and in the summer of 2001 completed a countrywide eradication campaign that radically reduced the world supply of heroin. One expert called it “the most dramatic event in the history of illegal drug markets.”
Cite
- Harp, S. The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. (Viking, New York, NY, 2025).
Metadata
Title:: The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces Year:: 2025 Publisher:: Viking Location:: New York, NY ISBN:: 978-0-593-65509-2
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Abstract
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New Yorker Best Book of 2025A Forbes Best True Crime Book of 2025 “Probably the most gripping, memorable, eye-opening book I’ve read in months.” —David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times “Propulsive.” —The Washington Post “Engrossing… . Truly shocking.” —The New Republic “The Fort Bragg Cartel opens like a nonfiction thriller and never lets up. A page-turning investigation into the dark side of our forever wars.”—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and Directorate S A groundbreaking investigation into a string of unsolved murders at America’s premier special operations base, and what the crimes reveal about drug trafficking and impunity among elite soldiers in today’s militaryIn December 2020, a deer hunter discovered two dead bodies that had been riddled with bullets and dumped in a forested corner of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the dead men, Master Sergeant William “Billy” Lavigne, was a member of Delta Force, the most secretive “black ops” unit in the military. A deeply traumatized veteran of America’s classified assassination program, Lavigne had done more than a dozen deployments in his lengthy career, was addicted to crack cocaine, dealt drugs on base, and had committed a series of violent crimes before he was mysteriously killed. The other victim, Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas, was a quartermaster attached to the Special Forces who used his proximity to clandestine missions to steal guns and traffic drugs into the United States from abroad, and had written a blackmail letter threatening to expose criminality in the special operations task force in Afghanistan.As soon as Seth Harp, an Iraq war veteran and investigative reporter, begins looking into the double murder, he learns that there have been many more unexplained deaths at Fort Bragg recently, other murders connected to drug trafficking in elite units, and dozens of fatal overdoses. Drawing on declassified documents, trial transcripts, police records, and hundreds of interviews, Harp tells a scathing story of narco-trafficking in the Special Forces, drug conspiracies abetted by corrupt police, blatant military cover-ups, American complicity in the Afghan heroin trade, and the pernicious consequences of continuous war. .
Notes
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Annotations
- Tehran embassy went sideways on account of the improvisatory nature of the task force dispatched to Iran, with its hasty mix of personnel and lack of a coherent command structure. In place of this unsightly gaggle, the official story goes, JSOC took shape directly under the wing of the secretary of defense to provide the president with a vertically integrated, full-spectrum, counterterrorism strike force ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. This pat narrative, a sort of morality tale intended to illustrate the cherished principle of joint warfare, is not factually inaccurate. But neither does it exclude another, alternative manner of understanding the creation, at this juncture in American history, of a secret military within the military. (Location 543)
- The Intelligence Oversight Act, which mandates CIA reporting to a group of eight Republican and Democratic legislators, passed in June 1980. Six months later, JSOC came into existence. (Location 562)
- JSOC, now had operatives fully capable of carrying out the same skulduggery as civilian spies, but without the added baggage of congressional meddling. (Location 573)
- That one of the first official acts of the newly installed, U.S.-backed Afghan government was to legalize poppy planting went all but unremarked in the Western press. (Location 748)