By Erin Banco and Phil Stewart
Dec 4 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers have reviewed a summary of a Pentagon document that lays out the scope of the Trump administration’s campaign to strike vessels carrying narcotics in the Caribbean, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Members of Congress see the document as central to their investigation into a September 2 operation in which the U.S. military destroyed a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 suspected traffickers including two who had survived an initial strike.
The summary of the document, known as an execute order, or an EXORD, is two pages long and broadly lays out the chain of command, who holds strike authority, and how the administration is using intelligence to identify targets, two of the sources said. It was first shared with Congress in October.
Lawmakers have asked the administration for the full document, the two sources said. It is unclear whether the Pentagon will hand it over.
The Pentagon did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Officials have said the operation included a follow-on strike against the vessel after there were survivors of the initial attack, raising questions about the legality of the operation and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s role.
That second strike, which was carried out by Admiral Frank Bradley, has led some lawmakers to suggest that the U.S. may have violated the law of war, which prohibits the military from firing upon the shipwrecked. The Pentagon’s own manual also says “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”
Hegseth said this week he did not personally witness the second strike. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Hegseth had authorized Bradley to carry it out.
Congress is probing how the second strike was conducted, as well as the administration’s rationale for initiating a second strike and whether Bradley consulted Hegseth before ordering the strike. Lawmakers say the summary does not offer enough detail and that only the full document would help to answer those questions, the four sources said.
The chairs of the Senate and House armed services committees did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Pentagon has provided access to one other major piece of information requested by Congress: the full, unedited video of the September 2 strike.
A select group of lawmakers viewed it on Capitol Hill Thursday during a briefing by Pentagon officials.
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things that I’ve seen in my time in public service,” said Democratic Representative Jim Himes, the co-chair of the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee.
“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.”
There have been 20 U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific against suspected drug vessels this year, which have killed more than 80 people.
Killing suspected drug traffickers who pose no threat of causing imminent serious injury to others would be murder under U.S. and international law. The U.S. government, however, has framed the attacks as part of a war with drug cartels, which it refers to as armed groups.
(Reporting by Erin Banco and Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Don Durfee and Edmund Klamann)
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