New York Times Debunks War Crime Story By the Washington Post
The pattern is all too familiar. The Washington Post runs a story with a sensational claim: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the killing of survivors of one of the first boat attacks back in September — a coup de grace or finishing shot that would constitute a war crime. The Post appears to have had only one source making the specific claim about Hegseth, but ran with the story. What followed was a line of politicians and pundits calling for the usual criminal charges, impeachments, and resignations. Then, various sources, including the New York Times, debunked the story.
When this story broke, some of us cautioned that the law was clear, but the facts were not. Yes, it is generally a war crime to intentionally kill or order a “double tap” strike for the sole purpose of killing the survivors at sea. The Nazis were charged with such heinous acts in World War II. However, such allegations are often difficult to resolve even after investigations in the “fog of war,” where decisions are made in seconds on a battlefield. This claim was being made with only the Post and a single source as “evidence.”
The Post claimed “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody, one of them said.”
This is the same newspaper that won the Pulitzer Prize with the later debunked Russian collusion story — a scandal started by the Clinton campaign, which secretly funded the infamous Steele dossier.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/12/03/new-york-times-debunks-war-crime-story-by-the-washington-post/
