Letters from an American - December 4, 2025

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

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December 4th, 2025, what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service. Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel killed by the United States. Himes was talking about a video of a U.S. strike against two survivors of a first strike in the Caribbean on a small boat allegedly carrying cocaine to the U.S. Today, Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley, the Special Operations Commander who ordered the strike and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Cain briefed members of Congress in a closed-door session on the events of that day. The U.S. attacked the boat on September 2nd in an unannounced operation against what it

claims are drug runners, meaning the men on the boat had no way of knowing they were targets. After the strike, the administration announced it had begun strikes against what it insists are drug boats, manned by gang members. The administration says President Donald Trump has determined that the U.S. is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that those in the boat are formally combatants, but it does not reinforce those claims with the legal authority they need. after informing Congress of the strikes on September 4th to ensure Congress was fully informed consistent with the war powers resolution Trump has since ignored that resolution which requires congressional approval for hostile actions to continue longer than 60 days a deadline that passed in early November as charlie savage explained today in the new york times legal experts say this operation is not lawful. Civilians engaged in trade, even illicit trade, are not enemy combatants. For that matter, the public so far has seen no hard evidence, but only heard the

administration's claim that the boats are engaged in drug trafficking. Katie Bolellis, Natasha Bertrand, and Haley Britsky of CNN explained that the initial strike of September 2nd killed nine of the 11 people on the boat immediately. It set the vessel on fire and split it in half, capsizing it and leaving two survivors clinging to the wreckage. For the next 41 minutes, U.S. officers watched as the men struggled to write what was left of the boat. Then, rather than rescuing the two men,

Admiral Bradley ordered a second strike that killed them, now saying he intended to destroy the vessel, which the administration claims was a military target. Shelby Holliday and Alexander Ward of the Wall Street Journal reported last night that Bradley would tell Congress that the men appeared to be communicating by radio with other enemy vessels in the area, and thus were still combatants. An argument defense officials have been making for weeks now. But Bradley did not say that. that today. Instead, he admitted the men were in no position to communicate with other vessels. He told congressional lawmakers that he ordered the strike because the vessel appeared to be

afloat thanks to packages of cocaine and that the survivors could have floated to safety and continued to traffic the drugs. A source told the CNN reporters that Bradley's rationale was insane. Even if the U.S. is at war with drug traffickers, a dubious argument, it is a war crime to kill individuals who are outside of combat, no longer posing an imminent threat. It's hard to imagine that two unarmed, shipwrecked men trying to write the remains of a capsized boat in the ocean hundreds of miles from the U.S. posed a threat. While some Republicans, notably Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, are defending the strike, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, said, there's a difference between being accused

of being a bad guy and being a bad guy. It is called the presumption of innocence. It is called due process. It is called basically justice that our country was founded upon. told MS now columnist Eric Michael Garcia, he wanted Hegseth to testify before Congress under oath, saying that Congress, if they had any kind of gumption at all, would not be allowing the administration to summarily execute people that are suspected of a crime. He said he wanted the full video of the strikes released. If the public sees images of people clinging to boat debris and being blown up,

I think that there is a chance that finally the public will get interested enough in this to stop this. Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, I am deeply disturbed by what I saw this morning. The Department of Defense has no choice but to release the complete, unedited footage of the September 2nd strike, as the President has a the September 2nd strike, as the President has agreed to do. This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration's military activities and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested and been denied fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation.

This must and will be only the beginning of our investigation into this incident. As of this morning, the U.S. had carried out more than 20 strikes on the small boats the president says are run by narco-terrorists, killing at least 87 people. This evening, Andrew Colvitt of Turning Point USA posted on social media, every new attack aimed at Pete Hegesith makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean. Hegesith quoted Colvette and commented, your wish is our command, Andrew, just sunk another narco boat. U.S. Southern Command confirmed the strike against a small boat in the eastern Pacific, saying that, confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known

narco-trafficking route. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with Music composed by Michael Moss.