Senators from both sides of the political aisle will join forces to investigate allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered there to be no survivors in U.S. airstrikes on alleged drug-running boats.
GOP Senator Roger Wicker, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Democratic Senator Jack Reed announced the decision in a joint statement Saturday.
"The Committee is aware of recent news reports and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” the statement read.
“The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
It comes following a report from The Washington Post, which alleged that Hegseth had ordered military personnel to “kill everybody” on board a vessel in the Caribbean, suspected of carrying drugs, on September 2.
A first missile strike left two survivors, but a Special Operations commander overseeing the attack ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions to “kill everybody,” according to the Post, which cited officials with direct knowledge of the operation.
The two men were then “blown apart in the water,” according to the report.
Wicker and Reed’s statement is a significant development following weeks and now months of intense scrutiny around the administration’s siege of what it describes as “narco-terrorists.”
The attack on September 2 was the first of more than a dozen attacks on alleged drug-running boats that have killed more than 80 people over the last three months.
International investigators and members of Congress have since questioned the legality of the operations, alleging that the Trump administration’s deadly campaign amounts to extrajudicial killings. Other experts, speaking to The Independent, have labeled the actions as outright murder and a war crime.
The Independent has contacted the Department of War for comment on news of the Senate investigation.
Hegseth took to social media Friday to blast The Post’s report as “more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting” aimed at discrediting the administration's work and insisted that the operations were lawful.
“As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’” he wrote in the lengthy post.
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 Terrorist Organization.”
He added: “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”
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