Admiral Denies ‘Kill All’ Order As Left Spins ‘War Crime’ Narrative

Testifying before Congress on Thursday, Navy Adm. Frank M. Bradley flatly denied that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a “kill all” order for strikes on a vessel carrying alleged drug-smuggling Venezuelan narco-terrorists in the Caribbean in early September, pushing back against accusations of war crimes.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said that the strikes on September 2 were “entirely lawful and needful and they were exactly what we would expect our military commanders to do.” Cotton added that during a classified briefing with Bradley, he witnessed “two survivors trying to flip a boat” after the first strike and “board it with drugs.”

“Admiral Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order to give no quarter or kill them all,” Cotton added.

The Washington Post published an anonymously-sourced story on Saturday claiming that things had gone very differently, however.

According to the initial story, a direct order to “kill them all” was attributed to Secretary Hegseth — and the scenario described suggested that two survivors had been clinging to wreckage when a second strike was ordered to ensure that they weren’t left alive.

Democrats and legacy media outlets were only too happy to run with that narrative, and they spent much of the week declaring Hegseth — along with anyone who had been involved in carrying out his order — was likely guilty of war crimes and continued with those questions after viewing video of the second strike on Thursday.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) said the second strike on the boat was “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service. You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.”

“Now there’s a whole set of contextual items that the admiral explained. Yes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in the position to continue their mission in any way,” he continued.

“Based on what I’ve seen, I am deeply concerned about the legality of the strike,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) told PBS News on Thursday. “I’m deeply concerned about the legality of the entire operation, and it needs a further investigation for a possible war crime.”

Following the briefings on Thursday, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell demanded that the Washington Post retract their piece.

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“The Washington Post must retract their story which led to this latest hoax against Secretary Hegseth,” he posted. “It’s an insult to the American People & to everyone who wears the uniform of our country.”

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) called the outrage from Democrats “manufactured and disingenuous” after mocking the war crime accusations on social media.

Virginia Kruta contributed to this report.