It reads like something out of a mediocre thriller. According to The Washington Post, in a story that is one anonymous source deep, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth personally ordered the killing of two narcotics smugglers after they had survived the destruction of their boat. The scene is in the Caribbean on September 2, 2025, and the U.S. military has just started blowing up drug runners instead of the gentlemanly “catch and release” program of past administrations, where the boats were intercepted, drugs confiscated, and the smugglers set free to do it all again; see Shots Fired! The US Military Sinks a Venezuelan Drug Runner (Updated) – RedState.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
The story comes a week after six Democrat Senators and Congressmen, now known as the Seditious Six, posted a video that seemed to encourage members of the armed forces to defy “illegal” orders from President Trump.
BACKGROUND
Karoline Leavitt Drops Mic on Dems Calling on Troops to Defy Orders – RedState
The commander overseeing the operation from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.
Later in the day, President Donald Trump released a redacted 29-second surveillance drone video showing the attack. The video does not include any footage of the subsequent strike on the survivors.
The Department of War spokesman, Sean Parnell, denied that the event had occurred.
We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday.
These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth.
Fake News is the enemy of the people. https://t.co/CgpNBfb2gf— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellUSA) November 29, 2025
His deputy, Kinglsey Wilson, affirmed that all lethal strikes on the drug runners are legitimate and based on the designation of the drug cartels as Designated Terrorist Organizations, and a presidential declaration that a “non-international armed conflict” existed between the drug cartels and the United States.
Don’t buy the Fake News from phony politicians.
Every lethal kinetic strike against narco-terrorists is:
1) Completely legal
2) Conducted against the operations of a Designated Terrorist Organization
3) In defense of vital U.S. national interests https://t.co/z1LL6IZgdW— Kingsley Wilson (@PressSecDOW) November 29, 2025
Putting aside the lack of evidence supporting this alleged event and the administration’s denial that it even happened, there is a helluva lot of assumptions involved to conclude that this is a war crime.
1. According to the Washington Post, “SEAL Team 6, known formally as Naval Special Warfare Development Group and under JSOC command, conducted the intelligence collection and targeting for this attack and several others, according to two people.” The implication is that the intelligence behind the September 2 attack was not driven by satellite or electronic means. It was verified by on-the-ground reconnaissance.
2. This leads to the implication that the people on the boat were the targets and not the ship or its cargo. If the boat were the target, then arguably the two survivors would have come under the Geneva Convention protections for shipwrecked persons, wounded soldiers, and pilots who are dangling in their parachutes. If the people were the target, then they would be legitimate targets, the same way as paratroopers can be lawfully killed before they hit the ground.
3. Hegseth’s order and the admiral’s follow-through make complete sense if the mission was taking out the crew.
At this point, there is not enough information in the article for a sane person to render an opinion, though there is plenty of grist for those trying to take down Hegseth, drive a wedge between Trump and the military, and protect drug runners.
Properly viewed, this article, with its questionable provenance, is designed to provide cover for the Seditious Six and their fellow travelers so they don’t get humiliated like Colorado Democrat Representative Jason Crow (CO-06) when asked for an example of the “illegal” orders they are railing against.
Democrat Rep. Jason Crow is asked FOUR TIMES what “illegal orders” he and his Democrat colleagues are referring to in their video calling for an insurrection.
He can’t answer — because they are lying. pic.twitter.com/vNQGGOegEQ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 19, 2025
Now, when asked what “illegal” orders they are talking about, you can bet they will point to this story as an example.
There is another item at work here. The article quotes “Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.” In his opinion, “That’s one of the problems with the law of armed conflict — the state using force is judge, jury and executioner.” It sends shivers down my spine to imagine the kind of advice he gave to unit commanders when he doesn’t support the idea of the use of force to begin with. The real objection, in my opinion, of many former military lawyers is that they have been removed from the kill chain. Commanders no longer have to go to their Judge Advocate General adviser and say “pretty please” before taking offensive action. Now they are sitting in the back row in the operations center, no one is talking to them, and they are mightily torqued.
The bottom line here is that no evidence exists that this event happened, or, if it did, that it played out as described. The fact that no other major media outlet has picked up the story is notable. And that the Post’s story is essentially a regurgitation of a nearly three-month-old article from loony-left outlet The Intercept is also suspect; see U.S. Attacked Boat Near Venezuela Multiple Times to Kill Survivors. Unless a lot more information comes out making the case that this was a crime, this article should be considered as The Washington Post doing what it always does when there is a Republican in the White House.
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