A bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators has vowed to investigate reports that a “follow-on” strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean was carried out at the behest of the Pentagon’s top official. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has since denied the report, published Friday by The Washington Post, which spoke to multiple anonymous sources who said they had knowledge of the order to launch a subsequent strike and kill two survivors of the Sept. 2 attack.
House, Senate announce inquiries
The Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., was the first to announce that it would be launching inquiries into the report. In a joint statement issued Friday, the senators said that “The Committee has directed inquiries to the [Department of Defense], and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
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Their announcement was followed Saturday by a joint statement from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash.
“This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean,” the lawmakers wrote. “We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command] region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”
Since early September, the U.S. military under President Donald Trump has blown up nearly two dozen boats that it says are trafficking drugs from countries such as Venezuela, killing more than 80 people in the process.
The first of those strikes, carried out on Sept. 2, reportedly left two people on board alive. However, the Post’s reporting suggests that Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everyone” on board, as opposed to retrieving the survivors and the cargo –– a protocol the military followed during a subsequent strike.
Grounds for a war crime
According to one lawmaker, Hegseth’s alleged order could constitute a war crime.
In an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said that if the reporting is true, it’s a “clear violation” of both Defense Department policy and international law.
“And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” Kaine said. “And the questions that we’ve been asking for months are give us the evidence that the folks on board were really narcotraffickers.”
Specifically, the Geneva Conventions state that a combatant is no longer considered an enemy once they are wounded or sick, and thus rendered harmless. Likewise, the wounded individual must be “collected and cared for,” meaning military personnel must provide medical aid as if the individual were a member of their own army.
Hegseth’s response
In a post to X on Friday, Hegseth refuted the reports and accused the “fake news” of “delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
He went on to say that all of the administration’s boat strikes have been “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.”
Amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela, Trump announced via Truth Social on Saturday that “Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers” should “consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” However, it’s unclear what authority the president of the United States has to close the airspace of a foreign nation.
