Top Admiral Admits Narco-Boat Strike Survivors Killed Couldn’t Call for Help: CNN

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A senior admiral overseeing the Trump administration’s narco-trafficking boat strike campaign conceded Thursday that two suspected smugglers killed in a second missile hit on September 2 had no way to radio for help, according to CNN, a theory floated as a justification for the further strike.

Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, head of Joint Special Operations Command at the time, told lawmakers in closed-door briefings that the pair clinging to wreckage “did not appear to have radio or other communications devices,” multiple sources told the network.

That acknowledgement challenges earlier claims that the men were legitimate targets because they supposedly appeared to be signaling for backup. The rationale, floated privately in Congress and repeated in press circles, aimed to rebut accusations that the strike amounted to a war crime. Under the Pentagon’s own law-of-war manual, killing shipwrecked sailors is prohibited.

Bradley said he authorized a second strike after watching surveillance footage for 41 minutes, concluding that the partially floating hull likely contained cocaine and could be recovered.

One source told CNN that logic was “f*cking insane.”

Multiple members on Capitol Hill were split on what they’d heard and seen in the briefing.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) insisted he “saw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs… back over so they could stay in the fight.” But Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) described it as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen,” telling CNN: “The end result was two individuals without any weaponry… clinging to a wrecked boat … the decision was taken to kill them.”

Hegseth denies he ordered to “kill them all,” but questions now swirl around the legal basis of a campaign that has launched more than 20 strikes and killed at least 87 people.

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