In another briefing, Bradley was asked whether Hegseth gave him a “no quarter order,” which is an illegal military directive to kill all enemy combatants and show no mercy, even if they surrender or are gravely injured, one of the U.S. officials and a second person with knowledge of the briefing said. They said Bradley replied that he was not given such an order and would not have followed one if it had been given. The White House and Hegseth have said no illegal orders were given.Unlike a “no quarter order,” an order to kill everyone on a target list is not forbidden under U.S. and international law.The three sources said Bradley said the military struck the boat with a GBU-69, a precision-guided munition that was set to air burst, meaning it detonated in midair rather than on impact. He said the explosion killed nine of the people on board, capsized the boat and damaged the back of it, including the motor.
Another part of the boat split off and caught fire, but a major section of the boat was not ablaze. The damage made the boat unlikely to continue navigating, Bradley told lawmakers.
For more than 30 minutes, Bradley said, he observed the two survivors among the wreckage.
He told lawmakers there were bags of cocaine on the boat that were not ejected during the initial explosion. Because the bags of cocaine were not seen floating in the water, Bradley said he believed they were strapped in and had stayed tied down during the explosion, making it likely the drugs were still under the capsized boat.
The cocaine was wrapped in plastic waterproof bundles, which likely made them more buoyant and may have contributed to the boat not sinking, he told lawmakers.
The two survivors got on the side of the boat that was not on fire and were able to flip it over and eventually stand on it.
Bradley observed them take off their shirts to check each other for wounds and told lawmakers they did not appear to have any visible injuries. He said the military’s overhead surveillance zoomed in to ensure the survivors weren’t injured or bleeding.
A U.S. military aircraft overhead spotted the survivors waving their arms but could not say with certainty whether they were signaling to the aircraft, Bradley told lawmakers, according to the three sources.
He said he determined that while the boat sustained damage significant enough that it may not be able to navigate, it may still have been able to keep floating or drifting.
U.S. intelligence also spotted another larger boat in the area, determining that the damaged boat was supposed to link up with it to transfer the drugs onto the larger vessel.
The larger boat was not on the approved target list Bradley had, so he did not have the authority strike it. He said because the U.S. did not have positive identification of who was on the larger boat, waiting to see if it came to try to salvage the damaged boat and two survivors was not a viable option.
Bradley explained, the three sources said, that his decision to target the boat with the survivors was because the drugs were not destroyed and the individuals on the boat had not surrendered and were not visibly injured but were still on the list of approved targets. And while the survivors were not armed, he said the mission identified the drugs as the threat to the U.S., effectively deeming the cocaine as the weapon that could endanger Americans.
Even so, Bradley acknowledged to lawmakers that U.S. intelligence did not conclude the drugs were heading to the U.S. Rather it showed that the boat was traveling south toward another country in South America, Suriname, which was first reported by CNN. Bradley told the lawmakers the drugs were eventually heading to Europe or Africa.
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