The commander of U.S. Special Operations Command told top members of Congress on Thursday that no one issued a “kill them all” order during a pair of military strikes on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean in September, lawmakers said after a closed-door hearing.
Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, USSOCCOM commander, and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, briefed Republican and Democratic leaders of intelligence and armed forces committees about the Sept. 2, 2025, operation that some have dubbed a “double-tap” missile strike.
Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican and chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, told reporters as he left that classified briefing that “Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all.”
Rep. Rick Crawford, Arkansas Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said after the closed-door briefing that he had no problems with the U.S. attack on the suspected drug boat off the coast of Venezuela.
“There is no doubt in my mind about the highly professional manner in which the Department of War conducted, and is conducting, the operations our nation has called them to do — to protect the homeland from these dangerous cartels who have for too long poisoned the American people, destabilized and corrupted our neighbors, and [who] torture and kill thousands throughout our hemisphere,” Mr. Crawford said in a statement.
But Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the intelligence committee’s ranking Democrat, said the video footage of the missile attack was one of the most “troubling” things he’s seen while in Congress.
“Yes, they were carrying drugs [but] they were not in the position to continue their mission in any way,” Mr. Himes told reporters after the closed-door briefing. “They were not in a position to continue their mission in any way.”
Mr. Crawford said anyone who has carried out highly sophisticated military operations would be no stranger to the complex decision-making process and legal analysis that was described during the briefing.
“Those who appear ’troubled’ by videos of military strikes on designated terrorists have clearly never seen the Obama-ordered strikes, or, for that matter, those of any other administration over recent decades,” Mr. Crawford said.
Mr. Himes said the two men on the severely damaged boat were in “clear distress, without any means of locomotion,” when they were killed in the follow-up U.S. strike.
“Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors: bad guys, bad guys, but attacking shipwrecked sailors,” the panel’s top Democrat said.
Mr. Crawford said he was “deeply concerned” by public statements that he said were more interested in scoring political points and did not acknowledge the nature of war.
He implied political hypocrisy, alluding to former President Obama’s campaign of drone strikes against Islamist terrorists abroad, some of which strikes killed civilians or targeted American citizens.
“I call upon them to remember their own silence as our forces conducted identical strikes for years — killing terrorists and destroying military objectives the same as in this strike — and ask themselves why they would seek to attack our forces today,” he said.
Senate Republicans and Democrats were just as divided on the drug-boat strike as their House colleagues.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by what he saw during Thursday’s testimony from Adm. Bradley and Gen. Caine. He said the Pentagon has no choice but to release the complete and unedited footage from the Sept. 2 strike, as President Trump has agreed to do.
“This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested — and been denied — fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation,” Mr. Reed said.
Thursday’s hearing was only the start of the investigation into the incident, Mr. Reed said.
Mr. Cotton said he fully supported the “righteous strikes” on the drug boats. He called them “entirely lawful and needful” and said they were exactly the type of missions U.S. military leaders are expected to execute.
“I didn’t see anything ‘disturbing’ about it. What’s ‘disturbing’ to me is that millions of Americans have died from drugs being run to America by these cartels,” Mr. Cotton said. “After decades of letting it happen, we’re going to take the battle to them.”
He said the operation that led to the strikes wasn’t some squad-level firefight in a cave in Afghanistan — necessarily a seriers of snap decision by low-level actors. But here, hundreds of military and civilian personnel inside the Pentagon and at several other bases were closely tracking the operation.
“Everybody was watching. Everybody had seen the intelligence and legal basis leading up to these strikes,” Mr. Cotton said.
The drug cartels have been waging war against the American people for decades, Mr. Cotton said.
“It’s my expectation and my deep hope that these strikes will continue, if necessary, to stop the flow of drugs,” he said. “We should take the fight to these cartels wherever they are operating.”
