Three key questions about the US ship attack that killed survivors

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a top military commander face serious questions about why the United States killed survivors of a military attack on a suspected drug ship on Sept. 2, when the laws of war say survivors on the battlefield must be rescued.

The White House acknowledges that a second strike was ordered against a ship already attacked by the military in the Caribbean Sea, and ABC News has confirmed that survivors of the initial attack died as a result.

Democrats say that alone could be enough to suggest a war crime occurred. The laws of war require either party to the conflict to provide care for wounded and shipwrecked troops.

Hegseth told Fox News the next day that he watched the operation unfold in real time and defended it as legal. It appears to rely on the same legal manual developed during the war on terrorism, in which the United States justified the killing of people transporting weapons that it said posed a threat to American forces.

“We’re going to conduct oversight and we’re going to try to get to the facts,” Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday. “And to the extent that we can watch video and see what the orders were, we’ll have a lot more information than just news reports.”

Here are three key questions about orders to kill drug traffickers:

What exactly did Hegseth order?

A key question for lawmakers is what Hegseth’s initial “execution order” included and what intelligence was used to justify it.

According to the Washington Post, Sources say Hegseth told the military to make sure none of the 11 passengers aboard the ship survived. After the initial attack left two people clinging to the rubble, the Post says, Admiral Mitch Bradley made the decision, as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, to launch a second attack to carry out Hegseth’s initial order to kill everyone.

Hegseth called the report a “fabrication,” while his chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the allegations were a “fake news narrative that Secretary Hegseth gave some kind of ‘kill all survivors’ order.”

However, the Pentagon declined to answer questions about what was included in Hegseth’s initial order.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt only confirmed that a second attack occurred and did not address any questions about survivors. When asked if Admiral Bradley had made the decision on his own, Leavitt suggested it was correct, replying, “And it was within his authority to do so.”

Why did Admiral Bradley order further attacks after seeing survivors?

Multiple sources described Bradley, a former Navy SEAL, as a deeply experienced and widely respected commander. By the time of the September 2 attack, Bradley had already spent time overseeing special operations missions in the Middle East under US Central Command and had assumed the Joint Special Operations Command, a global command dedicated to preparing and executing special operations missions in some of the most challenging and complex operating environments.

When President Donald Trump nominated Bradley to take charge of US Special Operations Command this fall, the Senate overwhelmingly approved his nomination by voice vote.

Eric Oehlerich, an ABC News contributor and former Navy SEAL who served under Bradley during the war on terrorism, said he had never seen Bradley cross the boundaries of the law.

Oehlerich said that if Bradley ordered subsequent strikes on Sept. 2, as the White House suggested, the decision would have been based on Hegseth’s initial order as well as the intelligence community’s conclusions about why the suspected smugglers on the ships were a threat to the United States.

Bradley also would have sought advice from a military lawyer present in the room, he said.

“There is not a single commander that is sitting in a position of authority that doesn’t have an attorney as the person closest to him sitting there watching at all times,” Oehlerich said.

The attack would also have been directly monitored by Hegseth himself, as he told Fox News on September 3, saying he had seen it “live.” In a post on X on Monday, Hegseth suggested only that the operation was Bradley’s decision.

“I support him and the combat decisions he has made, on the 9/2 mission and all others since,” Hegseth wrote.

Bradley declined to comment but was expected to brief lawmakers later this week.

Who was murdered? And were they a threat to the United States?

Hegseth’s reasoning for killing drug dealers appears to be the same as that used after 9/11, when Congress authorized the military to use force against targets linked to Al Qaeda. That authority allowed commanders in places like Iraq and Syria to kill people carrying improvised explosive devices, which he said posed an immediate threat to U.S. forces stationed in the region.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump argued that people who smuggle illegal narcotics were as dangerous to Americans as al-Qaeda terrorists. He declared that several drug cartels would be considered “foreign terrorist organizations.”

Legal experts have rejected the comparison between drug traffickers and al Qaeda or ISIS fighters. They also point out that Congress has not granted any type of authorization for the use of force.

A key question remains about who exactly is aboard the ships and exactly what threat they posed, an assessment that would have been made by the intelligence community and approved by Hegseth.

Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he is still waiting for information about the role U.S. intelligence played in the attacks and whether the attacks are having a strategic impact. Bradley was expected to brief House lawmakers on Thursday.

“If confirmed, whoever issued that order needs to get the hell out of Washington,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina. “And if it’s not proven, whoever created the anger should be fired.”