TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Alex Horton, is the reporter who broke the story that's been dominating the news since last Friday when it was published in The Washington Post. It's about what happened on September 2, when the U.S. military carried out the first deadly strike on a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean. All 11 aboard were killed. The Trump administration alleged the targets were narcoterrorists and that the boat was carrying drugs, despite providing no evidence. However, two of the crew actually survived the initial strike. They were alive in the water holding on to the wreckage when they were killed in a subsequent strike. Horton and his colleague Ellen Nakashima reported that the command to kill the survivors was issued by Admiral Frank Bradley, the special operations commander overseeing the mission, and that he was complying with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's verbal command to kill everyone on board. But Hegseth's order came before the actual strikes.
The Washington Post report led to House and Senate lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to call for reviews of the boat strikes. Some are raising the question of whether this amounts to a war crime or murder. The U.S. military has conducted strikes on at least 20 other vessels of alleged drug smugglers, killing dozens in the last few months. This may be part of the Trump administration's pressure campaign to get Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to relinquish power and the possibility that the U.S. could go to war with Venezuela if he doesn't. That's something we'll discuss later in the interview.
Alex Horton is a Washington Post national security reporter focused on the U.S. military. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Later in the day, President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth commented on the story during a Cabinet meeting. So we spoke to Horton again this morning to get his response to what was said. We'll hear that in a few minutes. But the first part of this interview sets up what happened during the September 2 attack.
Alex Horton, welcome to FRESH AIR. I want you to describe the story that you broke on Friday.
ALEX HORTON: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Terry. The strike was the first one that the Pentagon undertook in its mission, directed from the White House, to stop drug trafficking and drug traffickers from bringing their drugs into the United States. So there was this entire apparatus that was surged into the Caribbean. There's warships. There's aircraft carriers. And, you know, what you describe is, you know, a buildup for this pressure campaign. But at the same time, there was a parallel mission to go after drug traffickers, particularly in speedboats and in semisubmersibles, you know, the - really the business end, the last few miles to get to their distribution point.
So, you know, what we know from our reporting now is this first mission and some of the ones that followed were not undertaken by these forces that were in the region. This wasn't a matter of fighter jets and destroyers. It was an elite team of special operators from SEAL Team Six. This is the same unit that went on the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. These are the ones you call for the most high-stakes missions that can be done.
So on September 2, they observed a boat that they grew increasingly confident had drugs. And once they reached a certain level of confidence that this boat was carrying drugs, Secretary Hegseth, who - he was overseeing the operation that day. He is what's known as the target engagement authority. What he says goes on to strike or target, and he authorized the strike to be taken. So once that decision was made to strike the boat, Admiral Frank Bradley, who was at the time the joint special operations commander, authorized a missile to hit that boat. The commanders had watched it for some time burned, and they were - they felt pretty good that everyone on aboard was.
GROSS: But watching it livestream?
HORTON: They were watching, you know, live drone surveillance video of it. But once the smoke cleared, they saw there were two survivors. And Admiral Bradley, acting on his orders and guidance from Hegseth that he wanted people in that boat to be killed, ordered a second strike. And his rationale at the time during that moment was, they could be picked up by other traffickers, and the drugs could be picked up, too. And the drugs are the ultimate mission, so they needed to do something about that. So Admiral Bradley authorized that second strike on those survivors, and from what we heard from someone who watched it, those two men were blown apart in the water.
GROSS: So you served in the Army infantry in Iraq, and you're familiar with certain rules of engagement. And you know the difference between attacking survivors at sea versus on land. So tell us what the rules of engagement are in the sea with a shipwreck like this, where the survivors are clinging to the remains of the ship for their life.
HORTON: Yeah. There's a lot of distinction between the two, and like you said, I'm a land guy. You know, the maritime domain is less familiar to me. But here's how I understand it and what law of war experts have laid out. When you're finding someone on land in combat, there's a number of places you can go. You can retreat to another room. You could patch yourself up in a corner if you're shot. You have the ability to call other people on the radio to come get you in a vehicle. There are other circumstances of where you could conceal yourself and maybe rearm and regroup before your enemy has a chance to figure out what has happened to you. It's a pretty low standard to reattack someone.
