Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Dec. 2.
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The Trump administration is persisting with its controversial campaign to target and kill the crews of small boats allegedly smuggling drugs from South America into the US, but in the face of allegations that these strikes are tantamount to executions without trial, the White House is sending a confusing message about who actually gave each order to use lethal force.
The details matter because some in Congress suggest the orders are illegal and could ultimately lead to service members facing prosecution.
In response to reports that the first of these incidents included a second round of strikes, which killed two survivors on the burning boat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that he authorized and observed the initial strikes, but did not see the second round.
“I saw that first attack live,” Hegseth said at a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “As you can imagine, at the War Department, we’ve got a lot of stuff to do. So I moved on to my next meeting.”
Hegseth said he did not see survivors of the September 2 attack in the video and that the following attacks to sink the boat, which killed the survivors, were ordered by Admiral Frank M. Bradley.
“A few hours later, I learned that the commander had made (a decision), which he had full authority to make,” Hegseth said. “And by the way, Admiral Bradley ultimately made the right decision to sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”
Analysis of Hegseth’s responsibility for that order has drawn fire, including from Representative Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
“Yes. It was a CYA moment for Hegseth,” Smith said, speaking on NPR morning edition“He’s the Secretary of Defense. You know, he’s putting them in a terrible situation by giving them these highly questionable orders. And then, to then come out and say, hey, it was that guy, not me. That’s not leadership, and that’s not honest. I feel like Secretary Hegseth is the one who is responsible for what happened here.”
Since the first attack by the US military on a small boat in the Caribbean three months ago, a debate has raged within the military as lethal force used on civilian crew and passengers appears to be illegal. The Trump Justice Department provided a memorandum to Congress stating that the US is in a non-international armed conflict with drug cartels, and the attacks are under the laws of war. But Smith says that memo was also vague.
Smith said, “This memo explaining the legal justification for this is fascinating because half of it says, this is why this is an armed conflict, why these narcissistic terrorist groups are such a threat. They’re doing all these terrible things. And the other half says, no, this is not a war, therefore, we don’t need to get permission from Congress.” “They say it’s legal, and yet they worked very hard to make sure it wasn’t Hegseth who ordered it. So obviously, they’re a little nervous about that point.”
After this the questions are becoming more acute Washington stateT reported that the September 2 incident involved two attacks on a boat, and that survivors of the initial attack were visible when they were attacked 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, killing surrendered or helpless enemies would be a war crime, according to military experts, including a group of former JAG officers who have been critical of the Trump administration. Similar questions are expected when Admiral Bradley appears before Congress on Thursday.
But talk of war crimes emboldens the notion that the US could be at war with the entire criminal world of drug trafficking in any legal sense, says Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. He said, “It is not a question of a war crime because there is no war, there is no armed conflict, so it cannot be a war crime. It is essentially murder.”
“It creates a dangerous blueprint for a United States that believes it can strike anywhere on the planet without rules, limits, or consequences.”
He also said that when a country behaves as if it is at war when it is not, “it dismantles the rules that keep civilians safe and gives governments license to kill without the safeguards required by international law.”
Both President Trump and Hegseth again justified the attacks on Tuesday. Hegseth said there was strong evidence that each attack was carried out by someone he called a “narcoterrorist”, but he refused to show the evidence. Trump claimed that his efforts have saved hundreds of thousands of lives — more than double the estimated annual death rate from all drug overdoses in the U.S., most of which is actually caused by fentanyl that doesn’t come into the country by boat.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul, meanwhile, posted a letter he received after an information request that showed 21% of Coast Guard interventions involved no medication, suggesting that at least one in five fatalities may have been accidental.
in the cabinet meeting On Tuesday, Trump suggested without showing evidence that drug trafficking had declined since the boat attacks began, but he claimed to know nothing about the details.
Trump said, “As far as the attack is concerned, I did, you know, I still haven’t got a lot of the information, because I trust Pete, but to me, it was an attack. It wasn’t strike one, strike two, strike three.” “Someone asked me questions about the second attack. I didn’t know about the second attack. I didn’t know anything about the people, I was not involved in it.”
But speaking at the Pentagon earlier Tuesday, Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said, “At the end of the day, the secretary and the president are the ones directing these attacks.”
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