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US admiral Frank Bradley has defended his order to launch a second strike that killed survivors of an earlier attack on an alleged drug trafficking boat, as President Donald Trump and defence secretary Pete Hegseth seek to distance themselves from the controversial action.
Bradley, who oversaw the September 2 operation as the head of Joint Special Operations Command, was on Capitol Hill on Thursday with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Dan Caine to brief senior lawmakers behind closed doors about the double strike in the Caribbean.
The senior military officers played the raw video of the initial strike, which left two survivors, and the follow-up strike that killed them. A clip that Trump previously shared of the attack only showed the first strike.
After the meeting Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said that Bradley “defended the decisions taken” and “confirmed that there had not been a kill-them-all order, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter”.
Hegseth has been caught in a firestorm since The Washington Post reported last week that the secretary had ordered all 11 people aboard the boat to be killed. The legality of a second strike has been called into question, with some lawmakers accusing Hegseth of committing a war crime.
The defence department’s law of war manual states that the shipwrecked “should not be knowingly attacked, fired upon, or unnecessarily interfered with”, and that “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal”.
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Himes told reporters of the video, adding that the clip of the strikes showed the “United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors”.
“There’s a whole set of contextual items that the admiral explained, yes, they were carrying drugs. [But] they were not in the position to continue their mission in any way,” Himes said.
He also called on the Trump administration to release publicly all of the footage of the September 2 attack, something the president suggested on Wednesday he would be willing to do. “Whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem,” he said.
Hegseth said during a cabinet meeting this week that he oversaw the first strike, but did not “stick around” for the follow-up attack, saying that it was ordered by Bradley, who now heads US Special Operations Command. Hegseth added that Bradley made the “right decision”.
The president and his administration have closed ranks around the defence secretary. The follow-up strike has been widely criticised by lawmakers from both parties, with the House and Senate armed services committees opening investigations into the attack.
Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate armed services committee, said on Thursday that his committee’s “investigation is going to be done by the numbers”.
“We’ll find out the ground truth.”
Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas who sits on the armed services committee, called the strikes “righteous”, adding: “These are narco terrorists who are trafficking drugs that are destined for the United States to kill . . . millions of Americans.”
The officers’ appearance on Capitol Hill came days after the Pentagon’s watchdog found that Hegseth put American troops at risk and violated department policy when he shared plans for strikes against Houthi rebels in Signal chats in March.
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The unclassified report, which was released on Thursday, found that Hegseth “sent sensitive, nonpublic, operational information that he determined did not require classification over the Signal chat on his personal cell phone”.
Use of his personal mobile “did not comply” with Pentagon policy since the Signal app is a commercial app not approved for transmitting non-public information.
“Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD [Department of Defense] information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives,” the report concluded.
Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor in Washington
