The Washington Post published a blockbuster report last week headlined, “Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all.”
The story concerned the first of a series of U.S. military strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela — strikes that have now killed more than 80 people.
The Post’s Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima wrote that “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody,’ one of them said.” But, “as the smoke cleared,” the American observers “got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.” That’s when, Horton and Nakashima continued, “the Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack . . . ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.”
The story, in effect, accused Hegseth of giving a “no quarter order” that would be unlawful under U.S. law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and international treaty. It also accused the operation’s military and civilian leadership of subsequently ordering an illegal “double tap” strike on the two survivors, who at the time were hors de combat, i.e., out of combat, posing no imminent threat, and entitled to humane treatment.
Additional reporting from the New York Times, Hegseth’s public comments, and a close reading of the initial Washington Post report itself cast serious doubt on this damning narrative.
The Times has reported that five U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter say that Hegseth “did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish” the mission and that the secretary of defense’s “order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.”
Moreover, in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Hegseth publicly denied the harshest reading of the Post’s story — that he specifically ordered the killing of the men in the water after realizing there were survivors. Hegseth said that he “watched that first strike live” but “didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours” afterward as he “moved on to my next meeting.” He told the press that he “learned that that commander” had given the order for the follow-on strike “a couple of hours later.”
And it’s notable that a close reading of Horton and Nakashima’s Washington Post report does not a) place Hegseth in the room when the second strike was ordered or b) quote him directly as giving any such order — which is, at best, sloppy journalism in an exposé with such an explosive and accusatory upshot.
But of course these doubts do not remove all possibility that an inappropriate or unlawful order was given by Hegseth or his uniformed subordinates, and that’s why the House and Senate Armed Services Committees — under the bipartisan leadership of Chairman Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) and ranking member Adam Smith (D., Wash.) and Chairman Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) and Senator Jack Reed (D., R.I.) — should be commended for having quickly announced that they will conduct investigations into the strikes. It has been reported that Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, the SEAL admiral in command of the operation, is set to meet with lawmakers behind closed doors today to answer questions and give his account.
While President Trump himself has said he wouldn’t have ordered the second strike, Hegseth has been defending it (although the administration has now adopted the policy of saving and repatriating survivors of the missile strikes). Hegseth has gone out of his way to say that Admiral Bradley made the “correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat” and that he stands by the admiral and “the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.” And Hegseth’s social media posts mocking the controversy by using an AI-generated image of the children’s book character Franklin the Turtle blasting “narco terrorists” out of the water have been wince-inducing.
Congress is right to exercise its oversight prerogatives in this matter, but should also take up larger concerns over the wisdom, the legality, and the constitutional probity of the Trump administration’s military campaign in the Caribbean in the first place.
The Trump administration is insisting on making an overused metaphor — the “war” on drugs — into a reality without due cause.
No matter its ill effects here at home, cocaine trafficking is not an act of war against the United States, and it is not terrorism. Under longstanding U.S. law, it is an activity that is deterred and punished via criminal prosecution in our courts. Drug boats are appropriately interdicted by boarding them on the high seas and seizing their cargo, not via missile strikes.
And yet since this administration wants to send a deterrent message to the traffickers — and, by extension, Nicolás Maduro — it has resorted to the strikes. It claims that cocaine shipments — many of which are not even destined for our country — are the functional equivalent of terrorist attacks that justify using the power of the U.S. military to wage war against them.
Pete Hegseth and Admiral Bradley may have been unfairly maligned by the Washington Post, but that does not make the Trump administration’s military campaign in the Caribbean prudent or constitutional.