GROSS: Can you give us an example of what you mean?
HORTON: Sure. You know, one moment comes to mind, when I was, you know, with my platoon in Diyala Province in 2007. So this was, you know, the most violent year of the surge. We were fighting street to street and house to house with the group that would become the Islamic State. And we were on patrol on a particularly heavy fighting day, and we set up in a school to sort of look out over some rooftops, and we watched a two-man machine gun team set up and put their gun in our direction to get ready to fire. So several of us shot them while they were setting up. They stopped moving, for the most part. We kept shooting just to make sure that they were dead. We couldn't go there and check.
And then after a few minutes, we called in an Apache gunship to shoot a hellfire into the building to do two things - one, to make sure they were dead, and two, to kill any other militants that we weren't even sure about that we didn't see at the time. And that was - that's permissible because we had an engagement. We knew there were armed militants in the area. We knew civilians were, by and large - had evacuated, and, you know, we couldn't be sure that they were killed until we got closer to them. If we were to have gotten closer to them, this calculus would change - you know, that we would see they were wounded. And if they cannot reach a gun or if they don't have explosives on them, then it would become our obligation and responsibility to help them.
GROSS: Compare that to the rules at sea after a shipwreck.
HORTON: It's a - there's a very stark line between these two, and it's much less forgiving for this type of environment. If a U.S. ship strikes a navy vessel and it goes down or it's basically a wreck that can't function or move or fire back, and there are sailors in the water, unless they are engaging you with a weapon, they are essentially, as the law says, shipwrecked. They have no ability to do anything except wade in the water and try to survive. They have no ability to retreat. They certainly don't have an option to get away from you. And they have very few, if any, ways where they could play a trick on you and try to ambush you if you came to retrieve them.
So there are very clear protections, and this came out of World War II when this was - this happened on both the Allies and the Axis side of people who were shipwrecked getting engaged when they couldn't do anything about it. So now the rule for international war and lawfare is, you need to protect people who are shipwrecked, and you can't shoot them again in a circumstance like this. Now, there is room for nuance. You know, how destroyed was that boat? Did Bradley make a determination that it was still seaworthy? That part's unclear at this moment. So there is some wiggle room if you want to say they were legitimate targets because they could have gotten out of there.
GROSS: Was Secretary Hegseth's order ambiguous? Did the order need to be more specific?
HORTON: We're still trying to understand the contours of that order, that verbal order. You know, the manner in which he gave it, was it a swashbuckling, swagger type of thing, as he is prone to do as the defense secretary? Was it a formal directive to Bradley, and how many people heard it? These are all things were still trying to figure out.
GROSS: Speaking of swashbockling orders, I want to play something Hegseth said to military leaders when he gathered military leaders from around the globe in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30.
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PETE HEGSETH: We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for war fighters.
GROSS: So, Alex, like, is Hegseth saying we're just ignoring the rules of engagement now because we decided to?
HORTON: You know, this is something that the Senate and the House armed services Committees are looking to entangle is any number of things to include, you know, what were the authorities taken and did they violate any rules of engagement? You know, I think it's important to remember, you know, Hegseth I think, made it pretty crystal clear his view on this. As you may know, you know, before he was defense secretary, one of his priorities while he was a Fox News host on the weekends was to champion Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that he felt were unfairly prosecuted for war crimes. And there were a number that, you know, weren't just accused, but were convicted. He talked about this consistently that he feels military attorneys who offer the advice of how to conduct yourself lawfully, that it's too overbearing, it's too bureaucratic of a process and too soft and he would prefer that war is left to what he calls the war fighters and not to the military lawyers. And the consensus of military law experts have said that all of this talk about the rules of engagement, that all of that is an academic exercise that's besides the point that these are civilian traffickers who are alleged criminals but not lawful combatants. So therefore, you know, everything that had laid out about, you know, what it's like to be in combat and making these decisions and the distinctions, what they're saying is it is all moot because this is homicide or murder on the high seas rather than this trying to pick apart the nuances of military law, that it is a separate thing entirely.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Alex Horton. He's a Washington Post National Security reporter. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Alex Horton, a Washington Post national security reporter. He was the lead reporter on the story he broke with his colleague Ellen Nakashima last Friday about the U.S. military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat in early September. After nine of the 11 people on board were killed, two survivors were in the water, clinging to the wreckage. They were killed in a subsequent strike. According to Horton's reporting, the admiral who gave the command to kill the survivors was in compliance with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order to kill all the people aboard. The order was issued before the attack. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Later in the day, President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented on the story in a cabinet meeting. Horton returned to FRESH AIR this morning so I could ask him about his reaction to what they said.
