Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Thanks again for your support, and let's get on with the show. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Alex Horton, is the reporter who broke the story that's been dominating the news since last Friday when it was published in The Washington Post. It's about what happened on September 2nd when the U.S. military carried out the first deadly strike on a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean.
All 11 aboard were killed. The Trump administration alleged the targets were narco-terrorists and that the boat was carrying drugs, despite providing no evidence. However, two of the crew actually survived the initial strike. They were alive in the water holding on to the wreckage when they were killed in a subsequent strike.
Horton and his colleague Ellen Nakashima reported that the command to kill the survivors was issued by Admiral Frank Bradley, the special operations commander overseeing the mission. and that he was complying with Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth's verbal command to kill everyone on board. But Hexeth's order came before the actual strikes.
The Washington Post report led to House and Senate lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to call for reviews of the boat strikes. Some are raising the question of whether this amounts to a war crime or murder. The U.S. military has conducted strikes on at least 20 other vessels of alleged drug smugglers, killing dozens in the last few months.
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Chapter 2: What happened during the September 2nd attack on the Venezuelan boat?
So there are very clear protections. And this came out of World War II when this happened on both the Allies and the Axis side of people who were shipwrecked getting engaged when they couldn't do anything about it. So now the rule for... international war and lawfare is you need to protect people who are shipwrecked and you can't shoot them again in a circumstance like this.
Now, there is room for nuance. How destroyed was that boat? Did Bradley make a determination that it was still seaworthy? That part's unclear at this moment. So there is some wiggle room if you want to say they were legitimate targets because they could have gotten out of there.
Was Secretary Hexeth's order ambiguous? Did the order need to be more specific?
We're still trying to understand the contours of that order, that verbal order. You know, the manner in which he gave it. Was it a swashbuckling, swagger type of thing, as he has grown to do as the defense secretary? Was it a formal directive to Bradley and how many people heard it? These are all things we're still trying to figure out.
Speaking of swashbuckling orders, I want to play something Hexeth said to military leaders when he gathered military leaders from around the globe in Quantico, Virginia on September 30th.
We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.
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Chapter 3: What were the U.S. military's justifications for the strike?
We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.
So, Alex, look, is Hexeth saying we're just ignoring the rules of engagement now because we decided to?
You know, this is something that the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees are looking to entangle is any number of things to include, you know, what were the authorities taken and do they violate any rules of engagement? You know, I think it's important to remember, you know, Agseth, I think, made it pretty crystal clear his view on this.
As you may know, you know, before he was defense secretary, one of his priorities while he was a Fox News host on the weekends was to champion Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that he felt were unfairly prosecuted for war crimes. And there were a number that, you know, weren't just accused, but were convicted.
He talked about this consistently, that he feels military attorneys who offer the advice of how to conduct yourself lawfully, that it's too overbearing. It's too bureaucratic of a process and too soft. And he would prefer that war is left to what he calls the warfighters and not to the military lawyers.
All of that is an academic exercise that's besides the point that these are civilian traffickers who are alleged criminals but not lawful combatants. So therefore, you know, everything I laid out about, you know, what it's like to be in combat and making these decisions and the distinctions.
What they're saying is this, it is all moot because this is homicide or murder on the high seas rather than this trying to pick apart the nuances of military law. That is, it is a separate thing entirely.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Alex Horton. He's a Washington Post national security reporter. We'll be right back.
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Chapter 4: How did the command to kill survivors come about?
This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Alex Horton, a Washington Post national security reporter. He was the lead reporter on the story he broke with his colleague Ellen Nakashima last Friday about the U.S. military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat in early September.
After nine of the 11 people on board were killed, two survivors were in the water clinging to the wreckage. They were killed in a subsequent strike. According to Horton's reporting, the admiral who gave the command to kill the survivors was in compliance with Defense Secretary Pete Hex's order to kill all the people aboard. The order was issued before the attack.
We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Later in the day, President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth commented on the story in a cabinet meeting. Horton returned to fresh air this morning so I could ask him about his reaction to what they said. Well, let's hear what Trump and Hexeth had to say at yesterday's cabinet meeting. Let's start with Hexeth. Here's his comment.
Now, the first couple of strikes, as you would, as any leader would want, you want to own that responsibility. So I said, I'm going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it's the right strike. That was September 2nd. There's a lot of intelligence that goes into that, building that case and understanding that a lot of people providing information.
I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete authority to do.
And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat.
sunk the boat and eliminated the threat and it was the right call we have his back and the american people are safer because narco terrorists know you can't bring drugs through the water and eventually on land if necessary to the american people we will eliminate that threat and we're proud to do it so you didn't see any survivors to be clear after that
I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire. It was exploded in fire or smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war. This is what you and the press don't understand. You sit in your air conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about kill everybody.
phrases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made. I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war fighters.
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Chapter 5: What are the international laws regarding attacks on shipwrecked survivors?
Like I said, I'm not the adjudicator. I will say the Department of Defense's manual has lines in there that says you should not follow an order that is illegal. And the example it gives is firing on someone that is shipwrecked. It just so happens that what we're talking about is an example. But then it just goes back to were they shipwrecked or were they not?
Trump has threatened to recall Democratic Senator Mark Kelly to active duty in the military and then have him court-martialed.
Yes, to put him on active duty, to try him on military court, yes. To say he has incited the military and he needs to come back and face discipline under military law.
And what he said was that you have to follow the rules. I mean, that was the gist of what he said.
Yeah, that's right. I mean, the message they delivered was, you know, there is a responsibility for everyone to follow lawful orders and when the time comes for an illegal order to disobey it. And that's not a controversy. I mean, it is because it's political and these are Democrats. This is just the age we live in. But, you know, when you strip all that away, that is what you expect U.S.
service members to do.
So do you think that these attacks on people who Trump is labeling as narco-terrorists is part of Trump's efforts to oust Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro?
It's hard to say what the connective tissue is between these missions and the larger military buildup. Because as I mentioned, 99.9% of the forces that are in the Caribbean are not striking the boats. This is done by a very small, select, elite crew of targeters and intelligence operatives.
So then it becomes, okay, well, if they're not doing anything about the boats, or maybe they're supporting it in some ways, like intel or whatever... What are they actually accomplishing in the Caribbean?
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