On Saturday, NBC reported that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “ordered the US military on September 2 to kill all 11 people” on a motorboat traveling between Venezuela and Trinidad, contradicting the administration’s denials that no such order was given.

The report substantiates the claim made by the Washington Post in a report on November 28 that Hegseth gave a “spoken directive” and that “The order was to kill everybody.”

NBC’s report contradicts the statement also issued by Hegseth Saturday that allegations that he gave an order to “kill everybody” were “patently ridiculous.”

Following an initial attack on a civilian speedboat in the Caribbean on September 2, the US military, at the direction of Admiral Frank Bradley, launched a second strike, targeting two survivors who had climbed on top of the capsized boat and were reportedly waving at US military aircraft in a request for rescue. The US military launched two more strikes, sinking what was left of the boat in a likely effort to conceal their crimes.

The Pentagon’s law of war manual declares that soldiers have a duty to refuse to carry out “clearly illegal” orders, such as killing shipwrecked sailors. “Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual declares.

The Trump administration’s claims that the boat was transporting drugs headed toward the United States are contradicted by available evidence. Small drug boats do not typically have such large crews, meaning the boat was likely transporting people.

NBC based its report on a briefing given to closed-door congressional committees by Bradley on Thursday. Bradley told lawmakers that “US intelligence officials had confirmed the identities of the 11 people on the boat and validated them as legitimate targets.”

Bradley reportedly provided a tortuous defense of a clear war crime. NBC reported:

Bradley was asked whether Hegseth gave him a “no quarter order,” which is an illegal military directive to kill all enemy combatants and show no mercy, even if they surrender or are gravely injured, one of the US officials and a second person with knowledge of the briefing said. They said Bradley replied that he was not given such an order and would not have followed one if it had been given.

NBC then made the following outrageous claim: “Unlike a ‘no quarter order,’ an order to kill everyone on a target list is not forbidden under US and international law.”

NBC’s claim is jaw-droppingly, outrageously, false. There is nothing more patently illegal under American criminal law or international law than “an order to kill everyone on a target list.” The US military does not have the right under international law to summarily execute anyone, whether they are civilians or military personnel, if they are not actively involved in combat.

In fact, everything about the 22 attacks in the Caribbean carried out by the Trump administration, which have killed 86 people, is totally illegal. Citing baseless and unsubstantiated allegations of drug trafficking, the US military is serving as judge, jury and executioner in international waters, in a series of actions that constitute nothing short of murder.

Rebecca Ingber, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law, told the New York Times, “There is a risk that the focus on the second strike and specifically the talk of ‘war crimes’ feeds into the administration’s false wartime framing and veils the fact that the entire boat-strikes campaign is murder, full stop. … The administration’s evolving justification for the second strike only lays bare the absurdity of their legal claims for the campaign as a whole—that transporting drugs is somehow the equivalent of wartime hostilities.”

In an interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation” Sunday, Democratic Representative Jim Himes said, “But if they are outside of combat, they are not [legitimate targets], and attacking them is a violation of the laws of war. And these guys—and this is why the American people need to see this video. These guys were—were barely alive … much less engaging in hostilities.”

In a separate interview with ABC on Sunday, Democratic Representative Adam Smith, who saw the video in a closed-door congressional hearing, called the Trump administration’s claims that the survivors were engaged in combat as “ridiculous.”

There are no radios. They ought to release the video. If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false and people will get a look at it and they will see. The boat was adrift. It was going where the current was going to take it, and these two were trying to figure out how to survive. And the interpretation of this, that if maybe there were still drugs somewhere on that boat, that justifies the use of deadly force, is an incredible expansion of presidential power. If you say anyone who has drugs that they’re intending to illegally transit to the US is a legitimate target for deadly force, the amount of power that gives the president and the US military is unprecedented.

Smith said in an interview Sunday, “I mean, it seems pretty clear they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it because it’s very, very difficult to justify.”

The Trump administration will no doubt seek to cover up or even destroy the tape and is counting on the Democrats to help them do it. In 2005, the Bush administration destroyed recordings of the torture of detainees at a CIA black site. At the time, congressional Democrats were made aware of the destruction of the tapes but did not inform the public.

In remarks on Saturday, Hegseth threatened to continue the killings, saying, “If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it. President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation’s interests. Let no country on Earth doubt that for a moment.”