Lawmakers to Hear From Navy Admiral    12/04 06:15

   The Navy admiral who reportedly issued orders for the U.S. military to fire 
upon survivors of an attack on an alleged drug boat is expected Thursday on 
Capitol Hill to provide a classified briefing to top congressional lawmakers 
overseeing national security.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Navy admiral who reportedly issued orders for the 
U.S. military to fire upon survivors of an attack on an alleged drug boat is 
expected Thursday on Capitol Hill to provide a classified briefing to top 
congressional lawmakers overseeing national security.

   The information from Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley, who is now the commander of 
U.S. Special Operations Command, comes at a potentially crucial moment in the 
unfolding congressional investigation into how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 
handled the military operation in international waters near Venezuela. There 
are mounting questions over whether the strike may have violated the law.

   Lawmakers are seeking a full accounting of the strikes after The Washington 
Post reported that Bradley on Sept. 2 ordered an attack on two survivors to 
comply with Hegseth's directive to "kill everybody." Legal experts say the 
incident amounts to a crime if the survivors were targeted, and lawmakers on 
both sides of the aisle are demanding accountability.

   Bradley will speak to a handful of top congressional leaders, including the 
Republican chairs and ranking Democrats of the House and Senate committees on 
Armed Services, and separately to the GOP chairman and Democratic vice chairman 
on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

   "This is an incredibly serious matter. This is about the safety of our 
troops. This is an incident that could expose members of our armed services to 
legal consequences," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor 
speech Wednesday. "And yet the American public and the Congress are still not 
hearing basic facts."

   As Bradley appears for questions in the classified setting, lawmakers will 
be seeking answers to key questions: What orders did Hegseth give regarding the 
operations? And what was the reasoning for the second strike?

   Democratic lawmakers are also demanding that the Trump administration 
release the full video of the Sept. 2 attack, as well as written records of the 
orders and any directives from Hegseth. While Republicans, who control the 
national security committees, have not publicly called for those documents, 
they have pledged a thorough review.

   "The investigation is going to be done by the numbers," said Sen. Roger 
Wicker, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We'll find out the 
ground truth."

   Pressure builds on Hegseth

   President Donald Trump has stood behind Hegseth as he defends his handling 
of the attack, but pressure is mounting on the defense secretary.

   Hegseth has said the aftermath of an initial strike on the boat was clouded 
in the "fog of war." He has also said he "didn't stick around" for the second 
strike, but said Bradley "made the right call" and "had complete authority" to 
do it.

   Also on Thursday, the Defense Department inspector general was expected to 
release a partially redacted report into Hegseth's use of the Signal messaging 
app in March to share information about a military strike against Yemen's 
Houthi militants.

   The report found that Hegseth put U.S. personnel and their mission at risk 
by using Signal, according to two people familiar with the findings. The 
Pentagon, however, has cast the report as an exoneration of Hegseth.

   Who is Adm. Bradley?

   At the time of the attack, Bradley was the commander of Joint Special 
Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the military's 
elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. About a 
month after the strike, he was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations 
Command.

   His military career, spanning over three decades, was mostly spent serving 
in the elite Navy SEALs and commanding joint operations. He was among the first 
special forces officers to deploy to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. His 
latest promotion to admiral was approved by unanimous voice vote in the Senate 
earlier this year, and Democratic and Republican senators praised his record.

   "I'm expecting Bradley to tell the truth and shed some light on what 
actually happened," said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the 
Senate Intelligence Committee, adding that he had "great respect for his 
record."

   Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, described Bradley as among 
those who are "rock solid" and "the most extraordinary people that have ever 
served in the military."

   But lawmakers like Tillis have also made it clear they expect a reckoning if 
it is found that survivors were targeted. "Anybody in the chain of command that 
was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable," 
he said.

   What else are lawmakers seeking?

   The scope of the investigation is not yet clear, but there is other 
documentation of the strike that could fill in what happened. But obtaining 
that information will largely depend on action from Republican lawmakers -- a 
potentially painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the 
president.

   Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services committee, said he 
and Wicker have formally requested the executive orders authorizing the 
operations and the complete videos from the strikes. They are also seeking the 
intelligence that identified the vessels as legitimate targets, the rules of 
engagement for the attacks and any criteria used to determine who was a 
combatant and who was a civilian.

   Military officials were aware that there were survivors in the water after 
the initial strike but carried out the follow-on strike under the rationale 
that it needed to sink the vessel, according to two people familiar with the 
matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. What remains unclear -- and 
what lawmakers hope to clarify in their briefing with Bradley -- was who 
ordered the strikes and whether Hegseth was involved, one of the people said.

   Republican lawmakers who are close to Trump have sought to defend Hegseth 
this week, standing behind the military campaign against drug cartels that the 
president deems "narco-terrorists."

   "I see nothing wrong with what took place," said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an 
Oklahoma Republican, as he argued that the Trump administration was justified 
in using war powers against drug cartels.

   More than 80 people have been killed in the series of strikes that started 
in September. And for critics of the campaign like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, 
D-Conn., the pressing questions about the legality of killing survivors are a 
natural outgrowth of military action that was always on shaky legal ground. He 
said it was clear that Hegseth is responsible, even if he didn't explicitly 
order a second attack.

   "He may not have been in the room, but he was in the loop," Blumenthal said. 
"And it was his order that was instrumental and foreseeably resulted in the 
deaths of these survivors."