During a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Hegseth said he did not see any survivors in the water, saying the vessel "exploded in fire, smoke, you can't see anything. ... This is called the fog of war."
Hegseth also said he "didn't stick around" for the remainder of the September 2 mission following the initial strike and the admiral in charge "made the right call" in ordering the second hit, which he "had complete authority to do."
Politicians have opened investigations following a Washington Post report that Hegseth issued a verbal order to "kill everybody" on the boat, the first vessel hit in the Trump administration's counter-drug campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that has grown to over 20 known strikes and more than 80 dead.
The US also has built up its largest military presence in the region in generations, and many see the actions as a tactic to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to resign.
While several legal experts have told The Associated Press they believed the second strike violated peacetime laws and those governing armed conflict, the Pentagon's own manual on the laws of armed conflict also specifically cites striking survivors of a sunken ship as being patently illegal.
"Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal," the manual says.
President Donald Trump distanced himself from the secondary strike, which the news report said killed two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage.
Trump said he "didn't know anything" and that he "still hasn't gotten a lot of information because I rely on Pete," referencing Hegseth, when asked if he supported the second strike.
"I didn't know anything about people. I wasn't involved in it," he added.
Hegseth, sitting next to Trump at the Cabinet meeting, said Trump has empowered "commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people."
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said earlier in the day that all of the strikes have been "presidentially directed and the chain of command functions as it should."
"At the end of the day, the secretary and the president are the ones directing these strikes," Wilson said while speaking to hand-picked outlets at an event at the Pentagon.
The Trump administration has suggested the admiral overseeing the operation made the actual decision to conduct a second strike.
Trump called him an "extraordinary person" and said "I want those boats taken out, and if we have to, will attack on land also, just like we attack on sea."
The White House said on Monday that Navy Vice Admiral Frank "Mitch" Bradley acted "within his authority and the law" when he ordered the second strike, while Hegseth said on social media that he stood by Bradley "and the combat decisions he has made."
Bradley is expected to provide a classified briefing on Thursday to politicians overseeing the military.
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