Retired Major General Stephen Leper, a former U.S. Air Force Deputy Judge Advocate General, condemns Secretary Pete Hegseth’s February firing of TJAGs and the military’s lethal strikes on Caribbean drug boats since September, calling them "extrajudicial killing" under Trump’s declared non-international armed conflict. Leper disputes the legality—citing Geneva Conventions’ Common Article III and UCMJ—while critics like a Michigan caller compare policies to a "mob boss," but he insists adherence to law preserves the military’s moral integrity, even as Venezuela’s fentanyl role is misrepresented. The episode underscores how legal ambiguity and conflicting directives risk eroding trust in military ethics. [Automatically generated summary]
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Joining us to discuss the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats is retired Major General Stephen Leper, who is a former JAG working group member as well as a U.S. Air Force and former Deputy Judge Advocate General.
We were formed in February of this year when Secretary Hagseth fired the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Air Force, and Navy.
And we gathered together, we former and retired judge advocates, because we were concerned about both the messaging that was delivered at that time supporting the firing of the TJAGs, as well as the implications of those messages.
The message, of course, was we don't want lawyers to stand as obstacles to what we want to do in military operations.
We think lawyers actually detract from military operations instead of enhancing them.
The larger implications of that message are essentially that we don't think the law or lawyers matter to military operations, and so we're not going to consider the law as we plan and execute future military operations.
That's a dangerous message, and we as former judge advocates united in the common purpose to push back on that message.
Since the beginning of September, the U.S. military has carried out almost two dozen strikes in the Caribbean on boats the Trump administration alleges have been trafficking drugs.
And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday was defending those strikes on those drug cartel boats during remarks that he made at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
And right now the world is seeing the strength of American resolve in stemming the flow of lethal drugs to our country.
Here again, we've been focused and here we've been clear.
If you're working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you.
Let there be no doubt about it.
President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation's interests.
Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.
Like President Reagan, President Trump knows how to do so in a way that is tied to a clear purpose with a decisive and credible theory of military victory.
Just as the lessons of Vietnam informed Ronald Reagan and his Weinberger doctrine, so too the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan guide President Trump and his secretary today.
Major General Leopard, President Trump has told Congress that the U.S. is in non-international armed conflict with drug cartels and is treating these members as unlawful combatants.
Well, we, my colleagues and I, are looking at this from a legal perspective.
And as law of war experts, we understand that this operation targeting narco-trafficker boats does not qualify under international law as a non-international armed conflict.
In order to have a non-international armed conflict, you need to have the element of armed on both sides.
And in this particular case, we're not talking about an armed enemy.
We're talking about a group of civilians who are trying to introduce drugs into our border.
Now, there's no question that narco-trafficking is evil.
Narco-trafficking is a crime.
And the United States and other countries around the world have traditionally treated it as a crime.
What we've done is we've basically taken that crime and we've put it into a new category that this administration argues is worthy of having lethal military force being applied against it.
So my thoughts about the Secretary's comments are, first of all, this is not a non-international armed conflict.
And secondly, in order by making it such, what we're basically doing is we're saying that we are justified in taking the lives of civilians without due process.
Under the international law, it's called extrajudicial killing.
And under our law, it's called murder.
So what we're essentially being asked to do, our military, is murder civilians who are trying to bring drugs into our country, something that the Coast Guard is still handling as a law enforcement issue.
And our argument is that we should continue treating it as such.
One of the more notable attacks has involved what's being referred to as a double tap, in which an order was given to kill survivors.
Now, this week, Admiral Frank Bradley, who's a special operations commander overseeing the mission, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he issued the command to kill survivors, but that he was complying with Defense Secretary Pete Hegset's verbal command to kill everyone on board, although the Secretary has denied that reporting about issuing a kill everyone order.
What's been your reaction to this debate back and forth and the way that this played out?
Well, again, because this is not a non-international armed conflict, we argue that the laws of war do not apply to this situation.
But let's put that aside.
You know, that's a lot of lawyers talking about a lot of law.
Let's consider for a moment that the laws of war do apply, okay?
The laws of war provide a minimum standard of treatment of persons involved in a conflict, minimum.
