The head of U.S. Special Operations Command, Admiral Mitch Bradley, told senators during a closed-door briefing on Thursday that he did not receive an order from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to give no quarter or to kill any boat strike survivors.

Questions started swirling around Mr. Hegseth last week when the Washington Post first reported that he had given the military orders to kill everyone traveling on one of the alleged drug-smuggling boats on September 2 after a first strike incapacitated the boat. Military law experts have warned that killing a shipwrecked individual or someone trying to surrender would likely constitute a war crime.

Mr. Hegseth defended himself by saying that he was not in the room when the second strike took place, and that it was actually ordered by Admiral Bradley. Despite President Trump saying he would not have done such a thing, both the president and the defense secretary say they support the admiral. 

On Thursday, Admiral Bradley himself met with senators in a private briefing to discuss not only the September 2 strike, but the rest of the bombing campaign in the Caribbean. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain, also briefed senators on Thursday. 

After leaving the meeting — during which video of the incident was shown to senators — the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Tom Cotton, said that the strikes were “righteous” and that Admiral Bradley never received a direct order to kill all initial strike survivors. 

“I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States back over so that they could stay in the fight,” Mr. Cotton told reporters of the video he saw in the briefing. “Just like you would blow up a boat off of the Somali coast or the Yemeni coast, and you come back and strike it again if it still had terrorists and it still had explosives or missiles — Admiral Bradley and Secretary Hegseth did exactly what we would expect them to do.”

Mr. Cotton said it is clear that military commanders understand the importance of not killing combatants who have been incapacitated. The Arkansas senator pointed to a boat strike in the Caribbean in October which saw two survivors repatriated to their respective home countries after their boat was destroyed. 

He said that Admiral Bradley told senators that at no point did Mr. Hegseth give him any kind of “kill all” order. 

“Admiral Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order — to ‘give no quarter’ or ‘kill them all.’ He was given an order that of course was written down in great detail as our military always does,” Mr. Cotton said. “There was no vocal order either.”

Despite Mr. Cotton’s claim that the strikes were “righteous,” Democrats still walked away from the meeting with concerns. Senator Chris Coons told reporters after the briefing that it was hard to not be “troubled” after seeing videos of the bombings. 

“I have more policy questions than ever,” Mr. Coons said. “Exactly how narcotics being trafficked in the eastern Caribbean on the open ocean connect to harming the United States that at a level justifies lethal strikes repeatedly, I have not yet been persuaded of.”

He added that he did not share Mr. Cotton’s view that the second strike on September 2 was necessary because he did not believe that the survivors were trying to flip over what remained of their vessel in order to continue with their alleged drug-smuggling mission. 

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Adam Smith, came away even more concerned than Mr. Coons is. In an interview with New Republic after the briefing, Mr. Smith said it does not appear that the second strike on September 2 was at all justified. 

“This did not reduce my concerns at all — or anyone else’s,” Mr. Smith said. “This is a big, big problem, and we need a full investigation.”

“It looks like two classically shipwrecked people,” he said of the survivors.