White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command acted “within his authority and the law” when striking an alleged drug boat a second time on Sept. 2 after the first strike left survivors.
The White House has scrambled in recent days to respond to reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered an elite military unit to kill everyone on board an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in early September, leading the commander to send a second strike that killed survivors from the first attack.
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The Washington Post first reported Hegseth’s order and the second strike on Friday.
Speaking to reporters in the press briefing room, Leavitt confirmed that Hegseth authorized Admiral Frank M. Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, to conduct the strikes. “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was totally destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt’s comments appear to contradict those made by Trump on Sunday, when he told reporters that he would not have wanted the military to launch a second strike to kill survivors from the first explosion. Asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One if a second strike against survivors would be illegal, Trump said he didn’t know what happened and he’ll look into it. “But no, I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike,” Trump said. “The first strike was very lethal, it was fine, and if there were two people around—but Pete said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence in him,” Trump said.
The Sept. 2 strike was the first in a series of U.S. military attacks that have killed more than 80 people. Experts on the laws of war have pointed out that targeting alleged drug boats with military strikes isn’t legal because the U.S. is not at war with drug traffickers.
But even if the US were at war with people on those boats, giving an order to kill everyone on board, even if they are no longer in a position to fight, would amount to a war crime, those experts say. Title 18 of the U.S. code, which covers “war crimes,” includes as an example someone who ” intentionally kills…one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.”
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Hegseth and other Trump officials have repeatedly defended the strikes as lawful. On X on Friday, in the wake of the Post report, Hegseth wrote that “these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The boats and people being targeted, Hegseth wrote, are “narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people,” and that the military’s “current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”
The U.S. military will continue killing people in such strikes, Hegseth wrote on his personal X account. “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists,” he wrote.