U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaks during the joint press conference with South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-Back, following the 57th Security Consultative Meeting at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. Lee Jin-man/Pool via REUTERS
A legal expert swiftly shredded the Trump administration after a new report revealed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pre-authorized contingency plans on how to handle potential survivors during drug strike missions.
Hegseth has tried to distance himself from an order to kill two survivors clinging to a boat following a Trump administration strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. Hegseth claimed he learned of the second strike hours later and praised Adm. Frank Bradley, the special operations commander, for a "correct" decision to neutralize the threat. Even so, he stressed he issued no further orders. President Donald Trump has similarly distanced both himself and Hegseth from the killings.
“Adm. Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat,” Hegseth said. “We have his back.”But
However, The New York Times reported Wednesday that Hegseth had previously approved contingency plans on how to handle potential survivors.
"The military would attempt to rescue survivors who appeared to be helpless, shipwrecked and out of what the administration considered a fight. But it would try again to kill them if they took what the United States deemed to be a hostile action, like communicating with suspected cartel members," officials told the Times.
Ryan Goodman, a former Department of Defense lawyer, laid into Hegseth in a thread on X.
"USG has a new explanation on why they (now admittedly) intentionally killed 2 shipwrecked men. It does not pass the laws-of-war smell test," he said. "Worse for Hegseth, NYT: 'Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors.'"
Goodman specifically took issue with Hegseth's reported contingency plan.
"First it's absurd on its face that communicating to be RESCUED is a hostile act. That's the definition of being shipwrecked and helpless. The whole point of a legal prohibition on killing people who are shipwrecked is that they must be rescued or left to be rescued instead," he said.
Goodman then tore into the explanation that in retrieving the men, the cartels may also retrieve cocaine.
"It's legally ludicrous to claim - as Hegseth et al would need to do - that such activity equals failure to 'cease all active combat activity," he said.
The lawyer, now a chaired professor at NYU Law, pointed to the Commander's Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, which states, "Shipwrecked persons do not include combatant personnel engaged in seaborne attacks who are proceeding ashore, unless they are clearly in distress and require assistance. They qualify as shipwrecked persons only if they have ceased all active combat activity."
"Let Hegseth (or [Adm. Frank Bradley] or [General Dan Caine]) try to defend the idea that retrieving the cocaine is active combat activity. They can't. They're digging themselves in worse," Goodman warned.
Goodman then ripped the Trump administration's attempt to call cocaine boats "legitimate 'war-sustaining' targets," which he said makes the government's new explanation "fall apart."
"War-sustaining does not equal active combat activities. These 11 people were civilians, and retrieving the cocaine does not make the 2 less than shipwrecked," he said, concluding that the "entire exercise is Alice in Wonderland for legal experts."
"That's because the truth is: It's not an armed conflict. The laws of war thus don't apply. The more restrictive rules of human rights apply. It's extrajudicial killing."