At a Justice Department conference in February, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department's top drug prosecutors that the Trump administration wasn't interested in interdicting suspected drug vessels at sea anymore. Instead, he said, the U.S. should "just sink the boats," according to three people present for the speech.

At the time of Bove's comments, President Trump had only been back in office for a month. The White House had made clear that combatting drug cartels and transnational criminal gangs was a priority, but few could envision that six months later the U.S. would be blowing up suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Since the first deadly attack on what the government says was a narco-trafficking vessel off the Venezuelan coast on Sept. 2, the U.S. has conducted some 20 strikes in international waters, killing more than 75 people. The administration says the boats were carrying drugs and posed a direct threat to the United States, but it has not provided any public evidence to support those assertions.

Bove's remarks, which have not previously been publicly reported, suggest at least some members of the administration were considering this policy shift as early as six months before the boat strikes began.