Well, let's hear what Trump and Hegseth had to say at yesterday's cabinet meeting. Let's start with Hegseth. Here's his comment.
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HEGSETH: Now, the first couple of strikes, as you would, as any leader would want, you want to own that responsibility. So I said, I'm going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it's the right strike. That was September 2. There's a lot of intelligence that goes into that - building that case and understanding that a lot of people are providing information. I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the - which he had the complete authority to do. And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.
He sunk the boat. Sunk the boat and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back, and the American people are safer because narcoterrorists know you can't bring drugs through the water and eventually on land, if necessary...
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Have to do it.
HEGSETH: ...To the American people, we will eliminate that threat, and we're proud to do it.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike? You, personally?
HEGSETH: I did not personally see survivors, but I stand - 'cause the thing was on fire. It was exploding and fire and smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don't understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices, or up on Capitol Hill, and you nitpick, and you plant fake stories in The Washington Post about kill everybody, phrases on anonymous sources, not based in anything. Not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw up really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made. I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war fighters. President Trump has empowered commanders. Commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people. We support them, and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.
GROSS: OK. That was Pete Hegseth yesterday at a cabinet meeting with President Trump. So he attacked The Washington Post reporting. I'm assuming he's referring to the article that you were the lead reporter of last Friday about the strike. Has he singled out any facts that you reported in that investigative article?
HORTON: As untrue?
GROSS: Yeah.
HORTON: You know, the Pentagon and the White House have contended that Hegseth did not say in so many words to kill everyone on the boat before the first strike occurred. But everything else, they've essentially corroborated our reporting. This bit about Hegseth not being around for the second strike, you know, that was our understanding and belief, but we didn't have enough reporting to put that in the story the first time. But he confirmed that he was out of the room when Admiral Bradley made the decision to strike the two people in the water, and we reported as such that Bradley made that call himself and ordered that strike.
Our reporting was that Hegseth made it clear to Admiral Bradley that he wanted to kill everyone in the boat. So what our reporting says is Bradley executed that first strike and then, minutes later, when it was clear there were survivors, ordered a second strike to comply with that intent to kill everyone on board.
GROSS: And do you stand by the fact that he did say, kill them all?
HORTON: Yes. We don't know his exact verbiage, but that was his message to folks like Admiral Bradley.
GROSS: Does it make sense to you that Hegseth would leave without seeing the final results of the strike because he has a busy job and needed to go to a meeting?
HORTON: He is right that it's a - he has a busy job, and there's a lot to do. What he's talking about is what we reported, too, that everyone believed that the strike was a lethal success and they did the original intent, which was to kill them. And since the boat was on fire and, you know, obscured what was happening there, that - I think, you know, based on folks I've spoken to, that people just assumed the mission was over. There was nothing else to do. So what it sounds like is he watched it. He saw it. It was on fire. He believed it was mission accomplished, and he went on with his day.
GROSS: Well, let's move on to what President Trump said at the cabinet meeting yesterday. So here's President Trump.
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TRUMP: As far as the attack is concerned, I did - you know, I still haven't gotten a lot of information 'cause I rely on Pete. But to me, it was an attack. It wasn't one strike, two strikes, three strikes. Somebody asked me a question about the second strike. I didn't know about the second strike. I didn't know anything about people. I wasn't involved. And I knew they took out a boat. But I would say this. They had a strike. I hear the gentleman that was in charge of that is extraordinary. He's an extraordinary person. I'll let Pete speak about him. But Pete was satisfied. Pete didn't know about a second attack having to do with two people, and I guess Pete would have to speak to it. I can say this. I want those boats taken out. And if we have to, we'll attack on land also, just like we attacked on sea.
