Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, suggested on Monday that he did not give a direct command to have two survivors of a strike of a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean in September killed in a follow-up attack.
But the morning after the attack, of 3 September, Hegseth told his former colleagues on the morning show Fox & Friends that he had monitored the operation in real time.
"I can tell you that was definitely not artificial intelligence: I watched it live," Hegseth said.