By Joseph Lord, Ryan Morgan
Contributing Writers
The Republican and Democratic heads of the House and Senate armed services committees say they are probing reports of follow-up strikes on alleged drug boats operating in the Caribbean Sea.
“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the [U.S. Southern Command] region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said in a statement shared on X on Saturday.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., issued a joint statement late on Saturday stating that their committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
Citing anonymous sources, The Washington Post first reported on Friday that a special operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 strike on a suspect vessel off the coast of Trinidad ordered a second attack after two survivors were allegedly observed clinging to the floating wreckage of the vessel. The reported follow-on strike during the Sept. 2 operation has not been independently verified.
Responding to the reporting about the strike, War Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a statement denouncing what he described as “more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting to discredit … incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
Hegseth further said that every individual killed in the ongoing series of sea strikes was a member of a designated terrorist organization. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s current term, the U.S. State Department has designated several Latin American criminal enterprises as foreign terrorist organizations.
“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,” Hegseth said.
In comments Sunday, Trump disputed the reporting that Hegseth had ordered the survivors of the first attack killed, but said he would “look into it.”
“I don’t know anything about it. He said he did not say that and I believe him,” Trump said.
Asked more specifically about the reported second strike that killed survivors, the president said, “I wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“Pete said that did not happen,” Trump reiterated.
Last month, Trump announced that U.S. forces recovered two survivors from a submersible vessel they had destroyed in the Caribbean Sea. The president said these survivors were later returned to their home countries, Colombia and Ecuador, to face prosecution.
A handful of lawmakers were briefed on the operations on Nov. 5, in a closed-door setting. Rogers, who was among the select group of congressional leaders, praised the briefing and called on the Trump administration to go public with its legal rationale for the strikes.
“They should be talking to all y’all, because it was very well done, completely legal what they’re doing, and they should be more transparent about it, in my view,” Rogers said on Nov. 12.
The U.S. military strikes at sea may soon expand to operations against land-based targets.
“You probably noticed that people aren’t wanting to be delivering by sea, and we’ll be starting to stop them by land also,” Trump said in a Thanksgiving Day call to members of the Air Force’s Seventh Bomb Wing.
“The land is easier, but that’s going to start very soon,” the president added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
