{"id":58225,"date":"2025-12-02T09:50:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/58225\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T09:50:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:50:17","slug":"wh-says-admiral-ordered-second-strike-on-venezuelan-drug-boat-self-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/58225\/","title":{"rendered":"WH says admiral ordered second strike on Venezuelan drug boat: &#8216;Self defense&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The White House said the Pentagon authorized a second lethal military strike against an alleged Venezuelan drug boat \u2014 and insisted the double attack in September was legal.<\/p>\n<p>White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to order the follow-up strike on the suspected drug trafficking boat after two people survived the first attack.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPresident Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narcoterrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war,\u201d Leavitt told reporters on Monday. \u201cWith respect to the strikes in question on Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks during a meeting with Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader at the National Palace, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on Nov. 26, 2025.  REUTERS<\/p>\n<p>Bradley, head of the US Special Operations Command, \u201cworked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the vote was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>The comments comes after the Washington Post reported Friday that a Joint Special Operations Command commander ordered a second airstrike on a speedboat carrying 11 <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/12\/01\/us-news\/venezuelas-maduro-spotted-for-first-time-in-days-ending-flight-speculation\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">suspected Tren de Aragua narco-terrorists Sept. 2<\/a>, after the first strike left two people clinging to the wreckage. The double strike happened because of a verbal directive from Hegseth: \u201cThe order was to kill everybody,\u201d the paper reported.<\/p>\n<p>A second strike to finish off the pair in lieu of aid and arrests could be considered a war crime under international law \u2014 but the Trump administration is standing by claims that the second strike was warranted for \u201cself defense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe strike conducted on Sept. 2 was conducted in self defense to protect Americans and vital United States interests,\u201d Leavitt said in a prepared statement. \u201cThe strike was conducted in international waters and in accordance with the law of armed conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday OCt. 28, 2025that the U.S. military killed 14 alleged narco-terrorists in a series of strikes against four suspected drug vessels in the Eastern Pacific. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth\/X<\/p>\n<p>Leavitt later added \u201cone more point to remind the American public why these lethal strikes are taking place\u201d \u2014 noting that Trump has designated Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s narcoterrorists such as Tren de Aragua as foreign terror organizations, giving the US military the legal authority to blast the drug boats out of the water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe President has a right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America and if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate, which is what they are doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Secretary of War Pete Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to order the follow-up strike on the suspected drug trafficking boat. United States Navy<\/p>\n<p>Her comments come after President Trump on Sunday said he did not believe the Washington Post report that Hegseth ordered that no survivors be left from the<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/11\/30\/opinion\/trumps-push-on-venezuela-looks-to-be-the-safest-first-step-against-the-fentanyl-cartels\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> September strike in the Caribbean Sea<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPete said he did not order the death of those two men,\u201d Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. \u201cAnd I believe him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>President Trump on Sunday told reporters that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth denied ordering a second strike on a Venezuelan drug boat. REUTERS<\/p>\n<p>The president went on to say that he \u201cwouldn\u2019t have wanted that \u2014 not a second strike,\u201d but that the administration would \u201clook into\u201d the issue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said he did not say that,\u201d the president reiterated, \u201cand I believe him, 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump is meeting with his national security team Monday evening in part to discuss next steps in the Venezuelan crisis as 11 US warships and 15,000 troops stand by in the waters near the South American nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The White House said the Pentagon authorized a second lethal military strike against an alleged Venezuelan drug boat&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,9228,9,11,10,1351,87,30305,1069,58,7318,1076],"class_list":{"0":"post-58225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-karoline-leavitt","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-pete-hegseth","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-the-pentagon","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-us-news","18":"tag-venezuela","19":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}