WASHINGTON (AP) — A Navy admiral told lawmakers Thursday that there was no “kill them all” order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as Congress scrutinizes an attack that killed two survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug boat in international waters near Venezuela.
Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley "was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all. He was given an order that, of course, was written down in great detail,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, as he exited a classified briefing.
Cotton defended the attack, but a Democrat who also was briefed said that while there was no “kill them all” order from Hegseth, he was still deeply concerned by video of the second strike.
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters. “You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel were killed by the United States.”
Bradley was joined at the Capitol by Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for sessions that came at a potentially crucial moment in the unfolding congressional investigation into how Hegseth handled the military operation in international waters near Venezuela. There are mounting questions over whether the strike may have violated the law.
Lawmakers want a full accounting of the strikes after The Washington Post reported that Bradley on Sept. 2 ordered an attack on two survivors to comply with Hegseth's directive to “kill everybody.” Legal experts say the attack amounts to a crime if the survivors were targeted, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding accountability.
Among those briefed were the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees and the Intelligence Committee in each chamber. Most of the lawmakers in the briefings declined to comment as they exited.
Congress is seeking answers to questions such as what orders Hegseth gave regarding the operations and what the reasoning was for the second strike.
Democrats are also demanding that the Trump administration release the full video of the Sept. 2 attack, as well as written records of the orders and any directives from Hegseth. While Republicans, who control the national security committees, have not publicly called for those documents, they have pledged a thorough review.
“The investigation is going to be done by the numbers,” said Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We’ll find out the ground truth.”
Pressure builds on Hegseth
President Donald Trump has stood behind Hegseth as he defends his handling of the attack, but pressure is mounting on the defense secretary.
Hegseth has said the aftermath of an initial strike on the boat was clouded in the “fog of war.” He has also said he “didn’t stick around” for the second strike, but that Bradley “made the right call” and “had complete authority” to do it.
Also on Thursday, the Defense Department's inspector general released a partially redacted report into Hegseth's use of the Signal messaging app in March to share sensitive information about a military strike against Yemen’s Houthi militants. The report found that Hegseth endangered service members by doing that on his personal phone.
Who is Adm. Bradley?
At the time of the attack, Bradley was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the military's elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. About a month after the strike, he was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.
His military career, spanning more than three decades, was mostly spent serving in the elite Navy SEALs and commanding joint operations. He was among the first special forces officers to deploy to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. His latest promotion to admiral was approved by unanimous voice vote in the Senate this year, and Democratic and Republican senators praised his record.
“I’m expecting Bradley to tell the truth and shed some light on what actually happened,” said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, adding that he had “great respect for his record.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., described Bradley as among those who are “rock solid” and “the most extraordinary people that have ever served in the military.”
But lawmakers like Tillis have also made it clear they expect a reckoning if it is found that survivors were targeted. “Anybody in the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable,” he said.
What else are lawmakers seeking?
The scope of the investigation is unclear, but there is other documentation of the strike that could fill in what happened. Obtaining that information, though, will largely depend on action from Republican lawmakers — a potentially painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the president.
Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he and Wicker have formally requested the executive orders authorizing the operations and the complete videos from the strikes. They are also seeking the intelligence that identified the vessels as legitimate targets, the rules of engagement for the attacks and any criteria used to determine who was a combatant and who was a civilian.
Military officials were aware that there were survivors in the water after the initial strike but carried out the follow-on strike under the rationale that it needed to sink the vessel, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. What remains unclear — and what lawmakers hope to clarify in their briefing with Bradley — was who ordered the strikes and whether Hegseth was involved, one of the people said.
Republican lawmakers who are close to Trump have sought to defend Hegseth, standing behind the military campaign against drug cartels that the president deems “narco-terrorists.”
“I see nothing wrong with what took place,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., as he argued that the administration was justified in using war powers against drug cartels.
More than 80 people have been killed in the series of strikes that started in September. For critics of the campaign like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the pressing questions about the legality of killing survivors are a natural outgrowth of military action that was always on shaky legal ground. He said it was clear that Hegseth is responsible, even if the defense secretary did not explicitly order a second attack.
“He may not have been in the room, but he was in the loop,” Blumenthal said. “And it was his order that was instrumental and foreseeably resulted in the deaths of these survivors.”
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.