And under these circumstances, where you have survivors of a strike on their vessel who are trying to climb back into their vessel, the vessel, of course, being non-navigable, and simply trying to survive and who are dependent upon rescue in order to survive beyond climbing in the boat, that is the definition under the law of war of shipwreck.
And our obligation, vis-à-vis shipwrecked sailors or shipwrecked personnel, is not to target them, it's to protect them.
So at the moment that we delivered that first strike and converted these individuals from targets to shipwrecked survivors, our obligation with regard to those people also changed, also shifted from one of attacker to one of rescuer.
The fact that we did not uphold that obligation puts us in a position where we had violated international law and the people up and down the chain of command who gave the order and executed the order essentially committed murder.
I want to play you some remarks from Secretary Hegseth earlier this year addressing generals where he talks a bit about sort of these rules around engagement.
We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.
We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.
We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.
No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.
Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters.
That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader.
And it's all my E6 squad leaders ever wanted, back to that E6 rule.
We let our leaders fight their formations, and then we have their back.
It's very simple, yet incredibly powerful.
A few months ago, I was at the White House when President Trump announced his Liberation Day for America's trade policy.
It was a landmark day.
Well, today is another Liberation Day.
The liberation of America's warriors, in name, in deed, and in authorities.
You kill people and break things for a living.
You are not politically correct and don't necessarily belong always in polite society.
We are not an army of one.
We are a joint force of millions of selfless Americans.
We are warriors.
We are purpose-built, not for fair weather, blue skies, or calm seas.
We were built to load up in the back of helicopters, five tons, or zodiacs, in the dead of night, in fair weather or foul, to go to dangerous places, to find those who would do our nation harm, and deliver justice on behalf of the American people in close and brutal combat, if necessary.
Well, it struck me when I first heard that speech live that what he was describing could easily be applied to murderers and terrorists.
The way that he was describing the use of force and the lethality that he believes that the military should operate with is certainly a description of what the military needs to be capable of doing.
But the only thing that distinguishes us from murderers and terrorists is the idea that we do it consistent with the law.
We are constrained by the law.
And one of the fundamental principles of international law underpinning the laws of armed conflict is the concept of honor.
We are an honorable profession.
I served for 35 years in the Air Force, and my fellow airmen and the soldiers, sailors, and Marines I worked with during that 35 years all joined the military and served in the military because they believed it was an honorable profession, because they wanted to serve their country, because they wanted to defend us against enemies who would do us harm.
We didn't consider ourselves murderers.
We didn't consider ourselves terrorists because we were trained in the laws of war.
The laws of war guided us.
And so what if you go back to that speech and you do a word search of the transcript and you look for the word honor anywhere in it, you won't find it.
Secretary Hagseth's definition of warrior ethos does not include honor, does not include respect for law.
That's the concern that united the former and retired JAGs in the purpose to push back on these messages.
You mentioned this, but many, several members of Congress in talking about these strikes that have killed more than 80 people so far in the Caribbean, they're worried that some of these might be considered war crimes.
What is the threshold for a war crime?
And if these attacks are found to be unlawful, who ends up being responsible?
Well, again, assuming that the laws of war apply, which we argue they don't because this is an illegal operation from the very start, the laws of war are basically grounded in the Geneva Conventions, especially when it comes to the status of personnel that the military is ordered to fight.
And the Geneva Conventions, in a non-international armed conflict, it would be the common Article III of all four Geneva Conventions, essentially defines people who should be protected.
Now, you know, going into an armed conflict, the proposition that one state is arrayed against another state assumes that it's the military of both states that are fighting.
That's an international armed conflict.
When you engage in a state versus non-state sponsored armed force, that's the definition of non-international armed conflict.
And a war crime under either scenario would be a violation of the laws of war that apply to each of those conflicts.
In this particular case, with regard to these particular boat strikes, the 2nd of September strike in particular, the targeting of survivors of a shipwreck specifically violates Common Article III, which requires us to protect such persons, not continue to target them.
A war crime is both a violation of the laws of war, but then the act itself could also be a violation of domestic U.S. law.
And in this particular case, Even if we assume that the administration is correct, and this is a non-international armed conflict, a war crime may have been committed.
At the same time, that act constituted murder under our domestic laws.
