11 men killed in strike had loose cartel ties, officer told lawmakers
The U.S. military knew the identities of the 11 men killed in a Sept. 2 boat strike in the Caribbean and approved the hit because the crewmembers apparently had loose ties to a drug cartel, the military commander who led the operation told lawmakers last week, according to two people with knowledge of the briefing.
In a Dec. 4 classified briefing with a select group of lawmakers, Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley, who has been on the hot seat for weeks due to his role in the attack, said the military deemed the people on board legitimate targets because some had contact with members of drug cartels the Trump administration has declared foreign terrorist organizations, the two people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Bradley did not provide lawmakers with documentation that the boat carried drugs. He also stated that follow-up strikes sank the wreckage of the bombed boat, destroying possible evidence of drug trafficking, the people said.
NBC previously reported that the 11 men were on an internal list of "narco-terrorists" who were cleared to be targeted.
Survivors couldn't radio for help
Bradley, the commander of Special Operations Command, has come under scrutiny in recent weeks after the Trump administration confirmed that he ordered a second strike on the wreckage of the boat roughly 40 minutes later, killing two people who had survived the first attack. The Washington Post first reported the strike on the survivors.
In previous briefings with lawmakers, Pentagon officials rationalized that the second strike was necessary because the two men clinging to their demolished ship were trying to radio for backup, or for another vessel to collect the drugs, CNN and other outlets have reported. However, Bradley revealed during the Dec. 4 briefing that the survivors did not have the means to radio for help, one of the people with knowledge of the briefing confirmed.
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The Sept. 2 strike was the first of at least 22 known strikes by the Trump administration on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 87 people. It marked the beginning of a new policy of killing suspected drug traffickers that has come under fire from critics who say it is illegal and needlessly inhumane. Critics say the Trump administration cannot carry out such strikes without formally declaring war.
The strikes have not been approved by Congress. The boats hit were thousands of miles from trafficking routes for fentanyl, which flows into the U.S. from Mexico. Bradley told lawmakers that the vessel struck Sept. 2 was headed to Suriname on South America's east coast, according to news reports .
"Since the Department of War began striking these vessels, we have consistently said that our intelligence did indeed confirm these boats were trafficking narcotics destined for America," Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement to USA TODAY. "That same intelligence also confirms that the individuals involved in these drug operations were narco-terrorists, and we stand by that assessment."
"Every Presidentially directed strike conducted against these Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTOs) is taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and to protect the American homeland from narco-terrorism. These strikes send (a clear) message directly to the narco-terrorists: you will find no safe harbor if you continue to poison our people with deadly drugs."
Boat crews were low-level 'foot soldiers'
In decades past, the U.S. treated drug trafficking as a law enforcement issue, and the Coast Guard was assigned to interdict boats carrying drugs, issuing arrests and seizing contraband.
James Saenz, who served as the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for counternarcotics and stabilization during the Biden administration, said that during his tenure, the department did not have the intelligence network in place to pick up a detailed profile of the people aboard drug boats like those targeted in recent months.
"If we wanted to know the crew identities, it would take significant effort and a lot of time before we would be able to develop that much information with confidence," he said.
"Leaders (of drug cartels) and people with unique skills are not the ones riding these boats," he said. "It’s traditionally low-level foot soldiers" on board.
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The Trump administration has painted its campaign of killing suspected drug traffickers as a new War on Terror, comparing the toll of deadly drugs to the threat posed by terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. President Donald Trump designated eight Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in February. Experts have told USA TODAY that designation is primarily an economic tool and does not give the administration additional authority to target affiliated people with military force.
The Pentagon said in a notice to some lawmakers this fall that the president determined the U.S. is in a "non-international armed conflict" with drug cartels, whose actions are an "armed attack" against the country.
Critics, including lawyers and former military officials, have said that the comparison does not hold water.
"This is summary execution," said Wes Bryant, a former senior Pentagon adviser on mitigating civilian harm during military operations. "Somewhere in the chain, someone knows that this is either blatantly illegal or somewhere near illegal."
Bryant formerly served as a branch chief at the Pentagon's Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which worked to improve the military’s procedures for minimizing and reporting civilian casualties. The Trump administration dismantled it in the spring.
When the Trump administration launched its bombing campaign against Houthi forces in Yemen soon after, it became clear that the Pentagon's threshold of tolerance for civilian deaths had been drastically raised, Bryant said. At least 238 civilians, including 24 children, were killed in the less-than-two-month operation, according to the Yemen Data Project .
"Everything that the U.S. had been working towards – I had been working towards – in hand with special operations command, a lot of that was thrown out the window," Bryant said.
Bryant, a retired Air Force master sergeant who worked with special operations on counterterrorism missions during the War on Terror, said the boat strikes had further entrenched the administration's disregard of civilian life. It would be hard to confirm the identity of a couple of individuals, let alone 11 people on a boat, he said.
"This is so severe (that) at this point, the Trump administration needs to release the names of every single person," he said.
Building a 'pattern of life'
Mark McCurley, a retired Air Force pilot who flew many drone missions in the Middle East, said the military is likely observing boats traversing the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific using satellites or aircraft to build a "pattern of life." Common routes and travel times for boats that are believed to be carrying drugs could be compiled to "build that picture," he said. The military may be using aircraft to surveil boats as soon as they leave the harbor and then firing on them once they enter international waters, he added.
Establishing a "pattern of life" was essential to building a case that a target was legally justified, said McCurley, who also flew surveillance missions of counternarcotics operations in Latin America in the 1990s.
During the War on Terror, he said, the military would invest significant effort in verifying the "identity and intent" of a potential target.
"The justification is pretty thin," he said. "How is a boat carrying a product to Suriname a direct action against the U.S. or a direct threat to our existence?"
This article has been updated to correct the titles of James Saenz and Wes Bryant.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 11 killed in boat strike had loose cartel ties, official told leaders
