Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced scrutiny Thursday over a Sept. 2 Caribbean strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat and, separately, a Pentagon watchdog’s finding that he misused the Signal messaging app to discuss U.S. strikes in Yemen.
Members of the House and Senate were shown video of the Caribbean boat strike during closed-door briefings with Navy Admiral Frank M. Bradley, the Special Operations commander who oversaw the operation. Afterward, leading Democrats said the footage was disturbing. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., called it “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” saying the video showed “two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.” Himes cited the DOD’s manual on the laws of armed conflict, which lists attacking a shipwreck as an example of an impermissible action.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who also viewed the video, disputed that characterization. Cotton said the footage showed “two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight.” He described multiple strikes “minutes apart” and called them “entirely lawful,” saying he did not find anything disturbing.
The briefings provided more detail on an operation that has drawn questions from lawmakers and military experts about whether the strikes complied with U.S. law or could amount to war crimes under the administration’s framing of a campaign against narcotics traffickers. Bradley told lawmakers he was not under orders to kill everyone on board, according to both Cotton and Himes.
Lawmakers, including Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said they still have “serious questions about the legality of all the strikes” and called for greater transparency. Reed warned that failing to strictly observe the laws of war jeopardizes servicemembers and undermines U.S. moral authority. Several Democrats have urged the White House to release the full strike video. President Trump said he was not aware of the second strike and that he would be willing to release footage, though he said he did not know what was recorded. He defended the broader campaign, contending that disrupting drug shipments saves American lives: “Every boat we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives,” he told reporters.
Hegseth said he authorized the initial strike but did not order any subsequent strikes. He defended the decision to sink the vessel and Bradley’s actions, adding, “I watched that first strike live,” and, in a remark during a Cabinet meeting, quipping about his schedule, “As you can imagine, the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I moved on to my next meeting.”
Separately, the Pentagon’s inspector general released an 84-page report finding that Hegseth violated agency policy by using the commercially available encrypted app Signal on his personal phone to share details about planned U.S. strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The probe, led by Inspector General Steven Stebbins, followed requests from the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and stemmed from reporting that a journalist had been inadvertently added to a Signal group where senior officials discussed strike plans.
The report concluded that Hegseth sent nonpublic Department of Defense information—identifying numbers and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory—over an unapproved, unsecured network roughly two to four hours before the strikes. It said using a personal phone and Signal risked compromising sensitive information and could have endangered personnel and mission objectives.
Hegseth declined to be interviewed for the investigation, submitting a written statement arguing the information he shared did not require classification. Ahead of the report’s release, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the findings were a “TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth” and maintained that no classified information was shared.
NPR disclosure: Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation.
Sam Gringlas, Gabriel Sanchez and Deirdre Walsh contributed reporting.