So the people responsible for this would be everyone from the person who gave the order all the way down to the person who pulled the trigger.
There's been a lot made over the past couple of weeks about the duty to disobey unlawful orders.
In my view, the order to kill those survivors was an unlawful order.
The person who gave it is responsible.
The person who executed it is responsible.
And everyone along that chain of command who facilitated it could be held criminally responsible as well.
Before we get to callers, Senate Democrats and Senator Rand Paul have filed a war powers resolution to prevent the United States from engaging in military hostilities with Venezuela in particular without direction from Congress, without approval from Congress.
How would that change the dynamic of what's happening if that were to pass?
Well, what that would do is it would impose the requirements of U.S. law on the decision to go to war in the first place.
In this particular case with the boat strikes, the president made a unilateral decision to start targeting boats, and he has not complied with the war power resolution in the sense that he has allowed that operation to extend beyond 60 days without Congress's approval.
If Congress takes the first step and exercises its authority under Article 1 of the Constitution to essentially make war, then what it would be saying is you can't do this unilaterally, Mr. President.
We're telling you what the constraints are on you going forward with respect to this particular operation.
I don't know what was in the mind of the president when he started ordering these boat strikes.
What I will say is that these boat strikes actually provide a lot of conflict for our troops because at the same time we're conducting these boat strikes, killing the people on board, we're also still conducting law enforcement operations.
The Coast Guard is still out there interdicting, seizing drugs, and arresting drug runners.
And at the same time, the Department of Justice has said in a memorandum that it issued several months ago that they're not going to prosecute these people who are manning these drug boats.
And then lastly, the president has pardoned a major narco-trafficker.
So when you put all these data points together, the cognitive dissonance that it creates for our military has got to be tremendous.
A military member who's been asked to pull the trigger does so knowing that basically what he or she is doing doesn't matter to the overall effort to prevent drugs from coming to this to this country.
Let's hear now from Pat in Keyport, New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Pat.
unidentified
Hello.
I'd like you to address an issue I read about this week, which is that these drug-running boats, once you're in international waters, you're expected to fly the flag of the country that's your jurisdiction.
And the story I've heard is that these are not carrying the flag of any country and aren't they essentially pirate ships, which the U.S. military has a history of fighting through our existence as a country, and that it doesn't require a declaration of war.
They're violating the rules of international navigation.
Not flying a flag does not make you a target for lethal force.
It could make you a target for boarding by law enforcement authorities from countries surrounding the body of water that they're on, but it certainly does not make that vessel subject to attack.
So, Rodney, if I can pause you for just a moment, I do want to let the Major General respond to your question, but I also want to read a little bit here from a story in USA Today about that terrorist designation that you referenced.
The foreign terrorist organization known as FTO designation declared on November 24th gives more tools to the War Department to give Trump options to deal with cartels, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview on November 21st.
Headed by the illegitimate Nicholas Maduro, Cartel de los Solos has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence and drug trafficking.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X.
But experts said that the designation is not a military tool and that the organization it is leveled against, Cartel de los Solas, does not exist as an organized drug cartel.
Venezuela barely contributes to the flow of drugs coming into the United States, accounting for just a fraction of the cocaine.
It is not a source of fentanyl, the drug responsible for most overdose deaths, which is primarily produced in Mexico, according to the State Department.
Rodney, given that information, I just want to give you those details if you wanted to finish up your question and then we can let the Major General respond.
unidentified
Well, I mean, I really don't have a question.
My concern is that, you know, our government is trying to protect the continental United States.
And if you can stop any of the drugs coming in through the borders or through international waters, they're saving Americans.
As far as Congress declaring war, I don't foresee that happening.
Congress don't like declaring war on certain things.
And if you listen to them, they all say, oh, well, these are innocent people and they need to be picked up and brought here.
And let's waste the taxpayers' monies and put them through the court system.
And now we're going to turn around and let's jail them.
And we're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Drugs are a scourge, and we need to do everything we can to prevent drugs from coming into this country, full stop.
But we have been doing that.
We have been treating it as a crime, which is what it is.
And we have been treating the people who are involved in bringing drugs to our shores as criminals, which is what they are.
The International Terrorist Organization designation, as was mentioned, does not give us the ability or right to designate the people who bring drugs to our shores as combatants.
