Who is Admiral Bradley? Lawmakers will hear from the Navy admiral who reportedly ordered the attack that killed survivors of the boat raid

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Navy admiral who reportedly ordered the U.S. military to shoot survivors of an alleged drug boat attack arrived on Capitol Hill for a classified briefing Thursday with top congressional lawmakers overseeing national security.

The information from Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who now serves as commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, comes at a potentially crucial moment in the congressional investigation into how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth handled the military operation in international waters near Venezuela. There are growing questions about whether the strike violated the law.

Read more: AP sources say the Pentagon knew the boat attack left survivors but still launched a follow-up raid.

Lawmakers are seeking a full accounting of the strikes after The Washington Post reported that Bradley on September 2 ordered an attack on two survivors in compliance with Hegseth’s directive to “kill everyone.” Legal experts say the attack amounts to a crime if survivors are targeted, and lawmakers from both parties are demanding accountability.

Bradley will speak in a secure facility at the Capitol before congressional leaders, including the Republican chairs and top Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and separately before the GOP chairman and the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The meetings are expected to be closed.

“This is a very serious matter. This is about the safety of our troops. This is an incident that could expose members of our armed forces to legal consequences,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on Wednesday. “Yet, the American public and Congress are still not listening to basic facts.”

Read more: All US military strikes against alleged drug boats

Lawmakers will search for answers to questions such as what orders Hegseth issued regarding the operations and what was the reason for the second strike.

Democrats are also demanding that the Trump administration release the full video of the September 2 attack, as well as written records of orders and any directives from Hegseth. While Republicans, who control the national security committees, have not publicly called for these documents, they have pledged a comprehensive review.

“It will be investigated based on the numbers,” said Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We will discover the truth on the ground.”

The pressure on Hegseth is mounting

President Donald Trump stood behind Hegseth as he defended his handling of the attack, but pressure is mounting on the Secretary of Defense.

Hegseth said the aftermath of the initial strike on the boat was clouded in the “fog of war.” He also said he “did not continue” with the second strike, but Bradley “made the right decision” and “had full authority” to do so.

He watches: Hegseth says he “did not continue” after ordering the first boat strike on 2 September

Also on Thursday, the Defense Department’s inspector general is expected to release a partially redacted report on Hegseth’s use of the messaging app Signal in March to share information about a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.

The report found that Hegseth put US personnel and their mission at risk using Signal, according to two people familiar with the findings. But the Pentagon viewed the report as a vindication of Hegseth.

Who is Admiral Bradley?

At the time of the attack, Bradley was commander of Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the Army’s elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. About a month after the raid, he was promoted to commander of US Special Operations Command.

He watches: Trump and Hegseth are distancing themselves from the subsequent hit on the suspected drug boat

He spent most of his military career, which spanned more than three decades, serving in the elite Marine Corps and Joint Operations Command. He was among the first Special Forces officers deployed to Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks. His latest promotion to admiral was approved by a unanimous vote in the Senate this year, with Democratic and Republican senators praising his record.

“I expect Bradley to tell the truth and shed some light on what really happened,” said Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee from Virginia, adding that he had “great respect for his record.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, called Bradley among those “incredibly strong” and “the most extraordinary people to ever serve in the military.”

But lawmakers like Tillis have also made clear they expect a reckoning if survivors turn out to have been targeted. “Anyone in the chain of command who was responsible for it, who had a vision for it, should be held accountable,” he said.

What else are lawmakers seeking?

The scope of the investigation is unclear, but there are other documents from the strike that could fill in what happened. However, obtaining this information will depend largely on action taken by Republican lawmakers, a painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the president.

Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he and Wicker formally requested executive orders authorizing operations and full videos of the strikes. They are also seeking intelligence that identified ships as legitimate targets, rules of engagement for attacks and any criteria used to determine who is a combatant and who is a civilian.

Military officials were aware there were survivors in the water after the initial strike, but carried out the subsequent strike under the pretext that it needed to sink the ship, according to two people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. What remains unclear — and what lawmakers hope to clarify in their briefing with Bradley — is who ordered the strikes and whether Hegseth was involved, one of the people said.

Republican lawmakers close to Trump sought to defend Hegseth, as they stood behind the military campaign against drug cartels that the president considers “drug terrorists.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with what happened,” said Senator Markwayne Mullen, Republican of Oklahoma, considering that the administration was justified in using its war powers against drug cartels.

More than 80 people were killed in the series of attacks that began in September. For critics of the campaign, such as Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., pressing questions about the legality of killing survivors are a natural consequence of military action that has always been on shaky legal footing. He said it was clear Hegseth was responsible, even if Hegseth did not explicitly order a second attack.

“He may not have been in the room, but he was aware,” Blumenthal said. “It was his command that was instrumental and predictably led to the death of these survivors.”