All the ways the Trump administration has changed its story on the boat strikes

Written by: Aaron Blake at CNN

Shortly after the Trump administration carried out its first known attack on an alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean in early September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared with his old colleagues on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” to brag about the precision of the operation. “I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing and we knew exactly who they represented,” Hegseth said. He added that these were gang members from Venezuela who were “trying to poison our country with illicit drugs.” But three months later, the story of the already legally dubious attack has become one of the biggest controversies of the second Trump administration, with the revelation that the administration conducted a second set of strikes that finished off survivors of its initial ones – a possible war crime. And importantly, the administration can’t seem to get its story straight. Repeatedly over the last week-plus, its account of events has changed. Here are some of the key details. This narrative actually shifted well before the situation dominated the news in recent weeks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on September 2 that the boat was “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean, at which point they just contribute to the instability these countries are facing.” But the next day, the administration claimed the drugs were headed to the United States – at some point, at least. In addition to Hegseth’s comments about the boat’s operators “trying to poison our country,” President Donald Trump cited the boat carrying “massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people.” Rubio amended his comments to say that the boat “was headed towards, eventually, the United States.” And now we have a new layer to this evolving narrative. CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported Friday that the military official who oversaw the operation, Adm. Frank Bradley, told lawmakers in briefings last week that the vessel was actually heading to link up with a larger vessel that was headed for Suriname, another country on South America’s northern coast. Why is that significant? Because Suriname, which is to the east of Trinidad, is much more likely to be a stop for drugs on the way to Europe, not the United States. “Suriname is a transit country for South American cocaine, the majority of which is likely destined for Europe,” the State Department said in a March report on the international narcotics trade. Bradley told lawmakers that there was still a possibility the drugs could have ultimately gone from Suriname to the United States. But that circuitous, uncertain path for narcotics reaching the US is not how this was initially billed. And supporters of the strikes appear to be shifting their justifications. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton conceded Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he hadn’t seen hard evidence that the boat was headed to the United States. He said the killings were justified, though, because the people on the boat were part of a designated terrorist organization. One of the biggest questions with these strikes it just how solid the intelligence is, given the administration is killing people without due process. The fact that it can’t consistently describe where a boat was headed would seem inauspicious. The president has given mixed signals on this. Last weekend, before the administration publicly confirmed the second strike, Trump signaled he would have disagreed with that. “No, I wouldn’t have wanted that — not a second strike,” Trump said. But after the White House confirmed the second strike, Trump adopted a more supportive posture. “I support the decision to knock out the boats,” Trump said. “And whoever is piloting those boat – most of them are gone, but whoever are piloting those boats, they’re guilty of trying to kill people in our country.” Initially claiming the story was false

After the Washington Post, the Intercept and CNN first reported on the second strike two weekends ago, the administration offered a series of vague but tough-sounding denials. Hegseth cited “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting.” A Defense Department spokesman said the “entire narrative was false.” A White House spokesman said the initial report contained “NO FACTS and NO SUBSTANTIATION.” Trump himself claimed he didn’t know what had happened and that Hegseth “didn’t even know what people were talking about.” His defense secretary, Trump said, claimed he “did not order the death of those two men.” But the reports have since been vindicated. The White House confirmed the second strike shortly after those denials. There has been some dispute as to whether and how Hegseth had ordered that everyone on board be killed. Many have wrongly cast the initial reporting as saying Hegseth ordered the survivors’ deaths in real time – as opposed to giving orders ahead of time – but that’s not what the initial reports said. And the reporting continues to indicate that Hegseth asked for an operation that was lethal, with CNN reporting that Bradley understood his mission being to kill all 11 men on the boat. The whole thing looks a whole lot like the administration’s first impulse was just to deny it and hope it went away. But that clearly didn’t happen. Hegseth’s initial account has also been undercut. While he told Fox on September 3, “I watched it live,” he’s now emphasizing that he didn’t watch all of it live. Hegseth signaled last week that he hadn’t even been in the room when it became clear there were survivors and a decision had to be made on what to do next . “I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth said. “As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting.” But it’s worth noting: This was the administration’s first strike on a suspected drug vessel – strikes that have now killed more than 80 people. This was clearly an operation likely to generate significant constitutional questions and congressional scrutiny, regardless of where you land on the legality of these strikes. The suggestion now seems to be that Hegseth wasn’t party to that ultimately decision. But that’s different from how he initially billed his involvement. Trump signaled last week that he would be happy to release the fuller video of the strike. “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no problem,” Trump said Wednesday. But five days later, the video still isn’t out, and the administration seems to have gotten cold feet about doing what Trump said it would. “We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see,” Hegseth said Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. “Whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible about reviewing that right now.” Trump also seemed to walk back his promise from last week on Monday, responding, “I didn’t say that” when a reporter asked about it. Pressed further, he said the decision would be Hegseth’s. “Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me,” Trump said. It’s perhaps valid to be careful about what you release. But the administration was very quick to release video of the initial strikes. It posted it to social media the very same day. And it has repeatedly released videos of subsequent strikes, including one on the same day that Bradley went to Capitol Hill to discuss the controversial multi-part strike. If there’s an argument that releasing this footage could reveal US tactics to enemies, that doesn’t seem to have dissuaded them from doing so in the past. What’s more, Trump didn’t qualify his response on Wednesday; he said we’d get the video. The administration has argued that the survivors somehow still posed a threat. As part of that, CNN has reported, it told lawmakers in at least one briefing back in September that the survivors appeared to be radioing for help or backup. That claim has showed up in some other media reports, as well. But CNN reported last week that Bradley told lawmakers that the survivors were in no position to make a distress call. Cotton told CNN’s John Berman on Friday that he had seen no evidence of the survivors trying to use a radio.