War Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the deadly Sept. 2 military strike on a suspected drug-running vessel in the Caribbean Sea, but did not direct the killing of any survivors of the initial attack, according to a new report.
The New York Times, citing five US officials, reported Tuesday that Hegseth’s initial order to destroy the boat, its alleged drug cargo and anyone on board did not specify what should happen if survivors remained.
Adm. Frank Bradley, the head of US Special Operations Command, ultimately signed off on both the initial strike and several follow-up strikes that killed 11 people.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the subsequent strike, which targeted two survivors of the initial hit, was in direct response to Hegseth’s order to “kill everybody” on board the vessel.
The Times sources insisted that Hegseth did not give Bradley any orders at all during the operation and was not aware in real time that passengers were clinging to the wreckage.
“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narcoterrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday. “With respect to the strikes in question on Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes.”
Bradley, Leavitt added, “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”
“Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” President Trump told reporters Sunday night aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. “And I believe him.”
The GOP-led House and Senate Armed Services Committee have begun investigations into the Sept. 2 strike, which some lawmakers have suggested could be a war crime if the execution of survivors was ordered.
“It’s a long-held rule that survivors of the ship attack are no longer combatants, and an air crew member in a parachute is no longer a combatant,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a former member of the US Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, told CNN Monday night. “You’re out of the fight.
“I don’t know what the facts are, but that’s general law. We’ll see what the facts are.”
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