What we know about controversial Venezuela drug boat strike

A U.S. strike on an alleged drug ship in the Caribbean has become the focal point of controversy, with shifting narratives and growing questions on Capitol Hill.

A first strike on the boat reportedly left two survivors clinging to the burning vessel before a second strike killed them both, raising concerns that U.S. forces violated laws governing armed conflict.

This is the first in a series of ongoing attacks that have left more than 80 people dead in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

Although U.S. officials have insisted the strike was legal, a full picture of what happened and who was ultimately responsible for the decision is still emerging.

Here’s what we know about the strike and its aftermath.

The American public first learned of the strike on September 2, when Trump surprised reporters in the Oval Office by announcing that moments earlier the United States had “fired on a boat, a boat carrying drugs” coming from Venezuela.

Later that same day, the president posted on Truth Social that the strike had killed 11 members of the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year.

Trump’s message also included video of the attack, showing the boat struck by an unidentified munition and catching fire.

A US official later confirmed to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that a total of four missiles had been used in the operation.

Almost no further information about the target was provided at the time.

While Trump said the ship was headed to the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the same day that it was “probably heading to Trinidad or another Caribbean country.”

The next day, Rubio changed course, saying he was heading “eventually to the United States.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News at the time that he watched the strike “live.”

“We knew exactly who was on that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing,” he said.

In the days that followed, U.S. officials argued that the strike was legally justified.

Similar strikes continued regularly in the Caribbean and Pacific in the weeks and months that followed, with that of September 2 largely overshadowed by the intensifying military campaign against drug traffickers.

On November 28, however, the Washington Post reported that two people had survived the first strike on September 2 and that Hegseth had ordered a second attack to kill them.

Hegseth immediately condemned the reports as “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” while Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the “entire narrative was false.”

The report sparked concern among Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

In a joint statement on November 29, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee said they would take “bipartisan action to provide a full accounting” of the operation.

A similar statement was made by lawmakers in the House of Representatives.

This Sunday, November 30, several MPs explicitly expressed their concern that the attack violated international law.

One of them, Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, told CBS that the “double tap” strike “rises to the level of a war crime if true.”

Republican Mike Turner, who previously headed the House Intelligence Committee, said the Sept. 2 incident was “completely outside of anything that’s been discussed with Congress” about the military campaign.

Hours after Senator Kaine made his comments, President Trump addressed the issue directly, telling reporters on Air Force One that he “would not have wanted” a second strike on the ship.

He said Hegseth told him he did not order the second strike and believed him “100 percent.”

The next day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed – for the first time – that a follow-up strike had been ordered for September 2.

That order, she explained, came from U.S. Navy Admiral Frank Bradley, who at the time of the attack was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC.

Admiral Bradley had been promoted to acting position. He is now commanding general of the US Special Operations Command, to which JSOC is subordinate.

In a prepared statement, Leavitt defended Bradley’s actions, saying he was “well within his authority and the law.”

During a marathon cabinet meeting at the White House on December 2, Hegseth again confirmed that he had observed the initial strike as it unfolded before moving on to other meetings.

At the time of the attack, Hegseth said he “did not personally see any survivors”, which he attributed to burning rubble and the “fog of war”.

Later that day, the Secretary of Defense recalled, he was informed that Bradley had decided to “sink the boat and eliminate the threat,” a decision he considered justified.

The Defense Secretary also suggested that several hours may have passed before the second strike was ordered.

Trump, for his part, again said he “did not know about the second strike,” while saying he considered it part of a larger operation.

“For me it was an attack,” he said. “It wasn’t one shot, two shots, three shots.”

At present, some observers believe that Bradley could, in theory, be held responsible.

“Under normal circumstances, it would be a court martial,” former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told MS NOW.

“He would be relieved of his duties and he would be court-martialed.”

“The administration invents logic and justifications for the things it does that defy all legal history and precedent, and that’s basically what we’re seeing here,” he added.

Faced with mounting pressure, Admiral Bradley should have addressed lawmakers on December 4 to inform them of the closed-door operation.