GROSS: So that was President Trump yesterday speaking at a cabinet meeting. So he said he hadn't gotten a lot of information. He's the commander-in-chief. Shouldn't he be, like, demanding a detailed briefing right afterwards? I mean, he's not a passive recipient of these things.
HORTON: I mean, it really depends on how this was packaged for everyone. You know, when a mission like this happens, there's the after-action review. And a lot of times, it's a very short and succinct summary of what happened. And it could be that when this was rolled up for Hegseth's review or for Trump's review, if it even went to the White House, would say something to the effect of, you know, on September 2, the task force carried out a mission targeting one vessel with 11 crew, 11 crew KIA with four weapons released. It might say something to that effect. Does it go into a complete narrative of the decision-making? Maybe, and maybe not. So it could be that they didn't understand, you know, the finer details of the events, just that the overall ending was the same of 11 people were killed. And that's what Trump put on Truth Social later that day, was 11 people killed, and that's - that is an accurate summary of what happened. Didn't get into the how they got there, but that's - that is true.
GROSS: It's my understanding that the policy on survivors changed after the first attack on Venezuelan boats in early September. When did it change, and how did it change?
HORTON: Oh, we don't know, and we're still trying to figure that out. You know, we reported in our first story that there was a greater emphasis in planning in strikes to account for the possibility of survivors after that first strike, but we don't know who directed it and what form it took. But we do know that it - you know, later on in other strikes, it led to a rescue mission to recover two survivors.
I think just as likely, and maybe even more likely, is they didn't think clearly enough through the process to account for survivors because they were confident that when you hit an unarmored - essentially a fishing boat at sea with a missile that everyone's going to die. But here's the very first strike, and that didn't happen. So I think what is, you know, pretty possible here is they regrouped after the first strike was over and everyone was dead. And they said, perhaps, you know, we should account for this in our planning to - what do we do if there's a survivor? What are some of the things? You know, we need to just be more deliberate about that. I think that's probably the more likely event, is they realized that this was a potential gap in their planning and they addressed it after that.
GROSS: My guest is Washington Post national security reporter Alex Horton. The interview we just heard was recorded this morning. We'll hear more of the interview we recorded yesterday with Horton after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Washington Post national security reporter Alex Horton. He broke the story last Friday about the September 2 U.S. strike on an alleged drug boat from Venezuela, in which two survivors in the water were targeted and killed in a subsequent strike. The story says that a special operations commander overseeing the mission ordered that second strike in order to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's spoken order to kill everyone on board. Senate and House lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are now calling for reviews of the boat strike. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump commented on The Post's story. Let's get back to the interview we recorded yesterday morning.
So there are people in Congress, the military, legal experts, former JAGs thinking that this attack wasn't legal. And there's a debate between whether it was a war crime or murder, whether it's a war offense or a criminal offense. So how significant is that - the difference between those two?
HORTON: It's pretty significant, and it has to be one or the other. It can't be both, really. Just because you use the military doesn't mean whoever you're attacking is a combatant or a lawful target. You have to be attacking other combatants. So that's one thing to underline, is just because the U.S. military was involved doesn't mean it automatically is in this basket of permissible or impermissible conduct in military operations. You know, it would be the same thing if they shot, you know, protesters in downtown LA. You know, they're not lawful military targets and you can't use them that way.
Then the question becomes, well, is it this other thing? Are they saying that they're fighting a group of combatants and they're really just killing civilians who are criminals? You know, I'm not a legal expert, and I don't know what venue this would be discussed. But these are the questions that the Hill and others are trying to ascertain, of, you know, where do we go from here? Who's culpable, and for what?
GROSS: So Admiral Bradley is a former head of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, whose work includes the military's most sensitive and dangerous missions. So you'd think that he would know what is illegal - an illegal order.
HORTON: Yes.
GROSS: And...
HORTON: You know...
GROSS: You'd also think he'd know that you're not supposed to obey an illegal command.
HORTON: During that operation, he was operating in the position of joint special operations commander. Since then, he has been promoted to the four-star position of special operations commander, which is above what he was doing before. So now he oversees all matters of special operations within the military. But an important point about his background is a couple things. One, he's in the Navy, right? So he is attuned and has the cultural and institutional fluency of what you do in a maritime situation. It's part of the culture. I was in the Army. I didn't know this stuff. I was a land guy. He's a sea guy. He would understand this much better when it comes to the maritime restrictions and legalities of who you can strike and when you can strike them in the water.
