GOP Senators Vow 'Vigorous Oversight' After Stunning Hegseth 'Kill Everybody' Report

The top Republican and Democratic senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a joint statement promising to look into a report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a U.S. strike force to kill everyone aboard a suspected drug trafficking boat in September.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who is the committee chairman, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), said in a press release that the committee has “directed inquiries” to the Department of Defense and “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

The Washington Post published a stunning report Friday based on interviews and accounts from seven people “with knowledge of” a Sept. 2 military strike that killed 11 people on board a boat near the coast of Trinidad. Intelligence analysts suspected that the boat was smuggling drugs.

“The order was to kill everybody,” one person told the Post.

To fulfill Hegseth’s directive, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley then ordered a second strike to kill two men in the water who had initially survived, according to the Post.

ABC News subsequently confirmed that two survivors were killed in a second strike, though it did not confirm “the specifics of orders” from Hegseth or Bradley.

President Donald Trump has previously attempted to justify killing people on board suspected drug trafficking vessels in international waters rather than arresting them and trying them in court. The strikes have generated harsh condemnation, including from legal experts.

On X, Hegseth wrote off the Post article as “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting” from “the fake news.”

Pete Hegseth dismissed an explosive report about a Sept. military strike on a suspected drug ferrying boat as the work of "the fake news."

Felix Leon / AFP via Getty Images

In their statement, Sens. Wicker and Reed noted they were “aware” of both the news reports around the strikes and “the Department of Defense’s initial response.”