The Department of War is thwarting congressional oversight of the Trump administration’s attack on a boat off the coast of Venezuela earlier this month.

On Monday afternoon, as the full details of the first drone strike remained secret, Trump announced that U.S. forces conducted a second attack on a boat in the U.S. Southern Command are of responsibility, which covers the Caribbean and all of South America. In a post on TruthSocial, he wrote that the strike killed three people. “BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” he wrote.

Although the president is posting edited videos of these strikes, information about the planning, execution, and legal justification for this campaign on alleged “narcoterrorists” is being kept secret from senior congressional staffers.

Last Tuesday, senior staff from House leadership and relevant committees were barred by the Office of the Secretary of War from attending a briefing on the first attack, according to three government sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The military cited “alternative compensatory control measures” — the term for enhanced security procedures designed to keep information under wraps — as the reason.

The War Department has attempted to conceal numerous details about the attack that killed 11 people in the Caribbean, including the fact that the vessel altered its course and appeared to have turned back toward shore prior to the strikes. Men on board were said to have survived an initial strike, The Intercept reported last week. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.

“I’m incredibly disturbed by this new reporting that the Trump Administration launched multiple strikes on the boat off Venezuela,” Rep., Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations, said of The Intercept’s coverage. “They didn’t even bother to seek congressional authorization, bragged about these killings — and teased more to come.”

A very small number of Senate and House staffers, mostly from the Armed Services committees, received highly classified briefings about the attack last Tuesday, after the military delayed the meeting for days. Staff for key members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversee war powers, were conspicuously absent.

Briefers from the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict, the civilian Pentagon appointee who oversees special operations, made it clear that the attack was not a one-off and that lethal operations would continue, according to three sources familiar with the meetings. The Department of War did not send a lawyer to the briefing, so no expert was available to comment on the legality of the attack.

A senior defense official pushed back on claims that the Pentagon was stymying oversight. “The Department did not........

© The Intercept