the strikes on the two survivors as "righteous strikes" that were "entirely lawful."
Cotton also claimed that the video showed "two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs, bound for the United States, back over, so they could stay in the fight."
Reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States, and the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the primary cause of drug overdoses in the US.
Additionally, many legal scholars have said that a strike on the two men who survived the initial attack on the boat is very likely either an act of murder or a war crime, regardless of whether they were intending to traffic illegal drugs in the US.
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'Furious Backlash' Inside Pentagon as Hegseth Seeks to Avoid Blame for Deadly War Crimes
"This is murder," said one legal expert.
Dec 02, 2025
Finger-pointing has reportedly begun inside the Pentagon as the Trump White House has tried to shield US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from taking the blame for a double-tap strike on a purported narcotics smuggling vessel that many legal experts say was an obvious war crime.
According to the Washington Post, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt set off "a furious backlash within the Defense Department" on Monday after she declared that Adm. Frank Bradley, not Hegseth, made the decision to launch a second strike to kill two men who had survived an initial strike on a purported drug boat off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago on September 2.
One defense official told the Post that Leavitt's statement was "'protect Pete' bullshit," while another said that the administration appeared to be "throwing us, the service members, under the bus."
Hegseth on Monday praised Bradley in a post on X as "a true professional" who "has my 100% support." However, Hegseth also appeared to make clear that Bradley was the person in the chain of command who made the final decision to authorize a second strike on the survivors.
"I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made—on the September 2 mission and all others since," Hegseth wrote.
Even Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume found Hegseth's praise for Bradley to be disingenuous, and he described it as "how to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him."
Bradley is set to give members of Congress a classified briefing on the strikes on Thursday amid bipartisan demands for more information.
The question of who authorized the second strike on the boat is crucial in determining who would face potential future war crimes charges. Earlier reporting from the Washington Post claimed that Hegseth gave a spoken order to "kill everybody" in the boat strikes, which was then interpreted as a justification for launching a second strike on the survivors.
Rachel VanLandingham, a military expert at Southwestern Law School, told Al-Jazeera that, regardless of who authorized the strike, it was clearly illegal.
"That second strike against individuals who are shipwrecked, clinging desperately to the side of their boat wreckage—that’s a war crime," she said. "It’s a war crime because those individuals who are shipwrecked have protected status under the law unless they were, for example, shooting a gun at somebody."
Todd Huntley, a former Staff Judge Advocate who served as a legal adviser on drone strikes carried out in Afghanistan and other nations by Joint Special Operations task forces, told The Intercept he had no doubt that the second strike on the survivors was a prosecutable offense under either federal law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
"This is about as clear of a case being patently illegal that subordinates would probably not be able to successfully use a following-orders defense," he explained.
Rebecca Ingber, professor at Cardozo Law School, told Time that authorizing the second strike violated "one of the most basic and longstanding rules" of the laws of armed conflict.
"It is absolutely unlawful to order that there will be no survivors,” she explained. "There is no actual armed conflict here, so this is murder."
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Venezuela Says CIA-Linked Mercenaries Caught During 'False-Flag Attack'
"This is a colonial operation of military aggression that seeks to turn the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and US imperial domination."
Oct 27, 2025
The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Sunday that his country's security forces captured a group of mercenaries aligned with the US Central Intelligence Agency, less than two weeks after President Donald Trump confirmed his authorization of covert CIA action against the South American nation.
Venezuela "reports that it has captured a mercenary group with direct information from the US intelligence agency, CIA, being able to determine that a false-flag attack is underway from waters bordering Trinidad and Tobago, or from Trinidad or Venezuelan territory itself," the Venezuelan government said in a statement.
“This planned action perfectly evokes the provocation of the Battleship Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin, which gave rise to the war against Spain to seize Cuba in 1898 and allowed the US Congress to authorize involvement in an eternal war against Vietnam in 1964, from which they emerged defeated by the Vietnamese people after facing incalculable destruction and regrettable human loss," the statement continues.
"The government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has renounced the sovereignty of Trinidad and Tobago to act as a military colony subordinate to US hegemonic interests, turning its territory into a US aircraft carrier for war throughout the Caribbean against Venezuela, Colombia, and all of South America,” Caracas asserted.