The second part of that, though, is throughout his Navy career, he came through that Navy SEAL pipeline. You know, he was a member of SEAL Team Six - you know, the same group that carried out the mission. So his career has been defined, you know, by two decades of low-intensity conflict against insurgents who are often fighting in austere environments and fighting in a very specific way. And, you know, I've spoken to some military lawyers about this, of, you know, the idea that I mentioned before about being on land is a lot more permissible when you can reattack somebody. You have to wonder how much of Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and, you know, any number of other conflicts that the U.S. has been in over the last two decades - how much of that understanding and that finesse of dealing with it in that way has seeped into the rest of the military.
GROSS: It sounds as if Hegseth might be trying to blame Bradley for what happened as opposed to taking any responsibility for it, while praising Bradley at the same time. Let me read the social media post that he wrote on Monday of this week.
(Reading) Let's make one thing crystal clear. Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he's made on the September 2 mission and all others since. America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. When this Department of War says, we have the back of our warriors, we mean it.
OK. So it's a very praiseworthy thing to say of Bradley, but it's also blaming him.
HORTON: He stands behind him, but he wants to foot-stomp that Admiral Bradley was the one who took that second strike. And by the way, this is something we articulated pretty carefully and clearly in the story, that Bradley on his own determined he was going to take that second strike. But his justification and the framing in his mind was he was going to fulfill the original order that Hegseth had.
GROSS: Getting back to the two survivors of the first attack on a boat from Venezuela allegedly carrying narcotics, allegedly fentanyl, do you think that that puts the U.S. military at risk? Like, if we can kill two survivors against our own rules of engagement, are survivors of an attacked boat that is shipwrecked, an American boat - are they more likely to be killed, with the U.S. setting the example that it's OK? And I'm asking...
HORTON: Yeah.
GROSS: ...You this both as a journalist but also as a former member of the military in Iraq.
HORTON: You know, I think it's a bit hypothetical. I mean, there's reasons why you conduct yourself in a professional manner in a war, and you do that not because it's the right thing. But, you know, the U.S. has always - and not perfectly, though - has tried to set a different standard that is more than the adversaries like Russia and China and Iran that, you know, we have a tough military. We have a lethal military. We will kill you with force, but when a hurricane comes, we're going to help you out, too. Right?
And setting the difference and distinction of what a world leader is and how it conducts itself is also just a good example to set because in a conflict, say, with China, if you put torpedoes into 10 boats and in all 10 boats, there were Chinese sailors in the water, and the next order was to strafe them with fighter jets and kill them without any ability for them to be rescued or patched up or wounded or whatever, if China sees that, it says, well, why do we have to follow the rules? If the U.S. doesn't do it, then it doesn't matter what we do.
And there is this - in warfare, there is sometimes this tit for tat that they do it, and therefore, the gloves are off. And that could happen in small ways and in big ways. And you do not want to be an American sailor who goes down with the ship and see a Chinese plane coming and be like, man, I really wish my buddies in the other squadron didn't shoot up those survivors, because that pilot's going to feel a whole different set of ways about whether he can kill me or not. That is a concern. I mean, it's still hypothetical, but this is why we want to have these guardrails in warfare, so we can set an example. But also, we need to be able to say we're doing the right thing, that we're following orders that are lawful, we have confidence in our leaders and we will execute those orders.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Alex Horton. He's a Washington Post national security reporter. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Washington Post national security reporter Alex Horton. We're discussing his reporting regarding the U.S. military strike on a Caribbean boat in September from Venezuela, specifically how a second strike targeted two survivors clinging to the wreckage to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order to kill the entire crew. Our interview was recorded yesterday morning.
So who might be liable for violating the law of armed conflict or liable for murder?
HORTON: That's something that really needs to be unspooled. The fair and accurate answer is, I don't know. I can tell you what law of experts (ph) have sort of speculated on, but they still need more information because the other things that matter have consequence to that answer. Did Admiral Bradley misinterpret what Hegseth said? Did Bradley figure that that boat was seaworthy? Or they needed to attack the drugs, and the people were just collateral, rather than trying to kill the people themselves, is another thing.
During the ISIS war, there was a permissible target because fuel was being sold to finance terror operations that you could strike fuel depots. And if civilians or others got caught up in it, you know, they would do a calculated assessment, but there is a world where some civilians would be acceptable to risk in something like that, if they determined it was worth it. So you have to determine what you're shooting at and whether that was the point of shooting in the first place. But we need Bradley and we need Hegseth to make that clear, you know, whether that's on the Hill...
GROSS: And does it still get back to that the order was ambiguous? It didn't say if there were survivors after the shipwreck, shoot them, too.
HORTON: It could be. I mean, we do not know if that original strike had a contingency or planning on what to do in these kinds of operations. Sometimes it's detailed, but sometimes it's not as detailed as you would like. But there is a line or some sort of mention of, what do you do if this happens? And one thing that should or could have happened is, what do we do if someone survives a strike? And if they're 10 feet from shore or if they're 100 miles from shore, does it matter what we do? Do we just let them go back to what they're doing, or - since they're close to shore?
GROSS: You mean, like, when's this in global waters?
HORTON: This was...
GROSS: I mean, like, in international waters.
HORTON: You know, we didn't say where this was. You know, we have a decent idea. We said it was off the coast of Trinidad. But I'll tell you, I think where the strike likely occurred, it would make getting back to Venezuela probably an impossible task. There was not a clear option for them just to go home. So that matters, too, whether they're going to live to fight another day. But like I said before, a lot of this is besides the fact that the administration is the only one with confidence saying that these guys are part of an armed conflict with the United States and intend on doing the United States homeland harm and therefore, lethal military force is authorized. The way this has always happened is the Coast Guard has interdicted drugs because it's illegal and it shouldn't happen and they board the vessels and they take the drugs, and then they arrest them for prosecution either in the United States or their home countries or another country. That's the way it's always been done, that this is a criminal enterprise, but it is a law enforcement matter, not a U.S. military, as you put it, kinetic strike matter until now.
GROSS: This is what the six Democratic lawmakers warned about in their video - was it last week or two weeks ago - about the oath that members of the military take saying they are required to decline orders that are illegal?
HORTON: Yeah. I mean, this certainly could fall under that. Like I said, I'm not the adjudicator. I will say the Department of Defense's manual has lines in there that says, you should not follow an order that is illegal. And the example it gives is firing on someone that is shipwrecked. It just so happens that what we're talking about is an example. But then it just goes back to, were they shipwrecked or were they not?
GROSS: Trump has threatened to recall Democratic Senator Mark Kelly to active duty in the military and then have him court martialed.
HORTON: Yes, to put him on active duty to try him on military court, yes. To say he has incited the military, and he needs to come back and face discipline under military law.
GROSS: And what he said was that you have to follow the rules. I mean, that was the gist of what he said.
HORTON: Yeah, that's right. I mean, the message they delivered was, you know, there is a responsibility for everyone to follow lawful orders, and when the time comes for an illegal order, to disobey it. And that's not a controversy. I mean, it is because it's political and these are Democrats. This is just the age we live in. But, you know, when you strip all that away, that is what you expect U.S. service members to do.
GROSS: So do you think that these attacks on people who Trump is labeling as narcoterrorists is part of Trump's efforts to oust Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro?
HORTON: You know, it's hard to say what the connective tissue is between these missions and, like, the larger military buildup, you know, 'cause as I mentioned, like, 99.9% of the forces that are in the Caribbean are not striking the boats. This is done by a very small, select, elite crew of targeters and intelligence operatives. So then it becomes, OK, well, if they're not doing anything about the boats or maybe they're supporting it in some ways, like intel or whatever, what are they actually accomplishing in the Caribbean? And then there's this priority that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump, you know, going back to his first administration, you know, they have been fixated on Nicolas Maduro and getting him out of power. You know, he's backed by Russia You know, the U.S. considers him an adversary in the region and a point of instability, and they want to see him out of office. And they've said as much in the last few months. So these two things are kind of related, but, you know, you have to take a step back and say, well, why are they related? Because Trump talked about every boat has, like, so many thousands of deaths. What he means is fentanyl. These boats are not carrying fentanyl.
