The Trump administration is standing by its controversial campaign of targeting and killing the crews of small boats that are allegedly smuggling drugs from South America to the U.S. But in the face of charges that these strikes amount to execution without trial, the White House is sending a confusing message about who exactly gave each order to use deadly force.
The details matter as some in Congress suggest the orders are illegal and could leave servicemembers facing eventual prosecution.
In response to reports that the first of these incidents included a second round of strikes that killed two survivors on a burning boat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that he authorized and watched the initial attacks but did not watch the second round.
"I watched that first strike live," Hegseth said at a Cabinet meeting at the White House. "As you can imagine, the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I moved on to my next meeting."
Hegseth said he did not see survivors of that Sept. 2 attack on the video and that the following strikes to sink the boat, which killed the survivors, were ordered by Adm. Frank M. Bradley.
"A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the [decision], which he had the complete authority to do," Hegseth said. "And by the way, Adm. Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat."
Hegseth's parsing of responsibility for that order has drawn fire, including from Rep. Adam Smith, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
"Yeah. It was a CYA moment for Hegseth," Smith said, speaking on NPR's Morning Edition, "He's the secretary of defense. You know, he's putting them in a terrible spot by giving them these highly questionable orders. And then after that, to come out and say, hey, it was that guy, not me. That's not leadership, and it's also not honest. It seems to me Secretary Hegseth is the one who's responsible for what happened here."
Ever since the first strike by the U.S. military on a small boat in the Caribbean three months ago, a debate has stirred within the military because deadly force used on civilian crew and passengers appeared illegal. The Trump Justice Department provided Congress with a memo stating that the U.S. is in a non-international armed conflict with drug cartels, and the strikes are within the laws of war. But Smith says even that memo was ambiguous.
"This memo that's out there explaining the legal justification for this is fascinating because half of it says, this is why this is an armed conflict, why these narcoterrorist groups are such a threat. They're doing all these awful things. And the other half says, no, it's not a war, so therefore, we don't have to get permission from Congress," said Smith. "They say it's legal, and yet they went to great pains to make sure that Hegseth wasn't the one who gave the order. So obviously, they're a little nervous about that point."
Now the questions are getting sharper, after The Washington Post reported that the Sept. 2 incident included two sets of strikes on a boat, and that survivors of the initial attack were visible when they were struck again and killed. Hegseth initially denied the story and called it fake news, but on Tuesday he confirmed the basic facts.
If the United States is at war, then killing enemies who are surrendering or helpless would constitute a war crime according to military experts, including a group of former JAG officers who have been critical of the Trump administration. Questions along those lines are expected when Adm. Bradley appears before Congress on Thursday.
But talk of war crimes accepts the notion that the U.S. can even be at war with the entire criminal world of narcotrafficking in any legal sense, says Sarah Yager, Washington Director of Human Rights Watch. "It's not a question of a war crime because there's no war, there's no armed conflict, so it can't be a war crime. It is literally murder," she said.
"It sets a dangerous template for a United States that believes it can strike anywhere on the planet without rules, limits, or consequences."
She also noted that when a country acts as if it's at war when it's not, "that collapses the rules that keep civilians safe and gives governments license to kill without the safeguards international law requires."
President Trump and Hegseth both justified the strikes again on Tuesday. Hegseth said evidence was solid that each of the strikes was on what he called a "narcoterrorist" but declined to show proof. Trump claimed his efforts had saved hundreds of thousands of lives – more than double the estimated yearly death toll for all drug overdoses in the U.S., most of which are actually caused by fentanyl which does not come into the country by boat.
Meanwhile Republican Sen. Rand Paul posted a letter he received after an information request showing that 21% of Coast Guard interdictions turn up no drugs, suggesting that at least one in five of the deadly strikes could be in error.
At the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump suggested, without showing evidence, that drug trafficking has dropped since the boat strikes began, but he also claimed to know nothing about the details.
"As far as the attack is concerned, I did, you know, I still haven't gotten a lot of information, because I rely on Pete, but to me, it was an attack. It wasn't one strike, two strikes, three strikes," Trump said. "Somebody asked me a question about the second strike. I didn't know about the second strike. I didn't know anything about people, I wasn't involved in it."
But speaking at the Pentagon earlier on Tuesday, press secretary Kingsley Wilson said, "At the end of the day, the secretary and the president are the ones directing these strikes."
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