Hegseth and Pentagon face heat after Signal chat report, briefing on deadly boat strike | CBC News

A U.S. navy admiral told lawmakers on Thursday that there was no “kill them all” order from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, but grave questions and concerns remain as Congress scrutinizes an attack that killed two survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug boat in international waters near Venezuela.

Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley “was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all. He was given an order that, of course, was written down in great detail,” Sen. Tom Cotton, who heads the Senate intelligence committee, said as he exited a classified briefing in Washington, D.C.

Cotton defended the attack, but Democrats who also were briefed and saw video of the survivors being killed questioned the Trump administration’s rationale and said the incident was deeply concerning.

“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” said Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives intelligence committee. “You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, that were killed by the United States.”

“The order was basically: Destroy the drugs, kill the 11 people on the boat,” said Washington state Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House armed services committee. Smith, who is demanding further investigation, said the survivors were “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water.”

Among those briefed were the leaders of the House and Senate armed services committees and the intelligence committee in each chamber. Most of the lawmakers in the briefings, which included senators, declined to comment as they exited.

Joining Admiral Bradley at the Capitol was Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for sessions that came at a potentially crucial moment in the unfolding congressional investigation into how Hegseth handled the military operation in international waters near Venezuela.

WATCH | Serious questions about legality of any strikes, says ex-State Dept. official:

Lawmakers want a full accounting of the strikes after the Washington Post reported last week that on Sept. 2, Bradley ordered an attack on two survivors to comply with Hegseth’s directive to “kill everybody.” Legal experts say the attack amounts to a crime if the survivors were targeted, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding accountability.

The legality of the deadly strikes and treating alleged drug transporters as “enemy combatants” without the authorization of Congress had already been questioned by several legal experts. As well, the head of the U.S. Southern Command — which oversees operations in the Caribbean Sea — unexpectedly announced his resignation in mid-October, well before the end of his term.

Military officials were aware there were survivors in the water after the initial strike but carried out the follow-on strike under the rationale that they needed to sink the vessel, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Democrats have demanded the Trump administration release the full video of the Sept. 2 attack, as well as written records of the orders and any directives from Hegseth.

Republicans, who control the national security committees, have not publicly called for those documents but have pledged a thorough review.

“The investigation is going to be done by the numbers,” said Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who leads the Senate’s armed services committee. “We’ll find out the ground truth.”

More than 80 people have been killed in the series of U.S. military strikes and two survivors from a subsequent boat strike were repatriated to their home countries.

President Donald Trump has stood behind Hegseth as he defends his handling of the attack.

Hegseth has said the aftermath of an initial strike on the boat was clouded in the “fog of war.” He has also said he “didn’t stick around” for the second strike but that Bradley “made the right call” and “had complete authority” to do it.

Hegseth criticized over Houthi strike chat

Also on Thursday, the Defence Department’s inspector general released a partially redacted report into Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app in March to share sensitive information about a military strike against Yemen’s Houthi militants. The report found that Hegseth endangered service members by doing that on his personal phone.

In at least two separate Signal chats, Hegseth provided the exact timing of warplane launches and when bombs would drop — before the men and women carrying out those attacks on behalf of the United States were airborne.

Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by then-national security adviser Mike Waltz, as several high-ranking officials were brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis.

Hegseth had created another Signal chat with 13 people that included his wife and brother, where he shared similar details of the same strike, The Associated Press has reported.

Signal is encrypted but is not authorized for carrying classified information and is not part of the Pentagon’s secure communications network.

Hegseth previously has said none of the information shared in the chats was classified. Multiple current and former military officials have told AP that details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, were not appropriate to share on an unsecured device.

The revelations sparked intense scrutiny, with Democratic lawmakers and a small number of Republicans saying Hegseth posting the information to the Signal chats before the military jets had reached their targets potentially put those pilots’ lives at risk. They said lower-ranking members of the military would have been fired for such a lapse.

WATCH | Democrat Jim Himes said troops were put in danger by chat:

U.S. lucky not to be ‘mourning dead pilots now,’ Democrat says of Signal chat controversy

Connecticut congressman Jim Himes says a chat on Houthi airstrikes accidentally leaked to a journalist could have easily been intercepted by U.S. rivals.

The U.S. launched a broad assault against the Houthis, after the militant group launched a series of missile and drone attacks against ships in late 2023 in what their leadership had described as an effort to end Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Houthi campaign greatly reduced the flow of commercial trade through the Red Sea corridor.

Following the disclosure of Hegseth’s Signal chat that included the Atlantic’s editor, the magazine released the entire thread in late March. Hegseth had posted multiple details about an impending strike, using military language and laying out when a “strike window” starts, where a “target terrorist” was located, the time elements around the attack and when various weapons and aircraft would be used in the strike.

A Pentagon spokesperson called the inspector general report a “a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth,” an assertion that was slammed by Democratic lawmakers.

“This was not an isolated lapse. It reflects a broader pattern of recklessness and poor judgment from a secretary who has repeatedly shown he is in over his head,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement.

The initial findings of the report were first reported Wednesday by CNN.

Read the full report: