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Washington: United States War Secretary Pete Hegseth faces pressure to explain his role in a lethal mission against suspected drug traffickers after he reportedly gave an order to “kill everybody”, resulting in a second strike to eliminate survivors from the first.
The furore arises from a September 2 operation – the first of more than 20 strikes against alleged drug boats conducted by the Trump administration – which killed 11 suspected “narco-terrorists” believed to be ferrying drugs on international waters to the US.
Pete Hegseth, US secretary of war, allegedly gave a spoken directive to “to kill everybody” ahead of a strike on the Venezuelan boat.Credit: Bloomberg
The Washington Post reported Hegseth gave a spoken directive ahead of the strike on the Venezuelan boat, citing two people familiar with it. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of those people said, according to the Post.
When two people on the vessel survived the initial strike, the commander overseeing the mission reportedly ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s order, killing the survivors. This masthead has not independently verified the claims.
Hegseth has not explicitly denied the allegation but called the explosive story “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting”. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said his department had told the Post “this entire narrative was false”.
“These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people,” he said.
But Hegseth now faces questions from the US Congress and his boss, President Donald Trump, who said he believed Hegseth did not issue such an order but would investigate the matter further.
“He said he did not say that, and I believe him,” Trump told reporters on Monday (AEDT) as he returned to the White House after the Thanksgiving holiday.
“We’ll look into it. But no, I wouldn’t have wanted that, a second strike. The first strike was very lethal, it was fine, and if there were two people around – but Pete said that didn’t happen … Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.”
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters while in flight on Air Force One on Sunday.Credit: AP
The claims have added to simmering concerns in Congress about the legality and ethics of the strikes against alleged drug traffickers. Some lawmakers have complained for three months about a lack of information on the operations coming through official briefing channels.
In a joint statement, the top Republican and top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said the group would be “conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances”.
Democratic senator and former naval officer Mark Kelly, a member of that committee, told CNN that if the claims were true, they appeared to constitute a war crime.
US Senator Mark Kelly said the claims against Hegseth, if true, appeared to constitute a war crime.Credit: AP
“We’re going to have hearings, we’ll put people under oath,” he said. “I’ve got serious concerns about anybody in that chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over.”
More than 80 people have been killed by US strikes on boats alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean or the Pacific Ocean since the September 2 operation. Hegseth and the Department of War routinely share vision of the strikes on social media.
The Trump administration has declared that it is in an armed conflict with cartels trafficking narcotics to the US to kill Americans, and that suspected traffickers are “unlawful combatants” associated with Venezuelan gangs such as Tren de Aragua.
The administration is also building up its military presence in the Caribbean, including at least one nuclear-powered submarine, reportedly the USS Newport News, and the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, which arrived in November.
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Trump confirmed he had spoken with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, but would not reveal the contents of the call. “I wouldn’t say it went well or badly, it was a phone call,” he said.
CNN reported Trump would hold a meeting at the White House on Monday evening (Tuesday AEDT) about the next steps on Venezuela, amid speculation the US is planning to escalate military operations in a bid to force Maduro from power.
Meanwhile, Hegseth defended the boat strikes in several media posts, including one depicting a cartoon frog in a military helicopter shooting a missile at fishing boats stocked with drug packages.
“These highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes’,” he said.
“The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terroriset Organisation.”
Hegseth said all US operations in the Caribbean complied with US and international law, and the law of armed conflict, and were approved by military and civilian lawyers up and down the chain of command.
“We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists,” he said.
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