JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, let's talk about the actual war that they claim to be waging against, I'm not exactly sure what, the Venezuela-based cocaine cartels.

Let's listen to what the secretary, what Secretary Hegseth said when he was discussing the most controversial of these strikes.

PETE HEGSETH, Defense Secretary: 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.

REPORTER: So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike?

You personally -- PETE HEGSETH: I did not personally see survivors, but I stand -- because the thing was on fire.

It was exploded in fire or smoke, you can't see anything.

This is called the fog of war.

This is what you and the press don't understand.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Nancy, do you understand the expression fog of war?

NANCY YOUSSEF: I've heard it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I thought so.

Maybe by being a defense correspondent, you might have heard it once or twice.

So, let's go to this.

Get us up to speed on this controversy.

There have been a lot of boat strikes, 22, I believe.

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: More than a hundred people seem to have been killed in these strikes.

What did Pete Hegseth order and what did the admiral in charge of this operation, Mitch Bradley, what did he order?

NANCY YOUSSEF: So, on September 2nd, the United States launched the first of those 22 strikes.

Their argument is that -- because there's no legal authorization under Congress, their argument is that there's an imminent threat.

The imminent threat is drugs coming to the United States, and we have to take these essentially self-defense measures in defense of the United States.

So, we're going to strike these boats in international waters as they're transiting.

They conduct the first strike.

They hit the back of the boat.

Nine people are killed.

There are two who survive.

They see this through the drone video.

Admiral Bradley, who is the JSOC commander at the time.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: JSOC is the special pperations commander for that area.

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

He's watching this with a military lawyer and they're trying to assess, do we hit the boat?

What do we do in response?

He went before Capitol Hill this week and presented videos showing this.

And what it showed is that these two were holding on the remnants of the boat no bigger than a large table, and there's maybe bales of drugs nearby, and they made the determination that they could potentially grab those drugs, grab -- or make some sort of movement to eventually get them across those waters ashore eventually through the United States and conducted a second strike.

The reason it's so controversial is, in the laws of armed conflict, there's a thing called out of combat, which is you don't hit someone when they're out of combat.

So, if you think about it, somebody waving a white flag, somebody who's wounded, think of someone who's a pilot who's flying, and he takes -- he parachutes out of his shot jet.

When that pilot is coming down on the air, he's out of combat.

Once he's on the land and that hostile territory, he's back in combat.

In the water, you are out of combat when your vessel has been damaged, when you can't move.

Had they got onto another boat, had they moved in some way, had they had brought in other people, they're back in combat.

But the strike by everybody's measure happened when they were in the water, when there was no vessel nearby.

When there was no sign of sort of an imminent move by them to signal that they were coming back into combat.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So was it a war crime?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, it would be a remarkable thing.

You know, George Will pointed this out in his really scathing column about Pete Hegseth this week it appears we're in a situation where there's a possible war crime without an actual war having been declared.

And I think that's a really important point here, Jeff.

You know, we're talking -- we've moved, right?

It's like we skipped over the important question of what exactly the U.S.

is doing in the Caribbean.

And we're right, we've got a sort of legalistic approach about what happened to these two people.

But I would point out, and a number of legal experts have pointed out, that not only is this not a war that's authorized by the U.S.

Congress, but the stated purpose of going after drug traffickers, in this country, drug trafficking is not a capital crime, even if you were to be actually arrested and subject to the rule of law.

In fact, that was a point made just the other day by Mike Turner, a very senior Republican in Congress.

There's been no response with the administration, has not released the legal justification under which this campaign is occurring.

The administration has not released the evidence that it claims to have that these were, in fact, drug trafficking boats to begin with.

And then, of course, you have this really remarkable fact that at the same time we're actually meeting out deaths from the skies onto boats in the Caribbean.

Donald Trump this week pardoned the former president of Honduras, who is an actual convicted drug trafficker -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Convicted in this country.

SUSAN GLASSER: Convicted in this country through the rule of law on a truly epic scale of drug trafficking.

So, he's pardoned.

So, why is it that we're going to war against drug traffickers?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

SUSAN GLASSER: It's a remarkable mess.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Peter, widen the optic a bit.

Obviously, the United States has a vested interest.

The government of the United States has a vested interest in keeping killer drugs off American streets, out of American hands, right?

Although, to be fair, fentanyl is the right main drug threatening American lives, and this is not a fentanyl situation.

This is more a cocaine situation, as I understand, but stipulate terrible thing for people to bring drugs in the country.

Susan points out, there seems to be different standards for different people here, but writ large, most Americans would say, well, they shouldn't be trying to boat in terrible drugs to this country.

So, maybe Donald Trump is doing something to stop this plague.

PETER BAKER: Yes.

And I think he's relatively comfortable with that argument.

I mean, I think he thinks, politically, this is okay, that Americans aren't going to be upset about whacking bad guys, as he would put it.

But imagine in your city where you live and there was a house down the block that was known to be occupied by people who were selling drugs or thought to be occupied by people selling drugs because they haven't been convicted or anything, and the police, instead of raiding the house and arresting the people, used a bomb and blew up the house, right?

That's what we're talking about here.

The fact that happens in international water doesn't change the facts that we are using, as Susan said, lethal force against people who haven't been convicted of anything who do not pose an imminent threat under the traditional interpretation that people have used in the law of war.

NANCY YOUSSEF: And if I could just add, if you're interested in going after the drug problems in that part of the world, we've already heard from our allies that they're afraid to share intelligence because of the way that we're conducting these strikes, that these strikes potentially are hurting the kind of intelligence sharing and cooperation you need to really get at these root problems and develop the response such that you're actually stopping drugs from coming through.

The administration hasn't demonstrated why these particular boats are headed towards the United States.

They certainly don't have the fuel or capability.

All indications are that many of them are actually bound towards Europe.

And by violating potentially the laws of armed conflict, we're also putting our own troops in harm's way.

Imagine, for example, U.S.

troops are operating off the shores of Iran and a ship is struck and our sailors are holding on to life, and Iran decides that, in the absence of the rules, that they can go after our sailors.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I mean, they might do that anyway, to be fair.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Oh, fair, but we -- have we not made it easier?

Well, we're sort of eliminating the expectation of a sort of a rule-based order by saying these rules don't apply or that we can be -- redefine what it means to be out of combat.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

And, obviously, it's worth noting that Americans in other wars have gone to prison for violating the rules that we're talking about.

Whether Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans do is another question entirely, but we're not Russia, China, North Korea or Iran.

SUSAN GLASSER: And, in fact, one of the main precedents, Jeff, goes back to World War II and Nazi Germany.

And, you know, the Germans engaging in this conduct that we consider to be reprehensible and outside the laws of war when it came to our series (ph).

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Nancy, let me -- in the minute we have left, let me ask you this question, a political question.

Pete Hegseth causes a lot of headaches for the Trump administration for their political operation.

How long does he hang on?

Why does Trump hang on to him?

NANCY YOUSSEF: We've heard that he likes him personally and the president -- and what Pete Hegseth allows the president to do is to do these kinds of things with minimal questioning and pushback.

He has had an experience in the past under the first administration of a Pentagon that push back on the very things he wanted do.

Of all the problems he faces from Peter Hegseth, that's not one of them.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Any chance that we're seeing the end of the reign of Pete Hegseth soon?

NANCY YOUSSEF: I think you're seeing growing impatience, because, as you point out, lots of problems and not as many solutions.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, it's a fascinating conversation.

I have a feeling we'll be revisiting this.

Thank you very much for the fascinating conversation.

We're going to have to leave it there for now.

I want to thank our guests for joining me, and I want to thank you at home for watching us.