Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his team are facing questions and criticism after the Washington Post reported that he ordered the killing of “everybody” during an operation targeting an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea, which controversially included a follow-up strike on survivors of an initial strike. Hegseth has rejected suggestions that he may have committed war crimes, defending the strikes on purported “narco-terrorists” as “lawful” and even posting an illustration that seemingly makes light of the situation. But as the controversy has grown, he and the White House are naming someone else as ultimately responsible for the decision to strike again.
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“Let’s make one thing crystal clear,” Hegseth posted Monday night on X. “Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.” He added that the U.S. was “fortunate to have such men protecting us.”
The White House also appeared to point to Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, who lawmakers are now hounding amid concerns about the legality of the strikes in early September. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that Hegseth authorized Bradley to conduct the second strike, as part of the U.S.’s larger mission to combat narco-terrorism.
“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,” Leavitt told reporters.
Critics and observers have suggested Hegseth and the White House are throwing Bradley under the bus. “He is selling out Admiral Bradley and sending chills down the spines of his chain of command, who now know their boss will sell them out if he is taking heat. A case study in how not to lead,” posted Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “How to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him,” posted Fox News Channel’s chief political analyst Brit Hume.
Here’s what to know.
Why are the strikes controversial?
The Post reported, based on interviews and accounts from seven individuals, that Hegseth issued a spoken directive to “kill everybody” in the Sept. 2 strike on a boat traveling in international waters from Venezuela—among the earliest attacks in the Caribbean by the Trump Administration in its increasingly war-like anti-narco-terrorism campaign.
Eleven people were on board the boat when the U.S. military fired a missile at it, the Post reported. But as the smoke cleared, they discovered two survivors clinging to the wreckage. Bradley, who monitored the operation from Fort Bragg, N.C., ordered another strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive. Bradley also reportedly said that the survivors remained legitimate targets since they could contact other drug traffickers to rescue them and their cargo. The survivors were subsequently “blown apart in the water,” the Post reported.
The Intercept first reported on the follow-up attack that killed the survivors in September.
International law experts told TIME that, if the report is true, Hegseth, Bradley, and others involved may face criminal liability for the killing of survivors. “There is no actual armed conflict here, so this is murder,” Rebecca Ingber, a law professor at Cardozo Law School, said. Laura Dickinson, a law professor at George Washington University, said that “the intentional killing of a protected person—someone who is a civilian or a person who is ‘hors de combat’ because they have laid down their arms or are shipwrecked at sea—is a war crime.”
Speaking to the press aboard Air Force One on Sunday, President Donald Trump said, “I don’t know anything about it,” when asked about the Post’s report of Hegseth’s potentially illegal order. “[Hegseth] said, he said, he did not say that. And I believe him,” Trump said. But even he seemed uneasy with the idea of a second strike to eliminate survivors, adding: “No, I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. 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.”
Who is Adm. Mitch Bradley?
Bradley, according to his Navy biography, is a 1991 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He became a Navy SEAL in 1992, was among the first to deploy into Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks, and has since commanded at all levels of special operations. He is married and has four children.
During the Sept. 2 strikes, Bradley was leading the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees elite military teams, handles complex and sensitive military missions, and at times works with the CIA. In October, he assumed command of the JSOC’s parent group, the United States Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s special operations in more than 80 countries.
What happens next?
Lawmakers in both chambers and across party lines have already launched probes into the report of the second strike.
The House Armed Services Committee, in a statement by chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R, Ala.) and ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D, Wash.), said their panel is “committed to providing rigorous oversight” of the Defense Department’s operations in the Caribbean: “We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R, Neb.), a vocal intraparty critic of the Trump Administration who’s also on the House Armed Services Committee, told ABC News Sunday, “When people want to surrender, you don’t kill them, and they have to pose an imminent threat. It’s hard to believe that two people on a raft, trying to survive, would pose an imminent threat.”
But he also appeared to give Hegseth the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, ‘Kill everybody, kill the survivors,’ because that’s a clear violation of the law of war,” Bacon said. “I’m very suspicious that he would’ve done something like that because it would go against common sense.” (Then again, Bacon has previously referred to Hegseth’s Department of Defense as the “Department of Dense.”)
“We need a bipartisan, national hearing,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D, Calif.). “I am calling on @PeteHegseth and Admiral Bradley to testify and explain their actions to the nation.”
Sens. Roger Wicker (R, Miss.) Wicker and Jack Reed (D, R.I.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee also issued a joint statement, saying that their committee already sent questions to the Defense Department and that it “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D, Ariz.), a member of the Armed Services Committee who has come under fire from the Trump Administration for being one of a group of Democrats who warned military servicemembers to resist illegal orders, told reporters at a press conference on Monday that he’s spoken with Wicker about calling on Hegseth and Adm. Bradley to appear before the committee. Kelly added, “If what seems to have happened actually happened, I’m really worried about our servicemembers.”