And under international law, we do not have the authority, we do not have the right to use lethal force against them without due process.
And so I understand your concern about wanting to do all we can to prevent drugs from reaching our shores, but killing them indiscriminately and illegally is not the way to do it.
Bob is in Racine, Wisconsin on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Bob.
unidentified
Hello, Sispan and General.
I listen to you all the time.
It's very nice.
You know, if I was an airplane and they said, bomb these boats, and I didn't do it, common sense said, I don't want to kill this human being when we got Coast Guards to get them.
And they say, well, you get a dishonorable discharge or you go to jail.
Well, at least I'm alive.
And then people in that boat is around.
You know, and I just like the Republicans say and Trump that fentanyl comes from.
We got to stop fentanyl.
Fentanyl doesn't come from there.
I just heard the Republicans say that.
I done heard it time and time again.
Cocaine and RIPA come from there.
They constantly.
And then the last point: you know, it comes from Mexico and Canada.
But they still say it.
I don't know why the Republicans still say it.
And I done heard it on the news several times.
It's not fentanyl that comes from them.
And even Trump said.
I mean, sir, I would like your version of what I just said.
What you described at the top of your comment is the incredible burden that's been placed on our military.
Our military is now operating with several different lines of effort in an overall attempt to stop drugs from coming to our shores.
Their particular line of effort involves dropping bombs or shooting missiles at boats and killing all the occupants.
It's a tremendous burden to place on them, especially when the other lines of effort have been pretty successful in stopping drugs from coming to the United States.
I think I saw a statistic yesterday that said that last year the Coast Guard seized over 500,000 pounds of cocaine headed for the United States.
That's a lot.
And right now, by far, the greater number of drug boats coming to this country are being interdicted by law enforcement.
So my concern for our military is that we are putting them in a very, very difficult position of having to ask themselves the question whether the orders that they are being given are lawful or not.
And whenever you have a situation like that, it just creates a tremendous burden on them.
And it actually has the impact of weakening the military overall.
President Trump has threatened to recall Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat of Arizona, to active duty in the military and then have him court-martialed.
This is related to some statements as well as sort of an ad campaign about encouraging members of the military to not follow illegal orders.
Can the president do that, court-martial Senator Kelly, to bring him back into the military for this purpose?
If you're calling this a war crime, what would you call what the Biden administration did in Afghanistan after 13 Americans were killed there by a terrorist attack?
And they blew up a house and killed 10 civilians and seven children.
And all the people that the Obama administration killed with drawn attacks, including one American citizen, where was his due process?
And I can't speak to the specific examples that you've given.
All I can say, again, is that the laws of war establish different classes of people who are involved in an armed conflict.
There are combatants who are lawful targets, and there are non-combatants who are not.
And in the class of non-combatants, you have civilians, wounded and sick, and shipwrecked.
And in the case of the boat strike that we've been talking about on September 2nd, that second strike arguably is a war crime because it targeted protected persons under international law, i.e., shipwrecked sailors.
Dan is in Georgetown, Massachusetts, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Dan.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for having me on.
I just want to, you know, that guy, the last caller, brought up some points there about other adventures we've been in.
But I've just got to say, you know, after Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, the campaign he had of dropping bombs on innocent civilians, hospitals, schools.
He blew up a UN hospital, schools in Afghanistan, wedding party, funerals.
Like, he was dropping bombs on innocent families in Afghanistan over and over and over again.
So just common sense here, you know, you can take your law crap and I won't tell you where to stuff it.
But common sense says dropping bombs from unmanned drones with pilots from Texas on civilian families in a sovereign country, that's all okay because Obama walked on water.
We all understand that.
But now we have boats coming from.
You know that they know exactly where they came from, what they have in there, right?
We got pictures, we got satellite images.
We're not arbitrarily shooting fishing boats out of the Caribbean Ocean.
So the hypocrisy here is through the roof.
And I'm telling you the frustration of the American people when you have a president who can do no wrong, that's a mass murdering thug, and then you have a president that's trying to do the best he can and get some peace going, and you label him the mass murdering thug.
Well, as to whether or not anyone can be prosecuted for these or any other acts that are considered war crimes or violations of our domestic U.S. law, the answer is yes.
