Trump and Hegseth Comments on Boat Strike Leave Adm. Bradley Exposed

Adm. Frank M. Bradley will soon face questions from lawmakers, as Republicans and Democrats express concerns about a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean.

During his career, Adm. Frank Mitchell Bradley, a stoic and cerebral SEAL known as Mitch to his peers, has ordered and carried out military strikes against targets in Afghanistan, Yemen and other war zones.

Over the decades, he drew little attention outside the smoke and mirrors world of military Special Operations. But now he is facing his biggest professional challenge in public.

After years of following orders with clear rules of engagement and with congressional authority, targeting jihadists in rural and urban settings, Admiral Bradley was put in command of a legally murky attack on Sept. 2 targeting a boat in the Caribbean that the Trump administration says was smuggling drugs.

And in ordering a second strike that killed two survivors who were clinging to the burning wreckage of the boat — something his superiors say they did not specifically order him to do — Admiral Bradley now finds himself in potential legal jeopardy.

On Thursday, he will head to Capitol Hill for closed-door sessions with lawmakers, as Republicans and Democrats express concerns about the Trump administration’s campaign.

At the time of the Sept. 2 attack, Admiral Bradley was beginning the last month of his tour as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, which conducts some of the military’s most secret missions, and preparing to assume the command of U.S. Special Operations Command, a job he took in October.

But now he has become a public example of the potential legal peril that the American military faces as it carries out the orders of President Trump and his defense secretary.

The president said that he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike on the boat survivors, and that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told him he did not order one.

Mr. Hegseth had previously said that he watched the operation live on video. But on Tuesday, Mr. Hegseth said he “didn’t stick around” to see the second strike.

At the White House on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, read a statement that said Mr. Hegseth had authorized Admiral Bradley “to conduct these kinetic strikes” and that the admiral had “worked well within his authority and the law” to make sure the boat was destroyed.

The public comments of the president, Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Leavitt all leave Admiral Bradley exposed.

“For the top two civilians in the Pentagon and the White House to effectively wash their hands of it and claim no responsibility, while simultaneously saying that they stand by the decision, goes against any kind of ideas of responsible command,” said Carrie A. Lee, the former chair of the department of national security and strategy at the Army War College.

“Trying to walk this middle line where you are saying, ‘Well, I agree with his decisions, but if they violated the law, then we’re going to leave him swinging,” added Ms. Lee, who is now a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

The problem Admiral Bradley now faces was almost inevitable, Pentagon officials said, as the military tries to apply the rules of engagement it used in battling Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Mr. Trump’s battle against “narco-terrorists.”

A military generally cannot deliberately attack civilians, including suspected criminals, who do not pose an imminent threat. The administration has argued that the strikes are lawful because Mr. Trump has “determined” that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels, even though Congress has not declared any such war.

Lawmakers have also not voted to authorize the president to use lethal force in an international counternarcotics campaign, which could have offered a legal justification for the airstrikes.

“What’s at stake here is not just the legal position of a single officer, but the larger ethic of the professional soldier,” said Peter D. Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who follows the military. “The question is: How do officers deal with an order that an administration says is lawful but that most of the lawyers outside the U.S. government say is not? This current case brings that question into sharp relief.”

Admiral Bradley’s path to the highest levels of special operations began with his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in 1991 with a degree in physics.

He was a member of the varsity gymnastics team and in top physical condition for the career path he chose.

According to Stewart Smith, a Naval Academy classmate and fellow SEAL officer, Admiral Bradley graduated toward the top of his class and stood out for his physical fitness.

After graduating from SEAL training the following year, he rose quickly through the ranks of the Naval Special Warfare community, serving with two conventional SEAL teams in Virginia Beach, Va., and completed an exchange tour with a counterpart unit in the Italian Navy.

After that tour, Admiral Bradley completed training with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the secret counterterror unit also known as SEAL Team 6, and was assigned as the leader of an assault unit.

“He was studying to become an astronaut in the mid-1990s,” Mr. Smith said. “But after 9/11, he stayed at Development Group to lead.”

A retired Navy master chief recalled working with Admiral Bradley when the admiral was a young lieutenant serving on a team in Afghanistan soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. The master chief, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to invite backlash for speaking publicly, said the admiral was “a top-notch fellow” who looked after his sailors.

During that deployment, the master chief recalled, Admiral Bradley’s SEALs provided personal protection for Hamid Karzai after he was installed by U.S. forces as Afghanistan’s president, and were involved in gunfights while protecting him.

Dave Cooper, a retired SEAL who served at Development Group from 1994 to 2012, said that Admiral Bradley was “as smart as he is ethical.”

“If there has ever been a SEAL who is above reproach, it’s Mitch,” Mr. Cooper added. “I have yet to meet a finer person, much less a finer SEAL.”

Admiral Bradley stepped away from Team 6 in the mid-2000s to attend the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., where he earned a master's degree in physics.

Last month, even as the military campaign in Venezuela was continuing to ramp up, Admiral Bradley was back at the Naval Postgraduate School, this time meeting with students and talking about the mission of Special Operations troops.

“Bringing our values to the battlefield and applying them with precision is what sets us apart,” Admiral Bradley said, according to an account of his chat in an article on the Naval Postgraduate School’s website.

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