A Washington Post exclusive details how Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave an order on the first Caribbean boat strike, saying to leave no survivors.
"As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors," write Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima.
"The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraftfollowed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs," they write.
U.S. military officials have confirmed in private briefings to lawmakers that there was cocaine on the boats targeted in recent strikes, but no fentanyl, despite saying these attacks are part of a war on the deadly drug.
The Trump administration has not publicly released direct evidence to support its claims about the specific drugs on board the vessels it targeted in a series of lethal strikes since September.
"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation," they write.
“The order was to kill everybody,” one of those people told the Post.
On September 2, a missile struck a ship off the Trinidad coast leaving "two survivors clinging to the smoldering wreck," according to the report.
Complying with Hegseth's orders, the Special Operations commander ordered a second strike on the ship, after which "the two men were blown apart in the water," they write
"Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers," they explain.
"Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution," they add.
These alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, they write, "as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an 'armed conflict' with the U.S., these officials and experts say."
Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign, says simply that because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, this "amounts to murder."
"That’s one of the problems with the law of armed conflict — the state using force is judge, jury and executioner,” Huntley says.
Since that first attack, the Pentagon has hit at least 22 more boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing another 71 alleged drug smugglers, according to officials and internal data seen by the WaPo.
And while they report that the "protocols were changed after the strike to emphasize rescuing suspected smugglers if they survived strikes, according to three people, it is unclear who directed the change in protocol and when exactly it took shape."
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a Marine Corps veteran who received a classified briefing from Pentagon officials on the strikes in late October with other members of the House Armed Services Committee, says that protocol to "remove a navigation hazard to other vessels after a strike" most certainly doesn't include human beings.
"The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal," Moulton says.
Insiders still express doubt that people on the first boat strike were even smuggling drugs at all.
"Current and former officials within the U.S. military and DEA have expressed doubt that all 11 people aboard the first vessel were complicit in trafficking," the writers note.
The lack of transparency from the Department of Defense, "is a major obstacle to government accountability for its use of force, Huntley says.
“Really the only oversight is public and political pressure," he adds.
Meanwhile, Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama, posted on X that "This is why @PeteHegseth is flipping out about a meaningless video telling the troops only to obey legal orders. Drunk Pete and the people coordinating these strikes are in serious legal jeopardy."
Writer David Frum of The Atlantic agrees, writing on X, "So now we know why Secretary of Partying Hegseth was so touchy on the subject of illegal orders."
"Hegseth ordered the military to murder defenseless survivors who could’ve easily been saved, arrested, and tried. Now he’s trying to court martial a Senator for merely reminding the military they’re not obligated to follow illegal orders," says Jon Favreau, former speechwriter for President Obama.
Journalist Todd Neff suggests an edit to the Post story, writing on X, "Alternative headline: Pete Hegseth commits war crime: Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all."