The statement continues:
By folding to Washington’s militaristic agenda, Persad-Bissessar not only intends to attack Venezuela, a country that has always maintained a policy of energy cooperation, mutual respect, and Caribbean integration, and break our historic bonds of brotherhood; she also violates the United Nations Charter, the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace approved by [the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States], and the principles of [the Caribbean Community], which protect all peoples of the Caribbean.
These are not defensive exercises: this is a colonial operation of military aggression that seeks to turn the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and US imperial domination.
"Venezuela does not accept threats from any vassal government of the US. We are not intimidated by military exercises or war cries," the statement says, adding that the country "will always defend its sovereignty, its territorial integrity, and its right to live in peace against foreign enemies and [their] vassals."
Venezuela's accusation came amid joint military exercises between the US and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean Sea and follows a string of deadly US attacks on vessels the Trump administration claimed—without evidence—were transporting drugs bound for the United States. According to the Trump administration, at least 43 people have been killed in the US boat strikes in the southern Caribbean and Pacific Ocean since early last month.
Trinidad and Tobago challenged Venezuela to provide proof of the alleged false-flag operation and said the joint military operation with the United States "aims to bolster the fight against transnational crime and build resilience through training, humanitarian activities, and security cooperation."
The Trump administration—which had already deployed an armada of warships and thousands of troops to the southern Caribbean—said Friday that it ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group off the coast of Venezuela, which possesses the world's largest oil reserves.
The US has been meddling in Venezuelan affairs since at least the late 19th century, going back to the 1895 border dispute between Venezuela and Britain. Since then, the United States has helped install and prop up brutal dictators and assisted in the subversion of democratic movements, including by training Venezuelan forces in torture and repression at the notorious US Army School of the Americas.
In the 21st century, successive US administrations beginning with George W. Bush have tried to thwart the Bolivarian Revolution that was launched by former President Hugo Chávez and continued under Maduro. During the first Trump administration, Venezuela foiled an attempt by a group of mercenaries, including two Americans, to invade the country and topple Maduro.
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have also died as a result of US economic sanctions, according to research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Taunting the Venezuelan president during a Sunday appearance on CBS "60 Minutes," Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said, “If I was Maduro, I'd head to Russia or China right now."
However, senior Venezuelan officials waxed defiant in the face of the latest US threat.
“Once again, the empire and its accomplices seek to bend the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people through a criminal economic siege that flagrantly violates the Charter of the United Nations and international humanitarian law," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto said Monday.
"These actions are not only illegal," he added, "they are an unconventional act of war that we are determined to face and defeat in all scenarios."
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Venezuelan Ambassador Warns Trump Admin Is ‘Bloodthirsty’ Killer ‘Roaming Around the Caribbean’
The Venezuelan ambassador accused the Trump administration of "killing everyone who is on the sea working."
Oct 17, 2025
Venezuelan United Nations Ambassador Samuel Moncada on Thursday delivered a scathing denunciation of US President Donald Trump's drone attacks on purported drug boats off the coast of his country.
While holding up a copy of Thursday's edition of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, which highlighted two Trinidadian citizens who were killed by a US drone strike while on a boat, Moncada lambasted the Trump administration and compared it to a serial killer.
"There is a killer roaming around the Caribbean!" he declared. "He's bloodthirsty! He's killing everyone who is on the sea working! And people from different countries—Colombia, Trinidad, etc.—are suffering the effects of these massacres!"
🇻🇪 At the UN, Venezuela alerts of "a killer roaming around the Caribbean" committing massacres@SMoncada_VEN displays today's @GuardianTT newspaper, which reported that two Trinbagonians were murdered in the latest U.S. strike on a boat in the Caribbean pic.twitter.com/ztIBxawWQk
— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) October 16, 2025
According to Reuters, Moncada this week also sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council asking it to rule on the legality of the US strikes, while also releasing a statement affirming Venezuela's sovereignty.
The two Trinidadian citizens mentioned by Moncada were killed in a Tuesday drone strike that also reportedly took the lives of four other men.
In interviews with the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, friends and relatives of 26-year-old Chad Joseph, one of the men killed in the strike, denied that he was involved with any drug trafficking.
