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The White House said on Monday that U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized an admiral to conduct multiple strikes on a vessel from Venezuela allegedly carrying illegal narcotics in September.
The Washington Post had reported that a second strike was ordered to take out two survivors from the initial strike and to comply with an order by Hegseth that everyone be killed.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is holding a meeting about Venezuela with his national security team later Monday, said on Sunday that he would not have wanted a second strike on the boat and said Hegseth denied giving such an order.
But White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that Hegseth had authorized U.S. Admiral Frank Bradley to conduct the strikes.
“Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt said.
The White House said U.S. Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, seen here on Oct. 3, acted ‘within his authority’ when he carried out the order for a follow-up strike on a Venezuelan vessel. (Airman 1st Class Monique Stober/U.S. Special Operations Command/Handout/Reuters)
Leavitt said the strike was conducted in “self defence” to protect U.S. interests, took place in international waters and was in line with the law of armed conflict.
“This administration has designated these narco-terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations,” Leavitt said.
Critics have questioned the legality of the strikes, and both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have pledged to look into them.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that a U.S. navy admiral ordered a second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea in September, while insisting the attack was lawful. The incident has come under bipartisan scrutiny amid a published report that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for a second strike that killed survivors on the boat.
While lawmakers have said they did not know whether last week’s Post report was true, they said the reports of attacking survivors of an initial missile strike posed serious legal concerns and merited further scrutiny.
“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.
Republican Rep. Mike Turner, when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said Congress does not have information that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.
“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.
Trump has flagged the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. On Saturday, he said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety,” but gave no further details, stirring anxiety and confusion in Caracas.
After a series of attacks on alleged ‘narco traffickers’ off Venezuela, the U.S. has deployed its largest aircraft carrier to the region. For The National, CBC’s Eli Glasner explains why President Trump’s show of force may go far beyond fighting drugs.
Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had spoken to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the U.S. considers an illegitimate leader. Trump declined to provide details of the conversation.
The Trump administration has been weighing options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. Maduro has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade.
Yet even as the Trump administration has used the alleged flow of drugs to the U.S. as the legal underpinning justifying the strikes on the vessels near Venezuela, Trump said Friday he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who is one year into a 45-year sentence in a U.S. prison for helping drug traffickers move tonnes of cocaine to the United States.
Kaine called Trump’s decision to pardon Hernández “shocking.”
“He was the leader of one of the largest criminal enterprises that has ever been subject to a conviction in U.S. courts, and less than one year into his sentence, President Trump is pardoning him, suggesting that President Trump cares nothing about narco-trafficking,” Kaine said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Reuters has reported the options under U.S. consideration in Venezuela include an attempt to overthrow Maduro, and that the U.S. military is poised for a new phase of operations after a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and nearly three months of strikes on suspected drug boats off Venezuela’s coast.
Trump also has authorized covert CIA operations in the country.