War Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was not in the room when the order to strike an alleged drug boat a second time on Sept. 2 was given.
“I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we’ve got a lot of things to do. So I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive sight exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting.”
“A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete authority to do, and by the way, Adm. Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat,” Hegseth continued.
On Sept. 2, U.S. forces, for the first time, carried out a kinetic strike on a vessel they believed was carrying drugs. When U.S. troops realized that there were some survivors clinging to the wreckage, Navy Adm. Mitch Bradley, who led Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the operation, ordered a second strike. The Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave the order to “kill everybody,” leading to critics calling the act a war crime.
Since then, the White House has minimized Hegseth’s involvement in the second strike, saying Bradley led the operation and defended his decision.
“Adm. Bradley 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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
The news of the purported “double-tap” strikes has raised concerns among lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“The Committee is aware of recent news reports – and the Department of Defense’s initial response – regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels in the [U.S. Southern Command] area of responsibility,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and ranking member Jack Reed (D-RI) said in a joint statement. “The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
Despite the concern, the administration fervently maintains that the strikes were within the legal requirements and said Tuesday that more are expected.
“We’ve only just begun,” Hegseth said during the Cabinet meeting regarding the 21 strikes on purported drug vessels that have killed 82 alleged smugglers over the last three months. “We’ve had a bit of a pause because it’s hard to find boats to strike right now, which is the entire point.”
Hegseth had a “good conversation” with Wicker after concerns about the second strike arose, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson, who hosted the first briefing for the department’s new media corps after nearly every credentialed U.S. reporter handed in their badge in objection to the department’s new press policy.
“I can confirm that the secretary of war spoke with Sen. Wicker, and they had a good conversation where he was able to explain to him a lot of the rationale behind these strikes,” she said. “Our operations in the SOUTHCOM region are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the Law of Armed Conflict. These actions have also been approved by the best military and civilian lawyers up and down the chain of command.”
On the day the strike took place, President Donald Trump said the boat was “heading to the United States.” However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the same day that “These particular drugs were probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean.”
While the military’s operations have been constrained to strikes on suspected drug smuggling vessels so far, Trump himself has fueled speculation that these could be a precursor to a more significant operation designed to push Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power.
Earlier this week, the president increased the pressure on Maduro by warning that strikes on land against drug trafficking networks could be coming “very soon,” warning airlines, pilots, and criminal networks to avoid Venezuelan airspace.
“The department is a planning organization,” Wilson added. “We are always ready. We have plans for every single contingency, and we are going to make sure that when it comes to narco-terrorism, we’re dismantling that throughout the Western Hemisphere, and you’ve seen that in the success of our strikes.”
