Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing intensifying scrutiny after a bombshell Washington Post investigation alleged that he directly ordered U.S. forces to kill everyone on board a suspected drug-trafficking vessel in the Caribbean — an operation former military lawyers say constitutes murder, war crimes, or both.
According to The Washington Post, the September mission involved a U.S. strike force tracking a small boat believed to be carrying narcotics. When the vessel was hit and two people were seen alive in the wreckage, commanders allegedly launched a second “double tap” strike specifically to kill the survivors.
One source with direct knowledge of the mission told reporters, “The order was to kill everybody.” The two surviving men were reportedly “blown out of the water.”
Legal experts say the details outlined in the Post’s reporting are unequivocal. New York University law professor Ryan Goodman wrote on X that the allegations describe a “textbook war crime” and an unlawful extrajudicial killing. Goodman also accused administration officials of misleading lawmakers when they claimed the second strike was intended to clear debris, calling the explanation a “bold-face falsehood.”
The White House has defended the Caribbean missions broadly, with President Donald Trump arguing they disrupt violent drug traffickers and save American lives. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went further, insisting U.S. intelligence has full visibility into the identity and intent of everyone on board such vessels.
“We track them from the very beginning,” Rubio said. “We know who’s on them, who they are, where they’re coming from, what they have on them.”
Hegseth sharply rejected the Post’s findings on Friday, calling the report “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory.”
He did not dispute the operational details but insisted the mission — and the kill-all directive at the center of the controversy — is “lawful under both U.S. and international law,” describing the objective as stopping “lethal drugs, destroy[ing] narco-boats, and kill[ing] the narco-terrorists.”
Many critics took to X to slam him:
The allegations have already triggered fierce political and legal debate, raising profound questions about transparency, executive authority, military rules of engagement, and the boundaries of wartime conduct in operations that fall outside traditional combat zones.
As former military attorneys warn that the described actions could meet the legal definition of premeditated murder, pressure is mounting on Congress and independent investigators to determine whether U.S. forces were ordered to violate international law — and whether top officials attempted to conceal it.
