Venezuelan Boat Suspected of Drug Smuggling Is Said to Have Turned Before U.S. Strike

A Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it, according to American officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, added that the military hit the vessel repeatedly before it sank.

The disclosures add new detail to an operation that was a startling departure from traditional drug interdiction efforts, escalating President Trump’s use of the military for matters typically handled by law enforcement. Legal specialists have disputed that it was lawful for the military, on President Trump’s orders, to target and kill drug smuggling suspects as if they were combatants in a war.

Mr. Trump announced the strike last week, saying it took place in international waters and had killed 11 people who he said were transporting drugs “heading to the United States” and were part of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. He has not put forward evidence to support those assertions but has said “we have tapes of them speaking.”

While the White House has not provided a detailed legal rationale, it has put forward the outlines of a novel argument that using lethal military force was permissible under the laws of armed conflict to defend the country from drugs because 100,000 Americans die annually from overdoses. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said people suspected of smuggling drugs toward the United States pose “an immediate threat.” Mr. Trump, in a letter to Congress, justified the attack as a matter of self-defense.

Many legal specialists, including retired top military lawyers, have rejected the idea that Mr. Trump has legitimate authority to treat suspected drug smuggling as legally equivalent to an imminent armed attack on the United States. Even if one accepted that premise for the sake of argument, they added, if the boat had already turned away, that would further undermine what they saw as an already weak claim of self-defense.

“If someone is retreating, where’s the ‘imminent threat’ then?” said Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2000 to 2002. “Where’s the ‘self-defense’? They are gone if they ever existed — which I don’t think they did.”

Rear Adm. James E. McPherson, the top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2004 to 2006 who later served in the first Trump administration in several prominent civilian military roles, including general counsel of the Army, agreed.

“I would be interested if they could come up for any legal basis for what they did,” he said, adding, “If, in fact, you can fashion a legal argument that says these people were getting ready to attack the U.S. through the introduction of cocaine or whatever, if they turned back, then that threat has gone away.”

The White House did not directly address questions about the boat’s maneuvers or the nature of the strike, instead repeating the administration’s position on the attack. Mr. Trump “acted in line with the laws of armed conflict to protect our country” from “evil narco terrorists trying to poison our homeland,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman.

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said, “This strike sent a clear message: If you traffic drugs toward our shores, the United States military will use every tool at our disposal to stop you cold.”

After returning to office, Mr. Trump directed his administration to begin labeling various Latin American drug gangs and cartels as terrorist organizations, breaking with the tradition of limiting that status to violent groups that are motivated by ideology rather than illicit profit. Legally, such a designation permits sanctions like freezing a group’s assets, but it does not create authorization to use military force against it.

In July, Mr. Trump signed a still-secret directive instructing the Pentagon to use military force against some of the criminal groups his team had designated as terrorist organizations. The attack on the boat last week appears to signal an opening phase of operations stemming from that directive.

Mr. Trump, in announcing the attack, posted a 29-second video on social media that edited together several clips of aerial surveillance. It showed a speedboat cutting through the water, with a number of people onboard, before an explosion.

But officials briefed on the strike said that the video does not tell the entire story. It does not show the boat turning after the people aboard were apparently spooked by an aircraft above them, nor does it show the military making repeated strikes on the vessel even after disabling it, the officials said.

Mr. Trump’s aides have boasted that the operation is only the beginning of a war against suspected drug smugglers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters last week, “We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean, and when other people try to do that, they’re going to meet the same fate.”

Adding to the legal controversy is uncertainty over what standards, if any, the Trump team has set for the strength of the intelligence about who and what is on a boat for the U.S. military to summarily kill everyone aboard. Mr. Trump joked last week that not just drug smugglers but also fishermen may now think twice about going to sea in the region.

“I think anybody that saw that is going to say, ‘I’ll take a pass,’” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t even know about fishermen. They may say, ‘I’m not getting on the boat. I’m not going to take a chance.’”

One open question is where the boat was headed. Mr. Rubio initially told reporters last week that it was probably headed toward Trinidad and Tobago or some other country in the Caribbean, but administration officials have since characterized it as destined for the United States.

Another is what it was carrying. Some have expressed doubts that a vessel of its size would need an 11-member crew. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has called it “despicable and thoughtless” to glorify killing people accused of crimes without trials, has argued that if there were drugs, it was more likely cocaine than fentanyl — the drug most responsible for overdoses.

On Tuesday, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN that the administration had provided no evidence that the boat was taking drugs to the United States.

“If there’s a civilian boat that’s suspected of anything, particularly in international waters, you have to make an attempt to stop the boat,” he said, describing what he said was supposed to be standard rules of engagement. “You only fire, really, if fired upon.”

The legal question is whether Mr. Trump can simply choose to reject that approach and shift the problem of drug smuggling from law enforcement rules to the harsher framework of wartime rules, especially when Congress has not authorized any armed conflict with gangs and cartels like Tren de Aragua.

Geoffrey Corn, a retired uniformed lawyer who was the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, said he believed Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Hegseth’s order was not justified as an act of self-defense. He expressed concern that what he saw as an apparently illegal order was passed down through the military chain of command and carried out.

The apparent turning of the boat before the attack began, he said, reinforced that judgment.

“I think it’s a terrible precedent,” he said. “We’ve crossed a line here.”

Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.