WASHINGTON The White House on Monday redirected responsibility for the deaths of survivors from a U.S. military strike on a suspected drug-smuggling vessel, distancing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and placing the blame on the commanding admiral.
The U.S. Department of Defenses Law of War Manual explicitly states that targeting shipwreck survivors is an unlawful act. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal, the manual notes.
Despite this, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted the strike complied with the law while also maintaining, echoing President Donald Trump, that Hegseth had been unaware survivors were killed.
On Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to carry out these kinetic operations. Admiral Bradley acted fully within his authority and the law, ensuring the vessel was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated, Leavitt said.
At the time of the strike near Trinidad, Frank Bradley led the Joint Special Operations Command. According to a Washington Post report, Bradley conveyed the directive from Hegseth to kill everybody, sending Navy SEALs back to the crippled craft to eliminate the two survivors clinging to debris.
Bradley was promoted in October to lead U.S. Special Operations Command.
Leavitt referred additional inquiries to what Trump informally calls the Department of War, though officials there said they had no information beyond Hegseths recent social media remarks dismissing the report as fake news and sharing a cartoon attempting to justify killing alleged smugglers.
Trump also posted sections of a video showing the assault, boasting that 11 narcoterrorists had been killed.
The presence of 11 people on the vessel, however, casts doubt on the smuggling claim as extra passengers significantly reduce available space for narcotics. Most previous strikes have targeted boats carrying only three or four individuals.
Since the campaign of strikes began in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, Trump and administration officials have issued statements that have been misleading or demonstrably false. Trump has repeatedly asserted the operations were aimed at stopping fentanyl shipments and has claimed fentanyl was present on the destroyed vessels, though the administration has offered no evidence. The boats instead resemble those commonly used by low-level cocaine couriers.
Trump has also insisted the craft were heading toward the United States a claim contradicted by the fact that the small boats lack the fuel capacity for such a journey without multiple stops.
Over Thanksgiving, Trump further complicated his anti-smuggling stance by pardoning former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernndez, convicted in the U.S. for directing the trafficking of roughly 500 tons of cocaine. Leavitt defended the decision, repeating Trumps unsubstantiated claim that Hernndez was the victim of politically motivated prosecution under the Biden administration.
His court-appointed attorney had only three weeks to prepare. He said his conviction was lawfare by a leftist party that, quote, cut a deal with the Biden-Harris administration, Leavitt stated. The president listened to concerns and exercised his constitutional authority to grant clemency as he judged appropriate.