DOJ official told prosecutors that U.S. should ‘just sink the boats’ — and thus murder those onboard
At a Justice Department conference in February, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s top drug prosecutors that the Trump administration wasn’t interested in interdicting suspected drug vessels at sea anymore. Instead, he said, the U.S. should “just sink the boats,” according to three people present for the speech.
At the time of Bove’s comments, President Trump had only been back in office for a month. The White House had made clear that combatting drug cartels and transnational criminal gangs was a priority, but few could envision that six months later the U.S. would be blowing up suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Since the first deadly attack on what the government says was a narco-trafficking vessel off the Venezuelan coast on Sept. 2, the U.S. has conducted some 20 strikes in international waters, killing more than 75 people. The administration says the boats were carrying drugs and posed a direct threat to the United States, but it has not provided any public evidence to support those assertions.
Bove’s remarks, which have not previously been publicly reported, suggest at least some members of the administration were considering this policy shift as early as six months before the boat strikes began.
NPR spoke about the Trump administration’s policies with nine current and former U.S. officials who worked to combat transnational crime. They described a dramatic policy shift, from interdicting suspected drug boats, seizing the drugs, detaining and often prosecuting the crew, as the U.S. has done for decades — to blasting them out of the water and killing those on board.
All of the individuals spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. They questioned the legality of the deadly strikes — many referred to them as murder — and expressed doubts that the new policy would be more effective at stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the United States. Several of them said it may ultimately prove counterproductive. [Continue reading…]