Deep below the US Capitol, in a secure room meant to protect discussions of American secrets, a wave of sarcastic laughter spread among lawmakers and staff members who were assembled to receive a briefing in late October from senior Pentagon officials.

The Navy rear admiral and a top civilian adviser to the defense secretary had made the trip to Capitol Hill to walk lawmakers through an accelerating string of strikes that to date have now claimed 80 lives. The attacks were part of a campaign the Trump administration says is aimed at disrupting the operations of drug cartels.

But in a meeting the lawmakers expected would center around growing concerns over whether the military had the legal right to kill traffickers without knowing their identities and without trial, the two Pentagon briefers had left something behind: the military lawyers who had been scheduled to attend.

The announcement of the sudden cancellation by the lawyers was immediately seen by some of the lawmakers as a classic stonewalling tactic – with no lawyers around, the Pentagon officials could claim ignorance on legal questions – triggering the wry laughs in the secure room.

But what the Pentagon officials did have to say that day struck several attendees as deeply troubling. It was the way briefers described those killed in the operations – so-called enemy combatants – that seemed to provide evidence that the administration was dusting off the playbook of the drone war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The briefers discussed the strikes against alleged drug boats in nearly identical terms as those carried out in the Middle East during the global war on terror: Killed in Action, target signature, enemy combatants.

“I was like, wait a minute, enemy KIA, what war are we talking about here? What declared conflict am I missing?” one source familiar with the briefing told CNN.

In that and other briefings with lawmakers, military officials have acknowledged they didn’t know the names of those killed, the exact destination of their vehicles or have the documentation to prosecute them for their alleged crimes. But the targets’ actions fit the intelligence of what the briefers referred to as “terrorist” activity and so they were labeled as “enemy KIA,” or killed in action, a phrase used for decades to represent troops perishing on the battlefield.

The US spent more than a decade carrying out attacks, known as “signature strikes,” based on similar rough intelligence profiles as part of its drone campaign in the Middle East. But that campaign occurred during a period when US troops were routinely coming under enemy fire and were facing regular roadside bombings.

US forces operating in and