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<\/p>\n\n The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.\n <\/p>\n
\n As far back as September, defense officials have been quietly pushing back on criticism that killing the two survivors amounted to a war crime by arguing, in part, that they were legitimate targets because they appeared to be radioing for help or backup \u2014 reinforcements that, if they had received it, could have theoretically allowed them to continue to traffic the drugs aboard their sinking ship.\n <\/p>\n
\n Defense officials made that claim in at least one briefing in September for congressional staff, according to a source familiar with the session, and several media outlets cited officials repeating that justification in the last week.\n <\/p>\n
\n But Thursday, Adm. Frank \u201cMitch\u201d Bradley acknowledged that the two survivors of the military\u2019s initial strike were in no position to make a distress call in his briefings to lawmakers. Bradley was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike and was the top military officer directing the attack.\n <\/p>\n
\n The initial hit on the vessel, believed to be carrying cocaine, killed nine people immediately and split the boat in half, capsizing it and sending a massive smoke plume into the sky, the sources who viewed the video as part of the briefings said. Part of the surveillance video was a zoomed-in, higher-definition view of the two survivors clinging to a still-floating, capsized portion, they said.\n <\/p>\n
\n For a little under an hour \u2014 41 minutes, according to a separate US official \u2014 Bradley and the rest of the US military command center discussed what to do as they watched the men struggle to overturn what was left of their boat, the sources said.\n <\/p>\n
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\n Ultimately, Bradley told lawmakers, he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, according to one of the sources. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.\n <\/p>\n
\n The other source with direct knowledge of the briefing called that rationale \u201cf**king insane.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n <\/p>\n
\n According to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who were also briefed, the military used a total of four missiles to sink the boat: two missiles in the initial strike, according to Coons, and two in the second strike.\n <\/p>\n
\n It was the most detailed account of the September 2 strike to date \u2014 yet it came no closer to creating a consensus view.\n <\/p>\n
\n It is considered a war crime to kill shipwrecked people, which the Pentagon\u2019s law of war manual defines as people \u201cin need of assistance and care\u201d who \u201cmust refrain from any hostile act.\u201d Although most Republicans have signaled support for President Donald Trump\u2019s broader military campaign in the Caribbean, the secondary strike on September 2 has drawn bipartisan scrutiny \u2014 including, most consequentially, a vow from the Senate Armed Services Committee to conduct oversight.\n <\/p>\n
\n But after Thursday\u2019s round-robin of closed-door briefings by Bradley, what had been poised to be the most significant congressional scrutiny of the campaign to date appeared to fracture along party lines.\n <\/p>\n
\n Interpretations of the video differed wildly: Cotton said he \u201csaw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight.\u201d House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, called it \u201cone of the most troubling things\u201d he has seen as a lawmaker.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAny American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors \u2014 bad guys, bad guys, but attacking shipwrecked sailors,\u201d Himes said. \u201cYes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in the position to continue their mission in any way.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Himes later told CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper that, \u201cThe end result was two individuals without any weaponry, without any tools of any kind, clinging to a wrecked boat \u2026 the decision was taken to kill them and that is in fact what happened. And that was pretty hard to watch.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The apparent abandonment of defense officials\u2019 claims of a distress call as evidence of continued hostile intent \u2014 and thus, the validity of the secondary strike \u2014 is only the latest in a series of shifting accounts from the Trump administration since reports first emerged in the press over the weekend.\n <\/p>\n
\n Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his spokespeople initially railed against reporting of the second strike, with Hegseth calling it \u201cfabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting.\u201d Just days later, however, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the second strike occurred and said Bradley was the one who ordered it.\n <\/p>\n
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\n Hegseth\u2019s role in the secondary strike \u2014 including the precise orders he gave Bradley \u2014 continues to be a point of scrutiny.\n <\/p>\n
\n Himes and other lawmakers said Thursday that the admiral told them that Hegseth did not issue an order to \u201ckill them all,\u201d as the Washington Post initially reported.\n <\/p>\n
\n Lawmakers were told on Thursday that Hegseth had made clear before the mission began that the strikes should be lethal, but that he was not made aware of the survivors until after they had been killed, one of the sources with direct knowledge said.\n <\/p>\n