GROSS: They're carrying cocaine?
HORTON: They're carrying cocaine. Fentanyl precursors come from China. They go to Mexico, where fentanyl's produced, and then from Mexico, they go to the United States and other markets. Cocaine comes from two key places - Ecuador and Colombia. And cocaine that comes from Venezuela is - if it's not very small numbers produced in the country, it's coming from those two countries as part of a, you know, elaborate trafficking operation. But Venezuela's not a drug player. You know, every official I've spoken to about this with experience in the region says Venezuela's not on the radar for any kind of considerable drug trafficking. A lot -and the stuff they do have - a lot of it goes to Europe, not the United States. And they certainly don't do anything with fentanyl.
So this thing that - where Trump is doing the connective tissue between drug deaths are happening and they're out of control, ie fentanyl, to Venezuela, to Maduro orchestrating or supporting drug traffickers that help get fentanyl and other drugs to the United States - they have made that line go all through those points. And some of it is very tenuous because they're relying on the fact that they're trying to kill Americans intentionally - right? - and therefore, we're in armed conflict. And they're backed by Maduro, and therefore, Maduro is an adversary that we have to do something about.
GROSS: Yeah. Trump has accused Maduro of being the head of the Cartel de los Soles, which the State Department has designated as a terrorist organization. What do you know about that cartel?
HORTON: There's not a ton that's known about them. I mean, the origins of the group are people in the government who had some sort of, you know, kind of handshake, wink-wink deal that would engage in, you know, illicit activity to include, you know, drug trafficking. But as part of a formal organization, there is a lot of discussion about this on whether this group is an actual group. Is it a real thing or sort of this sort of collective of high-ranking people and criminals that's just sort of an amorphous thing and not like Islamic State or al-Qaida or even like the Sinaloa Cartel that has a structure, has a boss, and it has - they have economics on the payroll. They have scientists, and they have distribution networks, and they're essentially a company. This is not that, as far as we can tell. They are not in the same realm of any of these groups I mentioned, terrorists or drug cartels in particular.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Alex Horton. He's a Washington Post national security reporter. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUY MINTUS TRIO & GUY MINTUS' "OUR JOURNEY TOGETHER")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Washington Post national security reporter Alex Horton about the story he broke about the U.S. attack on a Venezuelan boat allegedly transporting narcotics. If you detect a shift in the sound quality, it's because our interview was recorded yesterday in a studio, but one question in this segment is from an update we recorded on Zoom this morning.
Trump has made it clear that he's willing to use military force against Venezuela on land as well as sea in the name of the war on narcoterrorists. What can you tell us about Trump's threats to continue this war on land? We know there's already warships off the coast of Venezuela, but he's willing to use military force. Does that mean he wants to get us into war with Venezuela, and how can he do that without informing Congress? What can a commander-in-chief do without consent?
HORTON: I mean, the commander-in-chief at this moment can carry on what he has justified as, you know, actions taken against a - an armed group of - and combatants. That's the way he's described some of these drug trafficking organizations. So, I mean, there's a Chinese menu somewhere in the Pentagon of who to attack and where that matters on Trump's preference, right? If he wants to hit these cartels a more meaningful way, like a lab or a facility or a storage place, perhaps that is one option rather than striking military forces in Venezuela - you know, an air defense system or a military barracks. That would be far different than hitting a drug lab or hitting a distribution point.
If President Trump wanted to attack military targets in a limited campaign that ramped up, he is certainly able to do that with what he has in the region now. If he wants to strike cartel and drug-type groups in Venezuela, short of hitting military targets, he can certainly do that. He has the capability, and it seems like he has the desire to. Whether that all comes to play is anyone's guess, but the pieces are in place for something like that to happen.
GROSS: Is narcoterrorism possibly a pretext to justify his campaign against Maduro? And are there other reasons he wants Maduro out?
HORTON: You know, I can't get into the president's head. But, you know, we do know if his stated goal is to and Hegseth's goal is to adversely impact the ability of drug traffickers to move product, Venezuela's, like, probably, like, among the last on the list in the region you would focus on 'cause Colombia and Ecuador or U.S. allies send the vast majority of cocaine up, and not just in the Caribbean. They send it in the Pacific. So if your stated goal was to do drugs and you had no designs about Venezuela or regime change or anything like that, you would construct an operation focused solely on the Pacific and maybe a little bit of the Caribbean to get your money's worth of traffickers. The volume of drugs and the volume of ships is in the Pacific. And a few strikes have happened there, but not all of them, and certainly not some of the more consequential ones like this first one.
GROSS: So, one of President Trump's comments yesterday at the cabinet meeting was that if we have to attack on land, we would. And so how close are we to going to war with Venezuela?
HORTON: I think strikes in Venezuela are, you know, it's hard to say if it's becoming more or less likely as time goes on, and the diplomatic talks go the direction. But from his comments, he didn't make it clear whether he was interested in attacking land targets for drug traffickers or Venezuelan military targets. Those are two different things that would invite very different responses from the Venezuelan government of whether they are in actual war with the United States. You know, strikes like that may be an off ramp for further action, right? Like, sort of how when the U.S. and Israel shot down drones and missiles heading to Israel, that was an off ramp that allowed Iran, after strikes hit their country, to take shots and sort of publicly settle the score. This could be something similar for the U.S. and Venezuela that we'll attack bad guys in the area and we'll get what we want. We'll have the public narrative of taking some targets out, but we're not going to blow up military targets. So just let us do it, and, you know, we both get what we want.
GROSS: So while we're talking about trying to, you know, basically get rid of a president that Trump doesn't like, Trump has pardoned a former president of Honduras. He was convicted last year of working for cartels to flood the U.S. with cocaine, of conspiring to possess destructive devices, including machine guns and taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquin Guzman, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. He was known as El Chapo. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison in federal district court in Manhattan, and Trump just pardoned him. Like, I don't understand how he's going after allegedly carrying narcotics, allegedly narcoterrorist, allegedly carrying fentanyl, when it's probably not fentanyl, it's probably cocaine. And yet, somebody who was sentenced in the U.S. in Manhattan, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
HORTON: So how do we square that?
GROSS: Yeah. How do we square that?
HORTON: Well, I mean, when you said about probably not fentanyl, I mean, I would say what they're carrying is more likely marshmallows than fentanyl.
GROSS: Wow. OK.
HORTON: That's how unlikely it's fentanyl.
GROSS: All right.
HORTON: You know, it's cocaine. You don't smuggle cherries out of Iowa, you smuggle corn, right?
GROSS: (Laughter).
HORTON: So...
GROSS: It's that obvious?
HORTON: It's that obvious. This is what they do. This is the region. So how do you square these two things that the message from Trump and the rest of the government is, we are at war with drug traffickers and cartels and people who are intent on doing us harm by sending deadly products to the United States. And then you see, you know, this deal with someone who's convicted in a U.S. court of these crimes, you know, for a very long time, and you contrast that with killing, you know, these people in these boats that have the smallest amount of drugs you could get to transport. To effect - I mean, we're talking on fractions of a percent of the trafficking volume that comes in. We're talking tons and tons and hundreds of tons of cocaine, maybe even thousands of tons of cocaine a year. You know, this is - these are drops in the bucket that you're focused on, but meanwhile, you know, the big fish is getting another deal entirely. So, you know, I don't know how it squares. I don't know what their relationship or any sort of deal that was made, but there is, you know, we are looking for more consistency in the Trumps, what they describe as a hard-line approach to drug trafficking.
GROSS: I want to thank you so much for your reporting and for being with us today.
HORTON: Yeah. I really appreciate it.
GROSS: Alex Horton is a Washington Post national security reporter focused on the military. Our interview was recorded yesterday with an update we recorded today.
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, our guest will be George Clooney. He became famous at 34. Late enough, he says, that he learned how to live before he learned how to be famous. His new character, Jay Kelly, wasn't so lucky. He'll talk about playing a movie star who has the fame part down, but the father, partner, friend part - not so much. I hope you'll join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHEL PORTAL'S "DISTIRA LANOAN")
GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
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