GOP signals end to probes into military’s killing of boat strike survivors
Top Republican lawmakers have signaled they are ending their inquiries into a controversial U.S. military strike on an alleged drug smuggling vessel in the waters off Venezuela.
Sen. Roger Wicker (Mississippi), Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Thursday that he had seen “no evidence of war crimes” in the Sept. 2 operation that killed two survivors of an initial U.S. attack on their boat. He expressed confidence that the Trump administration’s military campaign around Latin America, responsible to date for the deaths of nearly 100 people, has been conducted “based on sound legal advice.”
His comments come a day after Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), who leads the House Armed Services Committee, said he will shutter a parallel inquiry. Rogers told reporters that he, too, was “satisfied” that members of his panel had been able to directly question the military officials who oversaw the Sept. 2 strike, which killed 11 people in all, and that he had concluded the operation followed a “lawful process.”
Wicker’s statement does not specify that his probe is ending immediately or whether he would seek any additional materials from the Defense Department related to the operation.
Democrats, deeply disturbed by the episode, have urged their Republican colleagues to expand the scope of both inquiries.
In a statement Thursday, Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s senior Democrat, said he was “entirely dissatisfied” with the administration’s engagement and called for a formal investigation into the Sept. 2 strike, listing out documents the Pentagon still hadn’t provided.
Rep. Adam Smith (Washington), top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said through a spokesperson he wasn’t done looking into the incident “and the committees shouldn’t be done either.”
Wicker and Rogers launched the probes soon after a Washington Post report in late November detailing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s authorization ahead of the first attack to kill the boat’s crew and a top military officer’s order of a second strike that resulted in the deaths of the two survivors.
Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the Navy officer who oversaw the Sept. 2 strike, met privately Wednesday with members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, his second trip to Capitol Hill to answer questions about his decision-making that day. Lawmakers watched video of the attack, and Bradley discussed how he determined that the survivors were not “shipwrecked,” or out of the fight, a status that would have granted them special protection under the law of armed conflict.
In his closed-door meetings with lawmakers, Bradley has argued that the survivors were lawful targets because he could not rule out that the drugs on their boat were destroyed in the initial attack, or that the men could have radioed for help or floated to their expected rendezvous point with another vessel, The Post reported last week.
Retired military lawyers have cast doubt on the relevance of those factors in determining whether the strike survivors were “shipwrecked,” which the law of armed conflict defines as people who “are in peril at sea” as a result of misfortune affecting their vessel “and who refrain from any act of hostility.” Experts also argue that analyzing the strikes for “war crimes” obscures a more important point about the military’s ongoing campaign in Latin America: that criminal drug traffickers aren’t enemy combatants, as the Trump administration contends.
“Whether lawmakers or analysts call them a war crime or murder, the real problem is these uses of deadly force are not legally justified,” said Geoffrey Corn, a professor of law at Texas Tech University and a former Army lawyer.
While speaking with lawmakers this week, Bradley said that he consulted with the top lawyer advising him at least twice during the September operation, according to two U.S. officials familiar with his conversations. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were classified.
While it remains unclear whether Bradley’s top military lawyer affirmatively supported the second strike, Wicker argued in his statement that it “is in the best interest of our national security to support our men and women in uniform when they act based on advice from senior legal advisers.”
The announcements from Wicker and Rogers mark the close of Republicans’ most aggressive oversight of Hegseth’s tenure as defense secretary. Democrats counter that the Pentagon has yet to provide key materials, including Hegseth’s orders to conduct the Sept. 2 strike and the written opinion from the lawyer advising Bradley during that operation. The Defense Department has surpassed the time required by law to provide some of those documents.
Lawmakers have sought to force Hegseth’s hand by withholding 25% of his travel budget until he provides them with footage of all 26 strikes against alleged drug smuggling vessels — including the Sept. 2 operation — and other related materials. Members of both political parties have been frustrated by what they say is a lack of clarity on the Trump administration’s strategy.
Hegseth has refused to release the Sept. 2 video, citing what he says is the potential risk to U.S. military secrets. Democrats and select Republicans have questioned that explanation, given that the Pentagon has released other clips of its military strikes in Latin America.
The Republican-controlled House and Senate have voted down four measures intended to halt the boat strikes — and prevent a direct attack on Venezuela, which President Donald Trump has suggested is imminent. The two most recent attempts to assert Congress’s war powers failed Wednesday.
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• Ellen Nakashima contributed.