"I find it wrong because it have—people will be innocent and they will still do and say otherwise," Joseph's mother, Lenore Burnley, told the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. "The sea law is they supposed to stop the boat and intercept it, not blow it up like that.”
With the Tuesday strike, the total number of people killed by the Trump administration's attacks on suspected drug boats totaled at least 27.
The administration carried out yet another boat strike on Thursday, and Reuters reported that at least two crew members had survived the attack, marking the first time that an attack on suspected drug vessels had left any survivors.
Reuters noted that "the development raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody, possibly as prisoners of war."
The Trump administration so far has provided no legal justification for the strikes on boats, nor has it provided any evidence that any of the boats it has targeted were involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs.
Many legal experts believe that the strikes on the boats would be illegal even if they were found to have been carrying drugs, however, and some critics have accused the Trump administration of extrajudicial murder.
Moncada said Thursday that the Trump administration, which has also reportedly approved "lethal operations" by the CIA in Venezuela, is "looking for wars."
“Everybody knows what’s going on here," he said. "They are fabricating a war. The emperor is naked. Stop pretending this is complicated.”
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Trinidad and Tobago Mulls Historic Disaster Declaration After 'Ghost Ship' Oil Spill
"Right now the situation is not under control," the prime minister said Sunday on the eve of the Caribbean nation's world-renowned Carnival.
Feb 11, 2024
The government of Trinidad and Tobago this weekend said it is considering what would be the island nation's first-ever Level 3 diaster declaration amid a worsening environmental disaster caused by an oil spill from a mysterious ship on the eve of the Caribbean country's famed Carinval.
As more than 1,000 emergency workers and volunteers raced to clean up the massive spill off Tobago's southwestern coast, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley told reporters Sunday that "cleaning and restoration can only begin as soon as we have the situation under control. Right now the situation is not under control."
The spill came from a vessel of indeterminate origin that capsized off the coast of the Cove Eco Industrial Park on Wednesday. As Agence France-Presse reported, the ship—named Gulfstream—"made no emergency calls, with no sign of crew, and no clear sign of ownership."
Officials said the spill has affected over 25 miles of coastline and has damaged a coral reef and Atlantic beaches, threatening not only the environment and residents' health but also the vital tourism industry as the country prepares to host its world-renowned Carnival this week.
Farley Augustine, chief secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly, told reporters Saturday that the government may declare a Level 3 disaster for the first time in the nation's history. Level 3 spills require "substantial" international support.
"Everything indicates that we are going in that direction," Augustine said.
There have been hundreds of oil spills off Trinidad and Tobago's coast over the past decade. These accidents rarely attract international media attention and often go unpunished.
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"It's a Sea of Oil": Outrage in Trinidad Over Latest Spill Destroying Ecosystem, Fishery
"There have been in excess of 377 oil spills since 2015 and no one has ever been charged or prosecuted. Every drop of hydrocarbon has an ever-lasting impact on our marine ecosystem.”
Aug 13, 2021
Fishers and environmentalists expressed outrage this week over what they called the inadequate response by Trinidad and Tobago's government and one of the country's leading fossil fuel companies to the latest of hundreds of reported oil spills there in recent years.
"What is going to happen to the fisherfolk? What will be the environmental impacts, and what will this do to fishing in the Gulf?"
--Imitiaz Khan, Carli Bay Fishing Association
Earlier this week Trinidad and Tobago's Environmental Management Authority (EMA), Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries (MEEI), and Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) announced they were investigating the spill, which Paria Fuel Trading Company Limited said originated from a leak in a pipeline near its Pointe-a-Pierre refinery last weekend, according to the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian.
EMA officials said containment measures and booms were deployed in order to mitigate the accident, and that vessels were being used to break up the oil coating the water's surface.
Gary Aboud, corporate secretary of the advocacy group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), disputed claims by the government and Paria Fuel Trading Company. Earlier, Aboud posted videos of the spill, including one in which he cleans a bird slicked in oil, and another showing him dipping his hands into the blackened water before bringing them up completely covered in viscous crude.
