Hegseth and a top military commander are facing serious questions about why the U.S. on Sept. 2 killed survivors of a military strike against a suspected drug boat.
Hegseth and a top military commander are facing serious questions about why the U.S. on Sept. 2 killed survivors of a military strike against a suspected drug boat.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a top military commander are facing serious questions about why the U.S. on Sept. 2 killed survivors of a military strike against a suspected drug boat, when the laws of war say survivors on the battlefield should be rescued.
The White House acknowledges that a second strike was ordered on a boat already hit by the military in the Caribbean Sea, and ABC News has confirmed that survivors from the initial strike were killed as a result.
Democrats say that alone could be enough to suggest a war crime occurred. The laws of war require either side in a conflict to provide care for wounded and shipwrecked troops.
Hegseth told Fox News the day after that he watched the operation unfold in real time and defended it as legal. He appears to be leaning on the same legal playbook carved out during the war on terror, in which the U.S. justified the killing of people transporting weapons that it said posed a threat to U.S. forces.
“We’re going to conduct oversight, and we’re going to try to get to the facts,” Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Monday. “And to the extent that we’re able to see videos and see what the orders were, we’ll have a lot more information other than just news reports.”
Here are three key questions about the orders to kill drug smugglers:
What did Hegseth order exactly?
A key question for lawmakers is what Hegseth’s initial “execute order” included and what intelligence was used to justify it.
According to The Washington Post, sources say Hegseth told the military to ensure that none of the 11 passengers aboard the boat should be allowed to survive. After the initial strike left two people clinging to the wreckage, the Post says, Adm. Mitch Bradley made the decision as head of the Joint Special Operations Command to launch a second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s initial order to kill everyone.
Hegseth called the report a “fabrication,” while his chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the allegations were a “fake news narrative that Secretary Hegseth gave some sort of ‘kill all survivors’ order.”
The Pentagon declined to answer questions though about what was included in Hegseth’s initial order.
On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt would confirm only that a second strike occurred and didn’t address a question about survivors. When asked if Adm. Bradley had made the decision on his own, Leavitt suggested that was accurate, replying “And he was well within his authority to do so.”
Why did Adm. Bradley order subsequent strikes after seeing survivors?
Several sources described Bradley, a former Navy SEAL, as a deeply experienced and widely respected commander. At the time of the Sept. 2 strike, Bradley had already spent time overseeing special operations missions in the Middle East under U.S. Central Command and had taken over Joint Special Operations Command, a global command devoted to preparing and executing special operations missions in some of the most challenging and complex operating environments.
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When President Donald Trump nominated Bradley to take over U.S. Special Operations Command this fall, the Senate overwhelmingly approved his nomination by voice vote.
Eric Oehlerich, an ABC News contributor and former Navy SEAL who worked under Bradley’s command during the war on terror, said he has never seen Bradley push the bounds of the law.
Oehlerich said that if Bradley ordered subsequent strikes on Sept. 2, as the White House suggested, the decision would have relied on Hegseth’s initial order as well as findings by the intelligence community about why the alleged smugglers on the boats were a threat to the U.S.
Bradley also would have sought counsel from a military lawyer in the room, he said.
“There isn’t a single commander that’s sitting in a position of authority that does not have a lawyer as the closest person to him sitting there watching the entire time,” Oehlerich said.
The attack also would have been directly overseen by Hegseth himself, as he told Fox News on Sept. 3, saying he had watched it “live.” In a post on X on Monday, Hegseth suggested only that the operation was Bradley’s call.
“I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since,” Hegseth wrote.
Bradley declined to comment but was expected to brief lawmakers later this week.
Who was killed? And were they a threat to the US?
Hegseth’s rationale for killing drug smugglers appears to be the same one used after 9/11 when Congress authorized the military to use force against targets linked to al-Qaida. That authority enabled commanders in places like Iraq and Syria to kill people transporting improvised explosive devices, which it said were an immediate threat to U.S. forces stationed in the region.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump argued that people smuggling illegal narcotics were just as dangerous to Americans as al-Qaida terrorists. He declared several drug cartels would be deemed “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Legal experts have pushed back on the comparison of drug smugglers and al-Qaida or ISIS fighters. They also note that Congress hasn’t provided any kind of authorization for using force.
A key question remains as to who exactly is onboard the boats and what threat they posed exactly — an assessment that would have been done by the intelligence community and signed off on by Hegseth.
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he is still waiting for information on the role U.S. intelligence played in the strikes and whether the attacks are having a strategic impact. Bradley was expected to brief House lawmakers on Thursday.
“If it is substantiated, whoever made that order needs to get the hell out of Washington,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “And if it is not substantiated, whoever the hell created the rage bate should be fired.”