Pete Hegseth's excuse for stonewalling Congress shot down by retired general
December 20, 2025
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to withhold video from one of his attacks on alleged drug boats, not only from the public but also from members on Congress, is ludicrous, according to retired US Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling.
With the Trump administration continuing their attacks, claiming they are going after narcoterrorists without providing any evidence, Hertling claimed the Donald Trump appointee’s excuse for hiding the notorious Sept. 2nd attack video showing survivors of an earlier attack being killed doesn’t hold water.
Speaking with the hosts of MS NOW’s “The Weekend” the former general explained, “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 and not coincidental to what he's already done.”
“I mean, the Department of Defense was very quick to issue the the videos of the strikes on the boats that ultimately caused their destruction,” he elaborated. “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. You can take off things or blur them out. That would that would hinder any kind of issue that the secretary is concerned about.”
“And it's now been, since September 2nd, that that initial strike occurred,” he added. “So there's been plenty of time to edit those videos or redact the classified information. So it's not just the comments by the secretary that he won't release them. It's what he then said why he wouldn't release it, and it was because they might give up classified, classified information.”
“And that's just not true. I can attest to that,” he noted.
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