A War Crime or Fake News?

This is beyond the normal word games.

The Washington Post reports that the Secretary of Defense gave an order that led to a war crime when two men were killed after a strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs. Following Secretary Hegseth’s directive to “kill everybody,” a second strike was ordered specifically to eliminate survivors found clinging to the burning wreckage of the destroyed boat.

The targeting of these shipwrecked men, argue people like Jack Goldsmith, a former Assistant Attorney General who led the Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, exists in a different moral and legal category than the justification used for the initial strike. Because the men were hors de combat—out of the fight—ordering a follow-up attack to ensure no survivors violates the ancient prohibition against declaring “No Quarter.”

Secretary Hegseth labeled the report “fake news.” However, the last time he engaged in a high-profile dispute over the facts of his conduct, the record shows a stark gap between his denial and reality:

On March 24, 2025, after landing in Hawaii for a trip to the Indo-Pacific, Secretary Hegseth addressed reporters regarding the initial report that Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic had been inadvertently added to a secure Signal group chat:

“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”

On March 26, 2025, The Atlantic published screenshots of the Signal thread:

Sender: Pete Hegseth Timestamp: 15:15 Message: “Here is the timeline for ROUGH RIDER. Watch the ticker.”

• 15:30: MQ-9 Reapers push to IP [Initial Point]

• 15:32: TLAM [Tomahawk] Impact on Houthi Radar Sites

• 15:36: F-18 2nd Strike Starts

• 15:45: BDA [Battle Damage Assessment] collection begins

Immediately following this list, he added the specific emphasis that made the security violation undeniable:

Sender: Pete Hegseth Timestamp: 15:16 Message: “THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP.”

Hegseth did not merely discuss policy; he pasted a raw military “execution checklist” (EXCHECK) into the chat while the operation was still underway.

The Signalgate episode proved that for the Defense Secretary the constraints of truth are subordinate to the goal of lethality. Now, the question is whether the constraints of law are. That will be examined by the Senate.

The Washington post reports: Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.”

The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”