"It's like a porridge," Aboud says in the video. "We have a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Paria right now... All day long we have been calling the IMA, the EMA, the Ministry of Energy--no response. The oil continues to flow."
"This oil causes cancer," Aboud continues. "It's so ridiculous. Fishermen can't get any compensation. The fishery is collapsing."
Instead of collecting and cleaning up the oil, Aboud accuses Paria Fuel Trading Company of "driving around and chopping it up" in a boat, "so that it will sink and continue to do damage. When you break the oil up, it sinks and goes to the ocean bed, where it will continue to degrade and get into the food chain."
"It's a sea of oil," laments Aboud. "Please share this video and let the whole country see."
In a statement reported by Loop, Aboud said: "We are calling on the authorities to make public the cause of the spill, volume, nature of the hydrocarbon spilled, and those who are responsible. Furthermore, pray that our government [and] EMA act in the interest of our environment and prosecute this polluter."
"There have been in excess of 377 oil spills since 2015 and no one has ever been charged or prosecuted," said Aboud. "Every drop of hydrocarbon has an ever-lasting impact on our marine ecosystem."
According to FFOS, there have actually been 498 reported spills on land and in the sea since 2018. These rarely draw international attention, although last October, a listing Venezuelan tanker carrying--but not spilling--1.3 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Paria made headlines around the world.
FFOS program director Lisa Premchand told Britain's The Guardian that her group saw no evidence that Paria Fuel Trading Company was using booms to contain the spill.
"Through our drone imagery, there were no booms in the Gulf of Paria around this spill to contain the oil from spreading even further," she said. "It takes years and years for oil to degrade. There is a buildup of chemicals in our water. Our gulf is becoming more polluted over time with the increase in intensity of oil spills."
Imitiaz Khan, president of the Carli Bay Fishing Association, told the Daily Express that he was speechless when he viewed video footage of the new spill.
"I was wondering what is going to happen to the fisherfolk? What will be the environmental impacts, and what will this do to fishing in the Gulf?" he said. "The Gulf is the nursery of our fisheries, and with the amount of oil we were seeing and the way they were handling it, there is a grave concern."
"Instead of containing it, there is a video where their vessels are spinning in the oil to break it up, and that is not the way it should be dealt with," Khan continued. "We had a similar incident in 2018 in Orange Valley, and it negatively affected fishermen as fish prices went down because a lot of people were concerned about eating fish from the Gulf. Seventy-five percent of the fishing in this country happens in the Gulf, so this is a major concern for us."
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Amid US Sanctions, Venezuelan Oil Tanker at Risk of Spilling 1.3 Million Barrels and Devastating Caribbean Ecosystems
"The Caribbean Sea would never be the same" should the oil spill, climate scientist Eric Holthaus tweeted.
Oct 19, 2020
The companies that own a Venezuelan oil vessel that's been positioned off the country's coast for nearly two years called on the U.S. to give a "green light" to unload 1.3 million barrels of oil after local environmental advocates on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago expressed alarm over the recent appearance of the boat, which is tilting to one side and looks to be on the verge of sinking.
Recent pictures and footage show the FSO Nabarima, which has been in the Gulf of Paria since January 2019, tilting at about a 25o angle. The boat flies the Venezuelan flag and is operated by the Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and Eni, the Italian oil giant.
The U.S. embassy in Trinidad and Tobago said Friday that the joint venture "has a responsibility to take action to avoid an environmental disaster in Venezuelan waters." But Eni on Friday said that because the U.S. sanctioned PDVSA in 2019 along with President Nicolas Maduro, it must wait for approval from the U.S. to unload its oil "in order to prevent any sanctions risk."
"If this thing flips we will all pay the consequences for decades to come."
--Gary Aboud, Fishermen and Friends of the Sea
The embassy said in a statement that "the United States' Venezuela sanctions program is not designed to target activities addressing safety, environmental, or humanitarian concerns," suggesting local authorities are free to unload the oil.
The Nabarima has the capacity to carry 1.4 million barrels of oil and is currently holding 1.3 million barrels--equivalent to more than 54 million gallons of crude oil.
A spill from the vessel in the Gulf of Paria would dump five times the amount of oil that was spilled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989 off the Alaskan coast, noted climate scientist Eric Holthaus.
