White House says admiral directed second strike that killed drug boat survivors in ‘self-defense’

The White House has confirmed that the admiral overseeing a US military operation against alleged drug-carrying boats ordered a second strike that killed two survivors, an attack that has intensified legal scrutiny of the Trump administration’s deadly campaign.

Following new reporting on the September 2 strike and allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered military personnel to “kill everyone” aboard the ship, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt confirmed that Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley had issued the order to fire on the ship for the second time in the Caribbean.

At the time of the attack, Bradley headed the Joint Special Operations Command, which operates under the US Special Operations Command and is responsible for conducting generally classified military operations. He was later promoted to head the parent organization.

Asked to clarify whether Hegseth ordered the second strike on the boat, Levitt told reporters that Bradley — not Hegseth — gave the order and that the veteran naval officer was “well within his authority and within the law” when he did it.

“He ordered the engagement to destroy the boat and eliminate the threat of narco-terrorists,” she said.

Levitt added that the strikes “were carried out in international waters and in accordance with the laws of armed conflict.”

The Sept. 2 strike, the first of more than a dozen attacks in recent months that have killed more than 80 people, was “acted in self-defense to protect Americans” and “to protect vital United States interests,” she said.

As the two survivors emerge from the wreckage, Bradley issues orders to follow Hegseth’s alleged instructions to “kill them all.” The Washington PostCiting officials with direct knowledge of the operation.

According to the report, the two men were “blown separately into the water”.

News of Hegseth’s alleged command follows growing questions about the Trump administration’s deadly campaign and accusations that the attacks amounted to extrajudicial killings, which experts on the law of war are calling out. independent Directly labeled as murder and war crimes.

According to the Pentagon’s own law of the war manual, people “wounded, sick, or shipwrecked” on the high seas are supposed to be “respected and protected in all circumstances” by U.S. forces, even during wartime.

The Defense Department manual specifically states that “making them the object of an attack is strictly prohibited.”

But how her claim that the attacks on the survivors were “in accordance with the laws of armed conflict” was suppressed when the Pentagon’s own directives clearly say otherwise, Levitt declined to elaborate and instead repeated her initial prepared statement.

A day earlier, Donald Trump told reporters that Hegseth told him “he did not order the death of those two people.”

“I didn’t want this — not a second strike,” the president told reporters Sunday. “The first strike was very deadly.”

Levitt also defended Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted in a US court last year of leading a conspiracy to enrich a cartel – a charge at the heart of the president’s current military pressure campaign against Venezuela.

“The people of Honduras have highlighted [Trump] That’s how former President Hernandez was established,” Levitt said.

She repeated claims from Hernandez’s legal team that her case was “over-prosecuted” and “illegal” under Joe Biden’s administration.

“He is certainly within his constitutional rights to sign waivers to whoever he deems worthy,” she said.

Democratic and Republican members of both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee have pledged “robust oversight” of the Pentagon as members of Congress join growing calls for an investigation into alleged criminal activity.

The Pentagon initially declined to comment on Hegseth’s alleged order, but the secretary later issued a lengthy statement at X defending the campaign, without denying whether he had ordered officials to “kill everyone” on the boats even though there was no immediate threat to the United States.

“As usual, fake news is providing more fabricated, inflammatory and defamatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” he wrote Friday. “Our current actions in the Caribbean are legal under United States and international law, including all actions in compliance with the laws of armed conflict – and are endorsed by the best military and civilian lawyers up and down the chain of command.”