Plane used in boat strike off Venezuela was painted to look like a civilian aircraft, AP sources say

The plane used by the U.S. mil­i­tary to strike a boat ac­cused of smug­gling drugs off the coast of Venezuela last fall was paint­ed to look like a civil­ian air­craft, a move that ap­pears to be at odds with the Pen­ta­gon’s man­u­al on the laws of war.

The plane, part of a se­cret U.S. fleet used in sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tions, al­so was car­ry­ing mu­ni­tions in the fuse­lage, rather than be­neath the air­craft, rais­ing ques­tions about the ex­tent to which the op­er­a­tion was dis­guised in ways that run con­trary to mil­i­tary pro­to­col.

De­tails of the plane’s ap­pear­ance, first re­port­ed Mon­day by The New York Times, were con­firmed by two peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the sen­si­tive mat­ter.

Pen­ta­gon Press Sec­re­tary Kings­ley Wil­son said in a state­ment that “the U.S. mil­i­tary uti­lizes a wide ar­ray of stan­dard and non­stan­dard air­craft de­pend­ing on mis­sion re­quire­ments.”

The new de­tails come af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pres­sure cam­paign on Venezuela — which be­gan with it mass­ing mil­i­tary re­sources in Latin Amer­i­ca and at­tack­ing a se­ries of al­leged drug-smug­gling boats, killing at least 115 peo­ple — cul­mi­nat­ed this month in a stun­ning raid that cap­tured Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro. He and his wife were spir­it­ed to the Unit­ed States to face fed­er­al drug traf­fick­ing charges.

Alarmed by the ac­tions, the U.S. Sen­ate is prepar­ing to vote this week on a war pow­ers res­o­lu­tion that would pro­hib­it fur­ther mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela with­out au­tho­riza­tion from law­mak­ers.

Trump said to be try­ing to de­ter Re­pub­li­cans from war pow­ers res­o­lu­tion

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has been so in­censed over the Sen­ate’s po­ten­tial slap back on his war pow­ers au­thor­i­ty that he has been ag­gres­sive­ly call­ing sev­er­al Re­pub­li­can sen­a­tors who joined the De­moc­rats in vot­ing to ad­vance the res­o­lu­tion last week. It’s head­ed for a fi­nal vote as soon as Wednes­day.

“He was very, very fired up,” said Sen­ate Ma­jor­i­ty Leader John Thune, who did not vote for the res­o­lu­tion. He de­scribed Trump as “an­i­mat­ed” on the sub­ject when they spoke be­fore last week’s vote.

In jus­ti­fy­ing the boat strikes since Sep­tem­ber, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has ar­gued that the U.S. is in an “armed con­flict” with drug car­tels in the re­gion and that those op­er­at­ing the boats are un­law­ful com­bat­ants.

US mil­i­tary guide­lines warn against a civil­ian dis­guise

How­ev­er, U.S. mil­i­tary guide­lines on the laws of war pro­hib­it troops from pre­tend­ing to be civil­ians while en­gag­ing in com­bat. The prac­tice is legal­ly known as “per­fidy”.

The De­fense De­part­ment man­u­al, which runs over 1,000 pages, specif­i­cal­ly notes that “feign­ing civil­ian sta­tus and then at­tack­ing” is an ex­am­ple of the prac­tice. An Air Force man­u­al says the prac­tice was pro­hib­it­ed be­cause it means the en­e­my “ne­glects to take pre­cau­tions which are oth­er­wise nec­es­sary.”

The Navy’s man­u­al ex­plains that “at­tack­ing en­e­my forces while pos­ing as a civil­ian puts all civil­ians at haz­ard,” and sailors must use of­fen­sive force “with­in the bounds of mil­i­tary ho­n­our, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­out re­sort to per­fidy.”

Wil­son said each air­craft goes through a “rig­or­ous pro­cure­ment process to en­sure com­pli­ance with do­mes­tic law, de­part­ment poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions, and ap­plic­a­ble in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, in­clud­ing the law of armed con­flict.”

The plane that was paint­ed as a civil­ian air­craft was used in a Sept. 2 strike, the first in what would be­come a month­s­long cam­paign of U.S. dead­ly mil­i­tary strikes on sus­pect­ed drug boats with po­lit­i­cal and pol­i­cy ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth and oth­er top of­fi­cials have been called on by Con­gress to an­swer ques­tions and con­cerns about the ac­tions — par­tic­u­lar­ly the first one be­cause it in­volved a fol­low-up strike that killed two sur­vivors hold­ing on­to the wreck­age of the ves­sel hit in the ini­tial at­tack.

Le­gal ex­perts have said the fol­low-on strike may have been un­law­ful be­cause strik­ing ship­wrecked sailors is con­sid­ered out of line with laws of war. Some law­mak­ers have called for the Pen­ta­gon to pub­licly re­lease the unedit­ed video of the op­er­a­tion, which Hegseth has said he will not do.

In a Dec. 1 meet­ing of Trump’s Cab­i­net, Hegseth said he “watched that first strike live” but that he left be­fore the fol­low-up strike.

Le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Maduro’s ouster shared with law­mak­ers

Sen­a­tors on Tues­day were able to re­view, in a clas­si­fied set­ting, the White House’s still undis­closed le­gal opin­ion for hav­ing used the mil­i­tary to oust Maduro. It was de­scribed as a lengthy doc­u­ment out­lin­ing the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ra­tio­nale.

Ex­it­ing the clas­si­fied fa­cil­i­ty at the Capi­tol, Sen. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, a Re­pub­li­can who has long op­posed U.S. mil­i­tary cam­paigns abroad, said none of the le­gal ra­tio­nale should be kept se­cret.

“Le­gal ar­gu­ments and con­sti­tu­tion­al ar­gu­ments should all be pub­lic, and it’s a ter­ri­ble thing that any of this is be­ing kept se­cret be­cause the ar­gu­ments aren’t very good,” Paul said.

Sen. Pe­ter Welch, D-Vt., said he is not con­fi­dent in the le­gal­i­ty of the Venezue­lan op­er­a­tion and in par­tic­u­lar Trump’s plans to “run” the South Amer­i­can coun­try. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio has said the con­trol will come from en­forc­ing a quar­an­tine on sanc­tioned oil tankers tied to Venezuela as the U.S. as­serts pow­er over the coun­try’s oil.

“There’s an on­go­ing ques­tion whether the use of mil­i­tary can be for bring­ing a per­son to jus­tice,” Welch said, call­ing Maduro “a re­al­ly bad guy.”

The le­gal ra­tio­nale ad­dressed the mil­i­tary ac­tion “but not the cur­rent re­al­i­ty that the pres­i­dent is say­ing we’ll be there for years and that we’re run­ning Venezuela,” Welch said. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by LISA MAS­CARO and KON­STAN­TIN TOROPIN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press