Three days after the Pentagon denied it killed two survivors after an attack on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in early September, the White House and the Pentagon on Monday confirmed the second strike did indeed take place, and that it was authorized by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Rewind: “This entire narrative is completely false,” Hegseth’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, told the Washington Post, which reported the so-called “double-tap” strike ordered by the commander at the time, Navy Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley. That order came after Hegseth reportedly told Bradley to “kill everybody” on the boat. Hegseth himself responded on social media Friday, calling the Post’s reporting “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory.”
But on Monday, the White House’s press secretary confirmed Hegseth’s role in the sequence of events, which—as we noted in Monday’s newsletter—several lawmakers and legal experts have said could be a war crime, murder, or both. “Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?” a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday. “The latter is true,” she replied.
“Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” Leavitt said. “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.”
With the admiral’s role in the narrative confirmed, Hegseth on Monday evening called Bradley a “hero” for ordering the death of the two survivors, which would seem to contravene Section 5.4.7 of the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual. “Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support,” Hegseth wrote on his personal social media account Monday evening. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made—on the September 2 mission and all others since.”
Critical reaction: “Hegseth is very transparently blaming a Navy admiral for his own decision. Let this be a lesson for every other military officer: The Trump administration will issue unlawful orders, then blame you for following them,” former U.S. Army soldier Brandon Friedman replied on social media. “I mean, you deserve blame for following unlawful orders, but you should still know this in advance. IN ADDITION, Hegseth failed to learn or adopt the number one precept of Army leadership [PDF], specifically aimed at officers: ‘I am responsible for everything my unit does or fails to do.’”
Fox’s Brit Hume was of a similar mind, writing that Hegseth’s Monday evening post seemed to convey “How to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him.”
Coverage continues below…
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There’s been a notable increase in calls to a service offering free legal advice to U.S. troops, The Hill reported Monday evening. “The concerns, reflected in an uptick in calls to the Orders Project, which provides free legal advice to military personnel, come from the likes of staff officers involved in planning the strikes on supposed drug-carrying boats and those in charge of designating those on the vessels as a threat in order to carry out such attacks.” More, here.
Commentary: The United States “cannot build a safer world for its own servicemembers by discarding basic laws of war,” argues former Naval Academy JAG professor Mark Nevitt, writing Monday for Just Security. “If the United States abandons these rules, it cannot expect its adversaries to follow them when Americans are the ones captured, isolated, shipwrecked, or shot down. And it’s not just reciprocity. Weakening the legitimacy of such fundamental rules also corrodes the underlying foundation of a system that serves U.S. servicemembers time and again.”
“As the world’s most widely deployed maritime power, the United States relies on these protections more than any other nation,” Nevitt writes. “And what’s more, illegal orders create moral, reputational, and strategic harm long after the violations of law have ceased.”
So what now? Let the promised congressional investigations proceed without obstruction, Nevitt says. “Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have promised rigorous oversight of Pentagon operations in the Caribbean. At minimum, this must include full release of any relevant videotapes, especially of the Sept. 2 incident, and the accompanying Office of Legal Counsel opinion(s) purporting to justify the overall operations.” Read the rest, here.
Developing: President Trump just pardoned drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who was convicted last year and incarcerated in West Virginia for his involvement in the transit of cocaine into the U.S., the New York Times reported Tuesday morning.
It’s a notable legal about-face given Trump has threatened war against Venezuela, centered on the allegation that dictator Nicholas Maduro leads a drug cartel that traffics in cocaine. On Sunday, Trump was asked about this apparent discrepancy, and the president replied, “If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president.” Extra reading:
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Commentary: The awful arithmetic of our wars. “If we don’t figure out a way to fight far more cheaply, we won’t be able to afford to win a single battle,” writes New America’s Peter W. Singer at Defense One.
A sample of this daunting math: “Perhaps it was worth spending one-fifth of a billion dollars to damage Iranian nuclear facilities, but the numbers in Operation Rough Rider—the strikes against the Houthis last spring—illustrate the problem more starkly. The Pentagon spent roughly $5 billion on munitions and operating costs to stop attacks on Red Sea shipping, which simply started back up this month.” Read on, here.
Trendspotting: U.S. troops are deeply invested in, well, investments. “Servicemembers are making fortunes in tech stocks and bitcoin. They’re trading tips on obscure cryptocurrencies from the decks of aircraft carriers. Base parking lots are peppered with new Porsches and Humvees as the market hits new highs. And social-media influencers in fatigues tell followers how they, too, can become rich,” writes the Wall Street Journal.
Crypto is big. “Servicemembers helped fuel a surge in crypto prices that started in the fall of 2020 and peaked in 2021. In 2020, eight of the top 25 U.S. zip codes with the highest share of tax returns reporting receiving or disposing of crypto were around military bases,” WSJ reported off IRS data. read on, here.
Developing: Trump’s negotiator Steve Witkoff is slated to discuss Russia’s Ukraine invasion with Vladimir Putin in Moscow today. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is attending, too; he’s already been touring the city with his Russian hosts. Witkoff and Kushner’s visit comes after “revisions to the original peace proposal they drafted with Russian input,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Experts set low expectations for the Witkoff-Kushner mission,” UPI reports, and notes “Russia’s maximalist demands require Ukraine to hand over territory in the Donbas that it still holds, the removal of any path to NATO membership and shrinking the size of its military, as well as succumbing permanently to Russia’s sphere of influence in disputed areas by adopting its language, culture and the Russian Orthodox Church.” More, here.
Panning out: “Russian forces control more than 19% of Ukraine, or 115,600 square km (45,000 square miles), up one percentage point from two years ago, and have advanced in 2025 at the fastest pace since 2022, according to pro-Ukrainian maps,” Reuters reports.
Related: Did someone edit an online Ukraine battlemap to juke betting markets? That appears to be the case, Matthew Gault of 404 Media reported Monday.
Which raises a question that we hadn’t quite considered yet: “Did you know you can bet on the outcomes of battles in ongoing war? You can!” Gault reports. More, here.
Additional reading:
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