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According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.

But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.

Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him.

The officials clarified the sequence of events amid the political and legal uproar that has followed a report in The Washington Post last week. It said that Admiral Bradley ordered the second strike to fulfill a directive by Mr. Hegseth to kill everyone. The reaction has included questions about whether Mr. Hegseth specifically ordered an execution of shipwrecked sailors in violation of the laws of war.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday night, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Hegseth had denied ordering a second strike to kill two people who were wounded but still alive after the first one, saying, “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.”

Mr. Trump also sought to distance himself from the follow-up strike, saying he “wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike,” although he said the first one was “fine.” He defended his broader policy of having the military use lethal force against people suspected of smuggling drugs. Starting with the Sept. 2 attack, his administration has said it has carried out 21 such strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 83 people.

Mr. Hegseth called The Post’s reporting “fabricated” and “inflammatory.” “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’” he wrote on social media.

In another social media statement, on Monday, Mr. Hegseth said he stood by Admiral Bradley and what he called the admiral’s “combat decisions” in the strike. “Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support,” he wrote. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.”

Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Monday that he had spoken with Mr. Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the strikes and that his committee would conduct a congressional investigation into the matter.

The defense secretary also spoke with Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, according to a U.S. official.

In interviews on Monday, two U.S. officials — both of whom were supportive of the administration’s boat strikes — described a meeting before the attack at which Mr. Hegseth had briefed Special Operations Forces commanders on his execute order to engage the boat with lethal force.

That written order, they said, did not address what should happen if people survived the first strike.

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The suggestion that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or his officials targeted shipwrecked survivors has been galvanizing because that would apparently be a war crime even if one accepts Trump officials’ broader argument for the strike campaign.Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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