An unnamed source told Reuters that the vessel is tilted only because its crew has been repairing its valves, but Gary Aboud of the Trinidadian environmental group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea told the outlet that the recent images of the Nabarima "should be [a] red alert."
"If this thing flips we will all pay the consequences for decades to come," Aboud said.
Global Voices reported Sunday that an oil spill in the Gulf of Paria could turn it into a "dead, contaminated sea," threatening the mangrove forests, lagoons, estuaries, beaches, and ecosystems there.
The gulf serves as a habitat and migratory route for bird species as well as whales, dolphins, turtles, and other fauna. It is also where more than 50% of all fishing activity in Trinidad and Tobago takes places, and the potentially impending spill would devastate the local fishing industry.
"If it goes down we are all f-a-c-k-e-d," Aboud told Tampa, Florida-based radio station WMNF. "There's no nice way to say what will happen to us. Because 1.3 million barrels in an enclosed shallow, basin of water can only spell doom and gloom."
The tilting ship offers "one more good reason to leave oil behind," tweeted 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben.
"It's an accident that's happening in slow motion," Aboud told WMNF. "It's very clear that the vessel is in trouble. There's no doubt."
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Hunger Striking Eco-Activist 'Prepared to Die' for His Cause
Trinidadian Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh says protest is a 'form of peaceful social war' against government development plans
Nov 24, 2014
Environmental crusader Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh, who has refused food and water for more than two months, said he's "prepared to die" for his country, while reports indicate that the renowned Trinidadian university professor and activist is approaching his final days.
Since September 17, Kublalsingh, 55, has been on a hunger strike protesting the construction of a portion of a four-lane highway which will cut through a critical wetlands habitat on land that he says the government of Trinidad and Tobago has forcibly seized from island residents.
"I'm doing this absolutely for Trinidad and Tobago," Kublalsingh recently told VICE News, describing his hunger strike as a "form of peaceful social war" against the country's government.
His protest, he added, is "against the economic crimes committed against the people, against white collar criminality and the government's failure to account for and justify its actions."
The hunger strike is Kublalsingh's second against the proposed Debe to Mon Desir segment of the Solomon Hochoy Highway extension. In 2012, he ended his 21-day strike after the country's prime minister agreed to establishing an independent committee to reevaluate the project. Kublalsingh renewed his protest after construction continued.
Kublalsingh, who heads the Highway Re-route Movement, said he will disband his current strike if the government suspends work on the controversial portion of the highway, and agrees to mediation in consideration of the Movement's alternative route proposal.
The government has argued that the connector is vital to the island's economic development while environmentalists claim that the 9-mile stretch of road will likely be used to expand tar sands development in the area.
"All the things that need to be in place for tar sands mining [in Trinidad] are in place," Canadian activist Macdonald Stainsby told VICE News. Citing Stainsby, VICE listed other recent developments which point to this, including: "a new power station in the area, a recently upgraded bitumen-oil refinery, a new desalination plant, and business meetings between the Trinidad and Tobago government and Canadian mining companies."
"Of course, I'm prepared to die for this cause," Kublalsingh told Reuters on Friday. Though recently hospitalized in critical condition, Kublalsingh said he is still mentally alert and "spiritually connected."
Earlier this year, Kublalsignh gave a TED Talk on the monetization of natural resources and the "modern investment state" that has driven the development and destruction of key ecosystems locally and globally.
"What's happening in Trinidad and Tobago is of course a microcosm of what's happening internationally, globally," he said. Describing what he called "viral capital coming from your left side" and "viral global warming coming from your right side," Kublalsignh said that this can only lead to "the fragmentation of organic life as we know it on the planet."
"So, what do we do about it?" he asks. Quoting playwright Harold Pinter, Kublalsingh said that when faced with an atrocity, people behave in different ways: some people are just oblivious and go on living normally, some are aware of what's going on but feel they cannot stop it, some people get up and join the atrocity, and some people get up and fight the atrocity.
You can watch his entire presentation below.
An island not for sale: Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh at TEDxPortofSpainWayne Kublalsingh explores the thinning and withering away of organic life. He speaks of the social equations which involves the ...
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