WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Drug trafficking organizations must be treated the way foreign terrorist organizations were treated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Tuesday, pledging that the campaign against them will be a years-long mission.
"We must treat them like the al Qaedas of the world," Patel said at a Senate hearing, a day after President Donald Trump said the U.S. military carried out a strike on a second Venezuelan boat in international waters.
Trump said three men were killed in the strike and that the boat was carrying drugs, although he provided no evidence for that assertion.
"The manhunt after 9/11 took some years and this is going to be a years-long mission," Patel said.
The Trump administration also has provided scant information about a similar strike on September 2, despite demands from members of Congress that the government justify the action. It has alleged those onboard were members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and said 11 people were killed.
The Venezuelan government has said none of the people killed in the first strike belonged to Tren de Aragua.
The decision to blow up suspected drug vessels instead of seizing them and apprehending their crews is unusual and evokes memories of the U.S. fight against militant groups like al Qaeda.
Critics said the action in international waters was the latest example of Trump testing the limit of the law as he expands the scope of presidential power. The U.S. Constitution requires that Congress, not the president, must declare war.
Patel's comments echoed recent remarks from U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as the administration has sought to explain why it has made major deployments to the southern Caribbean for an anti-narcotics mission.
"A foreign terrorist organization poisoning your people with drugs coming from a drug cartel is no different than al Qaeda, and they will be treated as such," Hegseth said earlier this month.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; additional reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; writing by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alistair Bell)
