The New York Times is accusing the Trump administration of prosecuting a war crime.

On Monday, no fewer than six reporters bylined a piece that revealed that the Trump administration’s air campaign against what the White House maintains were Venezuelan “drug boats” involved an aircraft “painted to look like a civilian plane.” The surreptitious bomber featured no identifying markers and carried its ordnance in the fuselage “rather than visibly under its wings.” The Pentagon’s objective was to disguise its military assets in civilian clothing.

“The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists,” the Times asserted. As the many writers who contributed to this report by committee attest, “The laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them.”

“That,” the dispatch alleged, “is a war crime called ‘perfidy.’”

Of course, subterfuge is not a violation of the laws of armed conflict, but disguising weapons platforms as civilian assets is — and should be. The United States has an interest in preserving the conventions that safeguard civilian transportation from attacks by hostile powers, and in avoiding cloak-and-dagger activities that render an enemy so paranoid that they might take errant shots at aircraft of unknown origin. The downing of civilian airliners — deliberately or otherwise — can have profoundly deleterious consequences for the international security environment.

But is that what the United States did in this instance? Not according to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.

Relying on the expertise of the judge advocates general cited in the Times report, however, reporter Charlie Savage took issue with Zeldin’s interpretation of the laws of armed conflict.

Savage has a point — albeit one that applies less to clandestine activities that skirt the conventions of lawful combat. Indeed, the Times report stresses at the outset that its interpretation is only valid because “President Trump ‘determined’ the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.” The administration’s position is that the cartels and their boats are agents of the Venezuelan regime, with which the U.S. is engaged in an undeclared war. Therefore, if the Pentagon’s “lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders,” then it is incumbent on the U.S. to observe the laws of armed conflict or be held to account for their violation.

This is another one of those thorny legal questions that the U.S. Congress could clarify if it were inclined to perform the role the Founders designed for it.