Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that “a couple of hours” passed before he was made aware that a September military strike he authorized and “watched live” required an additional attack to kill two survivors, further distancing himself from an incident now facing congressional inquiry.
Speaking in the Cabinet Room alongside President Donald Trump, Hegseth delivered the most extensive public accounting yet of his involvement in the strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea. Lawmakers and law of war experts have questioned whether the episode constitutes a war crime and, if so, who bears responsibility.
“I did not personally see survivors,” he said in response to a reporter’s question, “ … because that thing was on fire and was exploded, and fire, smoke, you can’t see anything. You got digital, there’s — this is called the fog of war.”
Hegseth and Trump deflected responsibility for the killing of two survivors, pointing instead to the senior military officer in charge of the operation on Sept. 2, Adm. Frank M. Bradley. And while they praised the military for conducting the mission, both sought to make clear they had not known that a second order was given to kill the survivors as they were clinging to the boat’s wreckage.
“I didn’t know about the second strike. I didn’t know anything about people. I wasn’t involved, and I knew they took out a boat,” Trump said during a meeting with members of his cabinet.
Spokespeople for U.S. Special Operations Command, where Bradley is the top commander, have not commented publicly on the matter.
Hegseth said he had observed a live video of the initial attack before he “moved on to my next meeting.”
“I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth said, noting that he did not witness the entire sequence of events that unfolded next.
“As you can imagine,” he added, at the Defense Department “we got a lot of things to do. So I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever. … 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, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”
The Washington Post reported Friday that Hegseth gave a spoken order before the first missile strike to kill the entire crew of a vessel thought to be ferrying narcotics in the Caribbean, the first of nearly 20 such strikes directed by the administration since early September. When two survivors were detected, Bradley directed another strike to comply with Hegseth’s order that no one be left alive, people with direct knowledge of the matter told the Post.
The Trump administration has said 11 people were killed as a result of the operation.
It is unclear whether separate written orders explicitly detailed plans to kill suspected drug traffickers or contained more comprehensive information about what options were available in the event of any survivors. Military officials, in planning subsequent missions, have put greater emphasis on rescuing those who have survived the strike, according to people familiar with the matter. It is unclear who directed the change in protocol and when.
Hegseth has called the Post’s reporting “fabricated,” even as he and other administration officials have corroborated aspects of it in recent days.
For instance, in his remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Hegseth said he was directly involved early on as the administration began its military campaign in Latin America.
“Now, the first couple of strikes, as you would, as any leader would want, you want to own that responsibility,” he said. “So I said, I’m going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it’s the right strike.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Monday that Hegseth had authorized Bradley to conduct the strikes on Sept. 2, asserting that the admiral “worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed.”
Legal experts have said the survivors who were killed did not pose an imminent threat to U.S. personnel and thus were illegitimate targets. A group of former military lawyers and senior leaders who have scrutinized the Trump administration’s military activities in Latin America said in a statement issued over the weekend that the targeting of defenseless people is prohibited — regardless of whether the United States is in an armed conflict, conducting law enforcement or other military operations.
On Capitol Hill, two Republican-led committees have opened bipartisan fact-finding inquiries into the attack. Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said he spoke this week with Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Dan Caine, and that he expects to speak with Bradley also.
Wicker has said that he is seeking video and audio recordings of the strikes and that once those materials are received, he will decide how to proceed.
Lawmakers in the Senate and the House have criticized the administration for withholding information related to its military campaign and the legal arguments supporting the deadly boat strikes, even as Hegseth has vowed to continue the attacks.
In October, Wicker and his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), published two letters they had sent to the Pentagon weeks earlier requesting videos and orders documenting the strikes, which so far have killed more than 80 people. To date, the Pentagon has not complied, Wicker and Reed have said.
