Washington– A Navy admiral who reportedly ordered the US military to shoot survivors of an alleged drug boat attack was expected Thursday on Capitol Hill to deliver a classified briefing to top lawmakers in Congress overseeing national security.
The information from Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, now commander of US Special Operations Command, comes at a potentially critical moment in the war. Open a congressional investigation In how the Minister of Defense Pete Hegseth It took over the military operation in international waters near Venezuela. There are growing questions about whether the strike violated the law.
Lawmakers are seeking a Full accounting of strikes After the Washington Post reported that on September 2, Bradley ordered an attack on two survivors in compliance with Hegseth’s directive to “kill everyone.” Legal experts say The attack amounts to a crime if survivors are targeted, and lawmakers from both parties are demanding accountability.
Bradley will speak to a number of senior congressional leaders, including the Republican and senior Democratic chairs of the House and Senate committees on armed services, and separately to the GOP chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“This is a very serious matter. It is about the safety of our forces. This is an incident that could expose members of our armed forces to legal consequences,” the Senate Democratic leader said. Chuck Schumer New York in a speech on Wednesday. “Yet, the American public and Congress are still not listening to basic facts.”
While Bradley appears to ask questions in a confidential setting, lawmakers will seek answers to key questions: What orders did Hegseth issue regarding the operations? What is the reason for the second strike?
Democratic lawmakers are also demanding that the Trump administration release the full video of the Sept. 2 attack, as well as written records of orders and any directives from Hegseth. While Republicans, who control the national security committees, have not publicly called for these documents, they have pledged a comprehensive review.
“It will be investigated based on the numbers,” said Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We will discover the truth on the ground.”
President Donald Trump did it I stood behind Hegseth While he defends his handling of the attack, pressure is mounting on the Defense Minister.
Hegseth said there were traces of the initial strike on the boat Cloudy in the “fog of war”. He also said he “did not continue” with the second strike, but said Bradley “made the right decision” and “had full authority” to do so.
Also on Thursday, the Defense Department’s inspector general is expected to release a partially redacted report on Hegseth’s use of the messaging app Signal in March to share information about a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.
Report Hegseth was found to be putting US personnel and their mission at risk using Signal, according to two people familiar with the findings. But the Pentagon viewed the report as a vindication of Hegseth.
At the time of the attack, Bradley was commander of Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the Army’s elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. About a month after the raid, he was promoted to commander of US Special Operations Command.
He spent most of his military career, spanning more than three decades, serving in the elite Marine Corps and Joint Operations Command. He was among the first Special Forces officers deployed to Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks. His latest promotion to admiral was approved by a unanimous vote in the Senate earlier this year, and Democratic and Republican senators praised his record.
“I expect Bradley to tell the truth and shed some light on what really happened,” said Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee from Virginia, adding that he had “great respect for his record.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, called Bradley among those “extremely strong” and “the most extraordinary people to ever serve in the military.”
But lawmakers like Tillis have also made clear they expect a reckoning if survivors turn out to have been targeted. “Anyone in the chain of command who was responsible for it, who had a vision for it, should be held accountable,” he said.
The scope of the investigation is unclear, but there are other documents from the strike that could fill in what happened. However, obtaining this information will depend largely on action taken by Republican lawmakers, a painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the president.
Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he and Wicker formally requested executive orders authorizing operations and full videos of strikes. They are also seeking intelligence that identified ships as legitimate targets, rules of engagement for attacks and any criteria used to determine who is a combatant and who is a civilian.
Military officials were aware there were survivors in the water after the initial strike, but carried out the subsequent strike under the pretext that it needed to sink the ship, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. What remains unclear — and what lawmakers hope to clarify in their briefing with Bradley — is who ordered the strikes and whether Hegseth was involved, one of the people said.
Republican lawmakers close to Trump sought to defend Hegseth this week, and stood behind him Military campaign against drug gangs The president considers them “narco-terrorists.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with what happened,” said Senator Markwayne Mullen, a Republican from Oklahoma, arguing that the Trump administration was justified in using war powers against drug cartels.
More than 80 people were killed in the series of attacks that began in September. For critics of the campaign like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., pressing questions about the legality of killing survivors are a natural consequence of military action that has always been on shaky legal footing. He said it was clear Hegseth was responsible, even if he did not explicitly order a second attack.
“He may not have been in the room, but he was aware,” Blumenthal said. “It was his command that was instrumental and predictably led to the death of these survivors.”