REPORT: Second strike to kill survivors on alleged drug boats

5 p.m. on the East Coast. Our next story brings us to the Caribbean though. You've likely seen these types of images by now. The Washington Post has an exclusive. They say that Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an order to quote kill everybody in the first strike on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean back in September. The Post says after two men survived, the mission commander ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions.

Standing by is Alex Horton. He's a Washington Post military reporter. He wrote the story. He had the scoop. So Alex, why might they want to make sure that these people were dead?

Could they have learned anything from talking

to possible survivors? Yeah, thanks for having me, Austin. Yeah, that's typically how it's worked in the last 20 something years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. That you kill militants who are engaged in ground combat, but there is also value in arresting people, detaining them, asking them questions. And, you know, if you're doing a raid, you know, capturing anything that might be useful, documents,

hard drives, that sort of thing. In the region, when it came to, you know, alleged drug traffickers for the last several decades, the Coast Guard has been responsible for interdicting these boats, stopping them, arresting them, and then taking drugs and other things.

And they would send them on their way to prosecution and the Drug Enforcement Agency and other organizations would rely on that information to understand networks, understand trafficking a little better. But that's not what's happening here. The U.S. is striking these boats and killing these alleged traffickers. So their ability to understand it more is fairly limited when you do that.

The SEAL Team 6 carried out the operation and the report says after their initial strike on the boat, two men were seen alive. They were clinging to the wreckage and rather than rescuing or detaining them, a second double tap strike was carried out. It killed the survivors. So Alex, you spoke with a military lawyer about this.

Did you discuss legal and ethical concerns?

Yeah, we spoke to former attorneys and people who are familiar with the incident from the inside. And yeah, there's some legal dimensions to this, depending on, you know, I'm not a lawyer and how this would even fall out in any kind of court

is anyone's guess, but there's some subtleties here. You know, the Trump administration has said that these people are in non-international armed conflict with the US, which makes them combatants. But there are provisions that protect combatants in the Geneva Convention, specifically when it comes to being shipwrecked. You know, for example, if the US and China were engaged in a naval battle, and one of the Chinese vessels was sunk, if the sailors are there and

they're not trying to fight you back, it is unlawful to kill them while they're in the water. You do have responsibilities to help them if reasonable and to give them aid if reasonable, but you cannot keep on attacking them. They're not a combatant anymore. It's called oars to combat. It's a term that's been around for decades now. But a lot of legal scholars who do focus on law of war issues, they are saying that these people are not combatants because the US is not at war with these drug traffickers or alleged traffickers. Therefore, these strikes can be chalked up to just traditional murder.

So it's really depending on your perspective and who would decide these things. But that's where the legalities lie. So to people who follow the law closely on these matters, whichever way you slice it is a little concerning.

Over 20 of these types of strikes have been carried out in recent months. Do we have any information to suggest if this double tap method was used on other strikes aside from the very first one?

That's a good question. As far as we know, we couldn't find any other instances. And you know, this was extraordinary for a few different reasons. One, it was the very first strike. So it was very, very, a lot of focus and a lot of intensity around it, a lot of unknowns about how this was all going to go. And then the very first one you had survivors. There was a subsequent strike, you know, some time later, you may recall this was the semi-submersible in,

on I think the Atlantic side, and there was a Colombian and an Ecuadorian who were both rescued and repatriated. You know, they weren't tried in any American system. They weren't taken to the US for questioning. They were back home within a couple of days.

So what we know is there was a greater emphasis after this strike to plan deliberately to put greater emphasis, put greater care into what happens when you have someone in the water. to put greater emphasis, put greater care into what happens when you have someone in the water. You know, it seems to me that maybe it wasn't that,

that cognizant for people. And once it happened the first time, it seemed to be more of a deliberate thing to focus on it. But as far as we know, we don't know if, and you know, as far as we know, there were no other double taps that happen like this.

You know, you cover the military or WAPO. What are you tracking in the coming weekend? What are you tracking in the coming days? We've been watching as the US has been building up its resources in the region. What are you watching for in the immediate weeks ahead?

I'm watching for things that change and turn on a dime. You know, I think people are glued to the open source tracking of all these planes that are going towards Venezuela. You know, there's been B-52s and all kinds of like electronic warfare planes. And, you know, people on Twitter will just, you know, blow up and be like, all right, here it comes, there's something happening. But the US has those plane transponders on so you can see them.

It's about sending a message. If there's gonna be a bombing run on Caracas, you're not gonna see those things on open source tracking. So I'm looking for any changes of subtleties of that, ramping up of rhetoric in Caracas or Washington. But, you know, if something were to happen, that's a big if. You know, the diplomatic talks are ongoing,

the posturing is ongoing. As far as we know, these strikes have only been focused on alleged drug traffickers. But if, and I do underline the word if, if something were to happen on the ground in Venezuela, whether it's against traffickers or government targets, we're gonna hear about it after the fact.

Yeah, it's worth mentioning too, that just yesterday on Thanksgiving, President Trump said the US will very soon start stopping suspected Venezuelan drug trafficking networks by land. He said by land, acknowledging that.

We appreciate your time coming on today. By the way, I will also mention that any other significant strikes that happen on water, we'll be tracking closely. What will this look like? Let's say a strike does take place on land, and maybe this is an impossible question to answer, but typically we see the DOD very shortly after the strike's over sea, they'll send out a video of this thing. Do we anticipate that they'll handle a land strike the same?

Is that clear to us at all?

That's not clear to me at all. I mean, that just comes down to President Trump's decision and what he wants to say with these messages. You know, I think traffickers around the region, you know, they're not necessarily going to know if a boat in connected to one group versus another is going to happen. So, you know, releasing the videos quick might be messaging to groups to as a deterrence to knock it off. But when it comes to strikes like that, you're talking about, you know,

more robust ground targets and operations a little bit more involved than that. You know, it's hard to know. You know, there's things that the US would want to conceal about what they're using and what they're flying. And we already see that in these videos. They have redacted imagery and telemetry on these videos.

So they may not want to do that with legitimate military targets so fast because it would give, you know, for example, air defense systems in Venezuela a little bit more information. So they would probably, you know, if they were going to release anything at all, they would want to wait a little bit just so that information is not readily used by the adversary.

Alex Horton is a Washington Post military reporter. Thanks for the time today. Have a good weekend.

Appreciate it, Austin.

Thank you.

Of course. All right, the time in the nation's capital, 509. We do have retired intelligence officer and national security analyst, Hal Kemp, for standing by. He's gonna join me to discuss Venezuela,

the latest in Ukraine as well. Him and I have two segments coming up. Let's hit a commercial break first. Hal the latest in Ukraine as well. Him and I have two segments coming up. Let's hit a commercial break first. Hal joins me in a moment.