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The Trump administration<\/span> is promising legal cover for military personnel who carry out lethal attacks on the alleged drug smugglers in the waters surrounding Latin America.<\/p>\n Amid mounting questions from senior military and civilian lawyers about the legality of proposed strikes on civilian boats, the Justice Department\u2019s Office of Legal Counsel this summer produced a classified opinion intended to shield service members up and down the chain of command from prosecution, according to three government officials.<\/p>\n The legal theory advanced in the finding, two sources said, differs from some of President Donald Trump\u2019s public statements on the killings. It claims that narcotics on the boats are lawful military targets because their cargo generates revenue for cartels whom the Trump administration claims are in armed conflict with the U.S.<\/p>\n One senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, blasted the opinion. \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s more insane \u2013 that the \u2018President of Peace\u2019 is starting an illegal war or that he\u2019s giving a get out of jail free card to the U.S. military,\u201d said the official, referencing President Donald Trump\u2019s self-proclaimed moniker<\/a>. \u201cHopefully they realize there\u2019s no immunity for war crimes. Nor is there a statute of limitations.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration continues to keep the OLC memo from the American people but, this week, finally allowed members of Congress and their staffs to read the document. On Wednesday, just 20 copies were made available in a secure room, causing delays among lawmakers and staffers who have been waiting months to understand the legal reasoning underpinning the attacks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Thursday evening, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the campaign of attacks is called Operation Southern Spear. Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and Southern Command, \u201cthis mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on X. Southern Spear kicked off earlier<\/a> this year<\/a> as part of the Navy\u2019s next-generation effort to use small robot interceptor boats and vertical take-off and landing drones to conduct counternarcotics operations.<\/p>\n The military has carried out 20 known attacks, destroying 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing at least 80 civilians. The most recent attack, on a vessel in the Caribbean on Monday, first reported by CBS<\/a> on Thursday, reportedly killed four people. Following most of the attacks, Hegseth or Trump have claimed that the victims belonged to an unspecified designated terrorist organization, or DTO.<\/p>\n A list of DTOs, consisting of Latin American cartels and criminal organizations, is attached to the OLC opinion which claims that attacks on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific are lawful and that personnel involved are immune from prosecution.<\/p>\n \u201cThe strikes were ordered consistent with the laws of armed conflict, and as such are lawful orders. Military personnel are legally obligated to follow lawful orders and, as such, are not subject to prosecution for following lawful orders,\u201d a Justice Department spokesperson told The Intercept.<\/p>\n Experts in the laws of war<\/a> and members of Congress say the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings<\/a> because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians \u2014 even suspected criminals \u2014 who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. The summary executions are a significant departure from standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs<\/a>, in which law enforcement arrested suspected drug smugglers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senior government attorneys questioned the legality of the strikes long before they began, sources told The Intercept. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised that civilian and military lawyers raised significant concerns with these strikes, given that they are manifestly unlawful even under the most permissive wartime legal frameworks government lawyers have deployed at any point in the past two decades,\u201d Rebecca Ingber, a former State Department lawyer and law-of-war expert told The Intercept.<\/p>\n One current government official speaking anonymously, as well as Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war, both drew specific attention to the fact that this summer \u2014 at the time the Defense Department officials were expressing reservations about the legality of summary executions of alleged drug smugglers \u2014 Trump signed a secret directive <\/a>ordering the Pentagon to use military force against Latin American drug cartels<\/a> he <\/a>has labeled<\/a> terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a policy desire for strikes at sea and there was pushback, potentially from Joint Staff and Southern Command, on those requests, both on policy grounds, but also on legal grounds,\u201d said Finucane, now the senior adviser for the U.S. program at the International Crisis Group. \u201cThat seems to have generated two documents: this permission slip from OLC, blessing these actions as legal, and the directive from the White House basically telling DOD \u2018No! You will develop these options.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Several government officials suggested <\/a>to The Intercept that Rear Adm. Milton \u201cJamie\u201d Sands III, head of Naval Special Warfare Command, was fired<\/a> by Hegseth in August due to the admiral\u2019s concerns about impending attacks on civilian vessels by Special Operations forces. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson denied the officials\u2019 claims, and Sands did not respond to repeated requests by The Intercept for an interview.<\/p>\n Last month, Adm. Alvin Holsey \u2014 the chief of Southern Command \u2014 announced his retirement<\/a> years ahead of schedule. \u201cNever before in my over 20 years on the committee can I recall seeing a combatant commander leave their post this early and amid such turmoil,\u201d said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n Current and former government officials familiar with the OLC opinion say that it relies on a theory for the strikes that differs from the Trump administration\u2019s public pronouncements. \u201cEvery single boat that you see that\u2019s shot down kills 25,000 [Americans] on drugs and destroys families all over our country,\u201d Trump said on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d recently<\/a>. But the OLC opinion indicates that it is the sale of drugs, what is known as the \u201crevenue generating target theory,\u201d that the U.S. relies on to claim the narcotics aboard the boats are military objectives and, thus, lawful targets under the law of war. Under this theory, the civilians aboard would be considered collateral damage, and their deaths would be excused through a proportionality analysis tied to the military advantage gained by the attack.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n