Observers say a new report in the Washington Post details potentially illegal activity by the defense secretary.
By Ed Mazza
Critics are calling out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over a stunning new report in the Washington Post that he ordered a U.S. strike force to kill everyone on board a suspected drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean in September.
When two survivors were seen in the wreckage, commanders launched a second “double tap” strike to kill them, the Post reported on Friday.
“The order was to kill everybody,” one source with direct knowledge of the operation told the Post, which said the two survivors were “blown out of the water.”
New York University law professor Ryan Goodman wrote on X that the Post report details a “textbook war crime/extrajudicial killing.”
He wrote in a follow-up post that the administration’s claim to lawmakers that the second strike was to clear debris “seems to be a bold-face falsehood.”
President Donald Trump has justified the strikes by saying they have targeted drug traffickers, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said they know exactly who is on each boat and what they are carrying.
“We track them from the very beginning. We know who’s on them, who they are, where they’re coming from, what they have on them,” Rubio said last month.
Hegseth on Friday called the Post report “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory” and said the “declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists.”
He did not challenge the specifics of the Post report but insisted that the operation is “lawful under both U.S. and international law.”
Critics disagreed, firing back on X: