The Grim Fate of the Sole Survivor of a Lawless U.S. Boat Strike
INSIDE: Pete Hegseth ... Donald Trump ... Emil Bove
A Timeline With Glaring Holes
I’ve been surprised that the uproar over the killing of the two survivors of the Sept. 2 attack has not yielded a renewed look at a later attack that also left a survivor — under especially dire circumstances.
The official accounts of the Oct. 27 strike were muddled from the beginning, with conflicting initial reports of whether the survivor had been rescued. More than six weeks later, key questions remain unanswered:
Oct. 27: U.S. conducts three strikes against four different vessels, killing 14 people and leaving a sole survivor, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a social media post the next day:
Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.
The U.S. Coast Guard would later say that the strikes occurred on the afternoon of Oct. 27.
Oct. 28: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government “was informed about the Monday strike and about the potential survivor” on Tuesday morning, CNN reported.
The Mexican Navy would later say that its forces officially began a search-and-rescue operation for the “alleged castaway” at 6:30 a.m. on Oct 28, in the area U.S. officials reported a survivor.
“In a statement on X, Mexico’s Navy said it received a request from the U.S. Coast Guard and then carried out a rescue operation about 400 miles southwest of Acapulco, adding that an aircraft and a vessel were being used to carry it out,” Reuters reported.
The reason for the delay between the strikes on the afternoon of Oct. 27 and the launch of the Mexican search-and-rescue operation has not been publicly explained.
Notably, the NYT reported that the survivor had been rescued: “A U.S. military official, discussing operations on the condition of anonymity, said the lone survivor was picked up in waters near the coasts of Mexico and Guatemala.”
However, President Sheinbaum’s public comments cast doubt on whether there was a survivor, CNN reported:
Sheinbaum said she instructed the foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, to meet with the US ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, “and we will give them the information with the Navy secretariat about this survivor, if it is the case that there was indeed a survivor.”
The U.S. Coast Guard would later say the Mexican Navy informed it on the afternoon of Oct. 28 that is had found no survivors.
Oct. 29: “Pentagon officials convened another session about boat strike survivors, a video conference involving dozens of American diplomats from across the Western Hemisphere,” the NYT would later report. No word of whether the fate of the lone survivor came up in the conference call two days after the attack in question.
Oct. 31: Mexico publicly announces that it has found no survivors from the Oct. 27 attacks.
After citing an anonymous U.S. military official earlier in the week as saying the survivor was rescued, the NYT reports that the Pentagon is offering a different account:
The Pentagon said that after the strikes on Monday, U.S. military officials “observed one narcoterrorist in the water clinging to some wreckage.” U.S. officials then alerted a Mexican military boat nearby of the survivor, the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday, and Mexican officials assumed responsibility for the rescue.
The Pentagon statement also mentioned that it alerted not just the Mexican military boat but a nearby Mexican military aircraft, according to the NYT report:
The Pentagon statement on Friday said the U.S. forces acted “in accordance with international protocols for a distressed person in the water” and “relayed the precise location and status of the person in the water” to a Mexican military aircraft that was operating nearby.
Nov. 1: Mexican Navy planned to end its active search for survivors of the Oct. 27 strikes.
“The survivor was spotted swimming in the ocean … was never located and is believed to have drowned,” ABC News would grimly describe it a few weeks later.
As you can see, the inconsistencies in the various reports are glaring: Was there a survivor? Was the survivor rescued? Why the delay between the purported sighting of the survivor by the U.S. military and its hand off of the responsibility for the search-and-rescue operation to Mexico?
In mid-October, the Pentagon had briefly detained two survivors of a different strike before quickly repatriating them to Ecuador and Colombia, respectively. The Pentagon’s obvious squeamishness about taking survivors into custody raises a host of additional questions about the fate of the lone survivor.
Pentagon Considered Sending Boat Strike Survivors to CECOT
The Pentagon considered sending the two survivors of the Sept. 2 U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, the NYT is now reporting: “The State Department lawyers were stunned, one official said, and rejected the idea.”
Nothing to See Here!
Less than two weeks after launching a bipartisan investigation into the Trump administration’s lawless strikes on the high seas, the GOP chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is shutting down the probe.
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Emil Bove should be disciplined. Federal judges are barred from participating in partisan politics. This is basic. You can't even post a yard sign or slap a bumper sticker on your car.
I'm surprised that rationing pencils didn't make it into the National Security Strategy. Did limiting dolls at Xmas?