In the minutes after U.S. forces attacked a suspected drug smuggling boat near Trinidad, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander overseeing the operation, faced a choice.
A laser-guided bomb had killed nine of the 11 people on board, sunk the boat’s motor and capsized the vessel’s front end, according to people who have viewed or been briefed on a classified video of the operation. As smoke from the blast cleared, a live surveillance feed provided by a U.S. aircraft high overhead showed two men had survived and were attempting to flip the wreckage.
Ahead of the Sept. 2 mission, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given an order to U.S. forces to kill the passengers, sink the boat and destroy the drugs, three people familiar with the operation said. It appeared to Bradley that none of those objectives had been achieved, the admiral would later recount for lawmakers.
The video feed showed that the two men were struggling to stay atop the flotsam, which people who’ve seen the footage described as roughly the size of a dining room table. Bradley turned to the military lawyer advising him and requested input, according to members of Congress who spoke with him privately last week and people later briefed on those conversations. Under the law of armed conflict, were the men now “shipwrecked” and therefore out of the fight, rendering them unlawful targets?
The admiral decided that definition did not apply, these people said. Instead, what Bradley explained to lawmakers left some with the impression that there was a prevailing lack of certainty — about the existence of any drugs beneath the wreckage and whether the survivors had a means to call for help or intended to surrender — when he concluded that further action was warranted.
He ordered a second strike, killing both men. Moments earlier, the video feed had shown them waving their arms and looking skyward, people who saw the footage said. It was unclear, they added, why they were doing so.
The 30-plus minutes that elapsed between the first strike and the second has become the most consequential moment in Bradley’s three-decade military career — one that includes direct involvement in more than 1,000 lethal strikes governed by the law of armed conflict central to understanding the events of Sept. 2 and whether the strike survivors were lawful targets. The episode has put the admiral and his advisers under a spotlight alongside Hegseth, who has expressed support for Bradley while attempting to distance himself from the fallout.
Bradley defended his actions when summoned to Capitol Hill last week, telling lawmakers he weighed the fate of the survivors with the understanding that the Trump administration has argued illicit drugs are weapons responsible for killing Americans, and that those who traffic them are not criminals but enemy combatants. U.S. intelligence, he said, showed that everyone on the boat was a “narco-terrorist,” consistent with the administration’s definition, which allowed for deadly force. His testimony provided lawmakers with the fullest account of the operation since the publication of a Washington Post report on Nov. 28 revealing Hegseth’s authorization ahead of the first attack to kill the entire crew and Bradley’s order of a second strike that killed the two survivors.
Law of war experts and some lawmakers have challenged the admiral’s reasoning and cast doubt on the lawfulness of using the military to kill alleged criminals.
The military lawyer who advised the admiral, whom The Post is not identifying because they serve in a secretive unit, explained to Bradley how the law of armed conflict defines “shipwrecked,” these people said. International law defines “shipwrecked” persons as those who “are in peril at sea” as a result of a mishap affecting their vessel “and who refrain from any act of hostility.” Combatants who are shipwrecked receive special protection because, unlike troops on land, they cannot take refuge, experts note.
Bradley spent about eight hours meeting with more than a dozen lawmakers Dec. 4. Four people familiar with those sessions said that he affirmed having sought real-time legal advice, but that he did not say whether his military lawyer considered the survivors shipwrecked and out of the fight.
There was dissent in the operations room over whether the survivors were viable targets after the first strike, according to two people. What the lawyer advised, though, and whether they rendered a definitive opinion remains unclear.
A spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command, where Bradley is the top commander, declined to comment. The military attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Former military lawyers said that in such situations a commander’s top legal adviser would be expected to offer an assessment, but their role is only to advise, not to approve a strike.
This report is based on the accounts of 10 people who either spoke directly with Bradley on Capitol Hill last week, were briefed on his conversations afterward or are otherwise familiar with the operation. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is highly sensitive and Bradley’s communication with lawmakers occurred in classified settings.
The chain of command
Two Republican-led committees in Congress have opened inquiries into the Sept. 2 operation, though on Tuesday, Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Alabama), who heads the House Armed Services Committee, said that he was satisfied with the information he had received and planned to end his probe once other members of the panel are given an opportunity to see unedited video of the operation, as he has. A separate Senate inquiry continues.
President Donald Trump appeared to support releasing video footage of the operation before abruptly backtracking this week and deferring to Hegseth on whether to do so. Hegseth has been noncommittal, saying the Pentagon is “reviewing” the footage to ensure it would not expose military secrets.
Democrats have demanded fuller investigations and called on the administration to share more evidence with lawmakers. Sen. Mark R. Warner (Virginia), the Senate Intelligence Committee’s senior Democrat, said after meeting with Hegseth and other officials Tuesday that he was seeking written documentation of the opinion rendered by Bradley’s military lawyer.
The first strike Sept. 2 was carried out with a laser-guided GBU-69, according to people familiar with Bradley’s briefings. The munition exploded just above the crew, a setting designed to maximize the blast and the spread of shrapnel fragments. The follow-on strike was taken with a smaller AGM-176 Griffin missile, which killed the two men on impact, people familiar with the video footage said. U.S. forces then fired two additional Griffins at the wreckage to sink it.
