Lawmakers gathered in closed-door briefings on Thursday to watch a video of a U.S. missile strike on a boat that the Trump administration claims was bringing drugs to America.

The footage showed a second attack ordered by Adm. Frank M. Bradley, then in charge of the U.S. military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command. There is bipartisan agreement that the strike killed two shirtless survivors holding fast to an overturned hull.

The debate on Capitol Hill and beyond, which began with a published report about the orders governing that Sept. 2 boat strike, now centers on whether the strikes were legal and on whether the order for a second strike on survivors violated military law.

Why We Wrote This

With military leaders in the spotlight over drug boat attacks, how do troops know

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