WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the Pentagon will not publicly release unedited video of a U.S. military strike that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the Caribbean, as questions mounted in Congress about the incident and the overall buildup of U.S. military forces near Venezuela.

President Donald Trump further ramped up the pressure late Tuesday by announcing a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers into Venezuela, which has long relied on oil revenue as the lifeblood of its economy.

Hegseth said members of the Armed Services Committee in the House and Senate would have an opportunity this week to review the attack video, but did not say whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it as well.

“Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters as he exited a closed-door briefing with senators.

Trump’s Cabinet members overseeing national security were on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to defend a campaign that has killed at least 95 people in 25 known strikes on vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Overall, they defended the campaign as a success, saying it has prevented drugs from reaching American shores, and they pushed back on concerns that it is stretching the bounds of lawful warfare.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the campaign is a “counter-drug mission” that is “focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are operating in our hemisphere, undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans.”

Lawmakers have been focused on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they sift through the rationale for a broader U.S. military buildup in the region. On the eve of the briefings, the U.S. military said it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth had come “empty-handed” to the briefing, without a pledge to more broadly release the video of the Sept. 2 strike.

“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?” the New York Democrat said.

Senators on both sides of the aisle said the officials left them in the dark about Trump’s goals when it comes to President Nicolás Maduro or sending U.S. forces directly to the South American nation.

“I want to address the question, is it the goal to take him out? If it’s not the goal to take him out, you’re making a mistake,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who defended the legality of the campaign and said he wanted to see Maduro removed from power.

The U.S. has deployed warships, flown fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seized an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Maduro’s government for years has evaded U.S. oil sanctions by smuggling its crude into global supply chains on a shadow fleet of unflagged tankers.