While Bradley made the decision to conduct the follow-on strike that killed the two survivors, Hegseth was the operation’s target engagement authority, meaning he authorized the use of force and ultimately was responsible for the strikes ordered, people familiar with the matter said.
Hegseth has said that he watched live video of the initial attack but left for other meetings minutes later and was unaware initially that the first strike had left two men alive. It was a couple of hours, Hegseth has said, before he learned that Bradley ordered the second strike.
Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegseth, said in a statement, “We are not going to second-guess a commander who did the right thing and was operating well within his legal authority.”
Gen. Dan Caine, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the military’s top officer, saw the full video of the Sept. 2 strike for the first time Dec. 4, when he joined Bradley’s meetings with lawmakers, two U.S. officials said. In a statement for this report, a spokesman for Caine said the chairman has “trust and confidence” in Bradley and military commanders “at every echelon.”
The admiral’s defense
The Sept. 2 operation was the first in what has become an extended campaign to target suspected drug runners in the waters around Latin America. In strikes on more than 20 boats, U.S. forces have killed nearly 90 people to date, according to public notices from the Trump administration.
At the core of Bradley’s defense of the second strike, according to several people familiar with his conversations on Capitol Hill, was his assertion that the attack was not directed at the two survivors but at the boat wreckage and any cocaine it may have sheltered.
The laws of war stipulate that military commanders must consider the collateral damage of a strike only if the action could pose a threat to civilians, said Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army lawyer. By labeling suspected drug smugglers as combatants in an armed conflict against Americans, as the Trump administration has done, the Defense Department can argue that the military did not need to consider the harm to survivors when striking again, Corn said.
But many experts, Corn among them, dispute that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with cartel groups. Corn also noted that even if they are combatants, once shipwrecked, feasible measures must be taken to try to rescue them before attacking the target again, he said. “That to me is the most troubling aspect of the attack,” he said.
Bradley’s contention that he was targeting the boat rather than the people, Corn said, fails to explain why the admiral deemed it necessary to launch the second strike rather than first trying to rescue the survivors.
The admiral told lawmakers that intelligence gathered ahead of the operation indicated the boat being targeted was expected to transfer its cargo to another vessel while both were at sea. After the first strike, Bradley explained, he and his team were unable to rule out whether the men, who were shirtless, had a communications device either on their person or somewhere under the vessel’s wreckage that could have been used to call for help.
U.S. forces did not intercept any communications from the two survivors after the first strike, Bradley told lawmakers.
The admiral also theorized, multiple people said, that the two survivors could have drifted to shore or found a way to sail the wreckage to their intended rendezvous point. When the U.S. aircraft providing the live video feed scanned the surrounding area, it did not find another vessel coming to the boat’s aid. And the admiral conceded to some lawmakers that the survivors probably would not have been able to flip the wreckage, said one lawmaker and a U.S. official familiar with Bradley’s conversations.
The doubts that have emerged
Todd Huntley, a former director of the Navy’s international law office, which handles law of the sea matters, said in an interview with The Post that the legal definition for being shipwrecked does not require that people are drowning or wounded.
“They just have to be in distress in water,” said Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces.
Huntley also said that the potential presence of a communications device should have been irrelevant. “You can’t kill somebody in the water merely because they have a radio,” he said. The prospect of a rendezvous with another vessel does not indicate an intent to engage in hostilities or prove the survivors posed a threat, he added. “That is such a far-out theory,” Huntley said.
Trump and other Republicans have framed the administration’s counternarcotics campaign as a necessary measure to defend Americans from fentanyl, the leading cause of drug overdoses in the United States. But the Sept. 2 strike — and most of those that have followed — targeted a boat believed to be ferrying cocaine. Fentanyl smuggled into the U.S. mostly comes through border crossings.
People familiar with Bradley’s account to lawmakers said that the cargo in this case was heading next to Suriname, a small country east of Venezuela, not the United States. As The Post and others have reported, most of the narcotics that move through the Caribbean are headed toward Europe and Western Africa rather than the U.S.
“That further underscores that this boat was not a threat to the United States and not a lawful target,” Huntley said.
While speaking with lawmakers, Bradley said he looked for signs the men were surrendering, such as waving a cloth or holding up their arms. The admiral noted that he saw no such gesture, and did not interpret their wave as a surrender, people familiar with his interviews said.
To legal experts, Bradley’s assertion that he scanned for a sign of surrender reflected a foundational flaw with the Trump administration’s lethal force campaign: The laws of war weren’t written to address the behavior of criminal drug traffickers, they said.
On Sept. 2, the 11 passengers on board the targeted boat were almost certainly unaware the Trump administration had declared “war” on them, people familiar with the operation said. It’s unclear whether the strike survivors even realized a U.S. military aircraft was responsible for the explosion that had occurred, these people familiar said, or whether they knew how to indicate surrender — or that surrender was even an option.
In the weeks leading up to the attack, the Defense Department ran simulations that showed there was the potential for people to survive a first strike, three people familiar with the matter said. That did not appear to affect military planning for this operation. On the day of the attack, the U.S. military had no personnel or equipment on hand to rescue anyone.
Tara Copp and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.
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