Lawmakers to hear from Navy admiral who ordered attack that killed boat
strike survivors
[December 04, 2025]
By STEPHEN GROVES and LISA MASCARO
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Navy admiral who reportedly issued orders for the
U.S. military to fire upon survivors of an attack on an alleged drug
boat is expected Thursday on Capitol Hill to provide a classified
briefing to top congressional lawmakers overseeing national security.
The information from Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who is now the
commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, comes at a potentially
crucial moment in the unfolding congressional investigation into how
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth handled the military operation in
international waters near Venezuela. There are mounting questions over
whether the strike may have violated the law.
Lawmakers are seeking a full accounting of the strikes after The
Washington Post reported that Bradley on Sept. 2 ordered an attack on
two survivors to comply with Hegseth's directive to “kill everybody.”
Legal experts say the incident amounts to a crime if the survivors were
targeted, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding
accountability.
Bradley will speak to a handful of top congressional leaders, including
the Republican chairs and ranking Democrats of the House and Senate
committees on Armed Services, and separately to the GOP chairman and
Democratic vice chairman on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“This is an incredibly serious matter. This is about the safety of our
troops. This is an incident that could expose members of our armed
services to legal consequences,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer
said in a floor speech Wednesday. “And yet the American public and the
Congress are still not hearing basic facts.”
As Bradley appears for questions in the classified setting, lawmakers
will be seeking answers to key questions: What orders did Hegseth give
regarding the operations? And what was the reasoning 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 the orders and any directives from Hegseth. While Republicans, who
control the national security committees, have not publicly called for
those documents, they have pledged a thorough review.
“The investigation is going to be done by the numbers,” said Sen. Roger
Wicker, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We’ll find
out the ground truth.”
Pressure builds on Hegseth
President Donald Trump has stood behind Hegseth as he defends his
handling of the attack, but pressure is mounting on the defense
secretary.
Hegseth has said the aftermath of an initial strike on the boat was
clouded in the “fog of war.” He has also said he “didn’t stick around”
for the second strike, but said Bradley “made the right call” and “had
complete authority” to do it.
Also on Thursday, the Defense Department inspector general was expected
to release a partially redacted report into Hegseth's use of the Signal
messaging app in March to share information about a military strike
against Yemen’s Houthi militants.
The report found that Hegseth put U.S. personnel and their mission at
risk by using Signal, according to two people familiar with the
findings. The Pentagon, however, has cast the report as an exoneration
of Hegseth.
Who is Adm. Bradley?
At the time of the attack, Bradley was the commander of Joint Special
Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the
military's elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North
Carolina. About a month after the strike, he was promoted to commander
of U.S. Special Operations Command.
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Admiral Frank M. Bradley testifies during a Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing to examine his nomination to be admiral and
Commander, United States Special Operation Command, July 22, 2025,
at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, file)
His military career, spanning over three decades, was mostly spent
serving in the elite Navy SEALs and commanding joint operations. He
was among the first special forces officers to deploy to Afghanistan
after the 9/11 attacks. His latest promotion to admiral was approved
by unanimous voice vote in the Senate earlier this year, and
Democratic and Republican senators praised his record.
“I’m expecting Bradley to tell the truth and shed some light on what
actually happened,” said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, adding that he had
“great respect for his record.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, described Bradley as
among those who are “rock solid” and “the most extraordinary people
that have ever served in the military.”
But lawmakers like Tillis have also made it clear they expect a
reckoning if it is found that survivors were targeted. “Anybody in
the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of
it, needs to be held accountable,” he said.
What else are lawmakers seeking?
The scope of the investigation is not yet clear, but there is other
documentation of the strike that could fill in what happened. But
obtaining that information will largely depend on action from
Republican lawmakers — a potentially 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 have formally requested the executive orders
authorizing the operations and the complete videos from the strikes.
They are also seeking the intelligence that identified the vessels
as legitimate targets, the rules of engagement for the attacks and
any criteria used to determine who was a combatant and who was a
civilian.
Military officials were aware that there were survivors in the water
after the initial strike but carried out the follow-on strike under
the rationale that it needed to sink the vessel, according to two
people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of
anonymity. What remains unclear — and what lawmakers hope to clarify
in their briefing with Bradley — was who ordered the strikes and
whether Hegseth was involved, one of the people said.
Republican lawmakers who are close to Trump have sought to defend
Hegseth this week, standing behind the military campaign against
drug cartels that the president deems “narco-terrorists.”
“I see nothing wrong with what took place,” said Sen. Markwayne
Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, as he argued that the Trump
administration was justified in using war powers against drug
cartels.
More than 80 people have been killed in the series of strikes that
started in September. And for critics of the campaign like Sen.
Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the pressing questions about the
legality of killing survivors are a natural outgrowth of military
action that was always on shaky legal ground. He said it was clear
that Hegseth is responsible, even if he didn't explicitly order a
second attack.
“He may not have been in the room, but he was in the loop,”
Blumenthal said. “And it was his order that was instrumental and
foreseeably resulted in the deaths of these survivors.”
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