WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Saturday he supports the Sept. 2 decision to launch a second strike against a suspected drug trafficking ship in the Caribbean.

“I fully support that attack,” Hegseth said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. “I would have made the same decision myself.”

A video of the attack was shown to members of Congress in the Capitol behind closed doors on Thursday, days after reports emerged that the commander overseeing the operation ordered a second attack to eliminate two survivors to comply with Hegseth’s instructions that all should be killed.

Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have since said that Hegseth did not order the additional strike and that Adm. Frank Bradley, who headed the Joint Special Operations Command at the time, concluded that the ship’s wreckage should be neutralized because it could contain cocaine.

SIMI VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - DECEMBER 6: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivers a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum on December 6, 2025, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Hegseth spoke about creation
SIMI VALLEY, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 6: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivers a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum on December 6, 2025, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Hegseth spoke of creating “peace through strength” and emphasized the need to have a prepared military that would deter aggression from adversaries. (Photo by Caylo Seals/Getty Images)

Caylo Seals via Getty Images

On Saturday, Hegseth repeated his account of the day, saying he had seen the first attack on Sept. 2, but then left the room to attend another meeting. He declined to say whether the administration would release the full video, calling the issue “under review.”

The Sept. 2 attack was the first of 22 on vessels in the southern Caribbean and Pacific carried out by the U.S. military as part of what the Trump administration calls a campaign to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

The attacks have killed 87 people, including one in the eastern Pacific on Thursday.

Accounts of the Sept. 2 attacks have raised concerns that U.S. forces committed a war crime.

Video of the attack shown to lawmakers showed two men clinging to wreckage after their boat was destroyed, according to two sources familiar with the footage.

They were shirtless, unarmed and were not wearing any visible communications equipment.

The Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual prohibits attacks on incapacitated, unconscious or shipwrecked combatants as long as they refrain from hostilities and do not attempt to escape. The manual cites shooting survivors of a shipwreck as an example of a “clearly illegal” order that should be rejected.

The Trump administration has framed the attacks as a war against drug cartels, calling them armed groups and saying that drugs transported into the United States kill Americans.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Sergio Non and Alistair Bell)