I mean, they can be prosecuted.
The question, as you pointed out, is how and where.
And, you know, under these circumstances, it's not likely that an international tribunal would be convened either as an ad hoc tribunal or even in the tribunals that are standing.
I doubt that a case could be brought or would be brought.
As far as our own domestic law, however, there are consequences to acts like these.
And it really doesn't matter what administration you're talking about.
The rule of law means that justice is ultimately served, that the laws constrain our military operations.
And when the laws are violated, there should be accountability.
And the group of former and retired JAGs that I'm part of has called for accountability when and where necessary.
So we're, you know, we're hopeful that Congress will indeed investigate these accusations, these events, and show the American people not only the video,
but the Office of Legal Counsel memorandum that seeks to justify the boat strikes as legal in the first place, and all of the other things that have transpired and that we've talked about over the last several days with regard to the 2nd of September boat strikes as well as all others.
Yeah, I just want to find out what's the point with blowing these boats out of the water when they can't even reach the United States.
They can't even get here.
So they got to go somewhere else to offload those, to redistribute them, to come where they're going.
I figured they're going to Europe.
But anyway, if Trump's so wanting to get rid of all these drug boats and hegs, who's not qualified to be where he's at, how come he's pardoning Honduran president who was convicted of smuggling drugs to this country?
Well, as I mentioned, that is a concern I have for the military because the military understands all of this.
And, you know, to the extent that they identify hypocrisy within the policies that they're asked to execute, it makes it very, very difficult for them to do that.
Well, first of all, with regard to the first question, we don't know what advice the president's lawyers have given him because the office of legal counsel, at least in this particular case, we don't, because the office of legal counsel opinion that we understand places these boat strikes on firm legal foundations has not been released.
So the first step here needs to be that we all know what the office of legal counsel said before we can draw any conclusions about whether it's a valid interpretation of the law.
As to your second question, every judge advocate serving in the U.S. military has to be licensed by a state in the United States.
In my particular case, I am licensed in North Carolina and Colorado, and I'm an active attorney in both of those jurisdictions.
My colleagues, when they served in military, were required to be active attorneys in their respective states.
Well, I mentioned at the top of the show that my connection with the U.S. military goes back to my mother having been liberated by the U.S. Army in Europe after World War II.
And so, you know, I joined the military.
I went to the Air Force Academy at age 17 because I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps.
My father served as an Air Force NCO for 28 years, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps because I saw the good that the military did around the world.
I grew up all over the world.
My dad dragged my brother and me from assignment to assignment, many of which were overseas.
And I saw as a young child and as a young adult before I went to the academy, the great respect that our military was held up to by the people we met all around the world.
They viewed the military just as I did, as an honorable institution that does good.
And so I joined the military because I wanted to be one of the good guys.
I wanted to defend this country.
I wanted to learn how to do that.
I wanted to be part of a force that could be deadly when necessary, but I also wanted to be part of a force that was honorable at all times.
And so when I think back on World War II and I think about how the U.S. forces comported themselves during that conflict, we were the good guys.
We were the good guys and we need to continue to be the good guys.
And following the law ensures that.
And so what I would say to my fellow Americans is the law exists for a purpose.
It ensures that the good guys remain the good guys.
And that's what I hope we all want for our military.
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Coming up Monday morning, NBC News Senior Congressional Reporter Scott Wong on the week ahead for Congress.
And then SCOTUS Blog Executive Editor Zachary Shemtom previews Monday's Supreme Court case, Trump v. Slaughter, which will examine the legality of President Trump's firing of a Federal Trade Commission member.
Also, Julia Manchester, White House reporter for The Hill, on the week ahead at the White House.
And we'll talk about a new poll that examines Americans' declining attitudes on the value of a four-year college degree and educational alternatives to it with Career Education Colleges and Universities President and CEO Jason Altmeyer.
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Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case assessing the legality of President Trump's removal of Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission.
The president fired her this past March, saying her service did not align with White House priorities.
The Federal Trade Commission Act prohibits the president from removing FDC commissioners without cause, a restriction that the White House argues violates the separation of powers.
We'll have live coverage of the Trump v. Slaughter oral argument starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org.