By Noah Robertson, Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima

 

WASHINGTON, 12 Dec. - (ANA) - The controversial order given by Admiral Frank Bradley is under scrutiny from Congress. Inside the most consequential deliberation of his career, reports the Washington Post.

 

In the minutes after U.S. forces attacked a suspected drug smuggling boat near Trinidad, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander overseeing the operation, faced a choice.

 

A laser-guided bomb had killed nine of the 11 people on board, sunk the boat’s motor and capsized the vessel’s front end, according to people who have viewed or been briefed on a classified video of the operation. As smoke from the blast cleared, a live surveillance feed provided by a U.S. aircraft high overhead showed two men had survived and were attempting to flip the wreckage.

 

Ahead of the Sept. 2 mission, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given an order to U.S. forces to kill the passengers, sink the boat and destroy the drugs, three people familiar with the operation said. It appeared to Bradley that none of those objectives had been achieved, the admiral would later recount for lawmakers.

 

The video feed showed that the two men were struggling to stay atop the flotsam, which people who’ve seen the footage described as roughly the size of a dining room table. Bradley turned to the military lawyer advising him and requested input, according to members of Congress who spoke with him privately last week and people later briefed on those conversations. Under the law of armed conflict, were the men now “shipwrecked” and therefore out of the fight, rendering them unlawful targets?

 

The admiral decided that definition did not apply, these people said. Instead, what Bradley explained to lawmakers left some with the impression that there was a prevailing lack of certainty — about the existence of any drugs beneath the wreckage and whether the survivors had a means to call for help or intended to surrender — when he concluded that further action was warranted.

 

He ordered a second strike, killing both men. Moments earlier, the video feed had shown them waving their arms and looking skyward, people who saw the footage said. It was unclear, they added, why they were doing so.

 

The span of 30-plus minutes between the first strike and the second has become the most consequential moment in Bradley’s three-decade military career — one that includes direct involvement in more than 1,000 lethal strikes governed by the law of armed conflict central to understanding the events of Sept. 2 and whether the strike survivors were lawful targets. The episode has put the admiral and his advisers under a spotlight alongside Hegseth, who has expressed support for Bradley while attempting to distance himself from the fallout.  

 

Bradley defended his actions when summoned to Capitol Hill last week, telling lawmakers he weighed the fate of the survivors with the understanding that the Trump administration has argued illicit drugs are weapons responsible for killing Americans, and that those who traffic them are not criminals but enemy combatants. U.S. intelligence, he said, showed that everyone on the boat was a “narco-terrorist,” consistent with the administration’s definition, which allowed for deadly force. His testimony provided lawmakers with the fullest account of the operation since the publication of a Washington Post report on Nov. 28 revealing Hegseth’s authorization ahead of the first attack to kill the entire crew and Bradley’s order of a second strike that killed the two survivors. - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/12 December 2025 - - -