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Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces

By John Ketwig (reviewer)

The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
by Seth Harp
Viking, 2025

Right up front, I admit that I was forced into the army against my will back in 1966, and I believe my military experiences fucked up my life. I have a very low regard for the American military overall, and especially the Army.

The Fort Bragg Cartel exposes a pattern of secrecy and criminality throughout the US Special Forces, especially the elite Delta Force, and dares to suggest that our decades-long global war on terrorism has had a terrible psychological effect upon our young soldiers. They traffic in drugs, smuggling heroin on military flights from the fertile fields in Afghanistan. That trade has fueled a pervasive culture of corruption and greed that has tainted the entire Fayetteville, North Carolina, community and Special Forces and Delta Force operations worldwide. Fort Bragg is home to the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, where Special Operations and Delta Force warriors are trained to be covert and deadly.

In the 1980s, a covert conflict known as Operation Cyclone, waged by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, sought to drive out Russian occupiers, intending to install a communist regime in Afghanistan. The local anti-communist resistance fighters, known as the mujahideen, were armed and funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia, and "trained" by covert American Special Forces undercover troops. One Saudi prince, known as Bandar Bush for his close ties to the Bush family, was a Washington power broker who supplied hundreds of millions of dollars to the CIA and Operation Cyclone. Another, Osama bin Laden, contributed to the building of roads in remote areas that would facilitate weapons deliveries. During this period, radical Islamists were organized to wage war on the godless Soviets, and these warriors became al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

When the Russians left Afghanistan in 1989, the country suffered under the rule of a series of competing warlords. Ultimately, the mujahideen took control and turned Afghanistan into a giant plantation for the cultivation of the opium poppy plant. The narco-lords competed for the establishment of trafficking routes, and the Afghan people were forced to grow poppies instead of food crops. Children, especially young boys, were kidnapped and turned into sex slaves. When the Taliban took control in 1994, they forbade poppy cultivation and boy play. In 2001, they completed a country-wide eradication campaign that radically reduced the world supply of heroin.

Since the Americans invaded, Afghanistan's heroin production has been resurrected to a level nine times what it was before the American intervention! All of this was covert, and the Americans had to rely upon drug traffickers, smugglers, and flamboyant pedophiles to fight the Taliban. Americans have introduced farming techniques and encouraged the establishment of worldwide trade practices to create the modern heroin industry, and many have shared in the wealth that has resulted. Rotating in and out of deployments, Special Forces and Delta Force troops returned to Fort Bragg addicted to both drugs and cruelty. In the summer of 2002, within six short weeks, four army wives were murdered by their husbands. Fayetteville became known as Fatalville, Fatalburg, and Fayette Nam. During that period, the community experienced increased levels of poverty, inequality, homelessness, racism, pollution, prostitution, gender violence, and widespread drug use. Shipments of heroin to America became common, if not usual, on the army's flights home. Enlisted men and NCOs were the main traffickers. Still, the officers and government or CIA officials shared in the activity while maintaining a fraudulent image that they were curtailing Afghanistan's drug production. Berets are not the only things that were green in Afghanistan!

The author, an Iraq war veteran and New York Times bestselling author, undertook this investigation after learning about two 2020 murders. The bullet-riddled bodies of Master Sergeant William "Billy" Lavigne and Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas were discovered in a forested area of Fort Bragg. Lavigne was a member of Delta Force, perhaps the most secretive black-ops unit in America's military, and Dumas was attached to the Special Forces. Lavigne had experienced more than a dozen deployments, was addicted to crack cocaine, dealt drugs to Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, had an extensive record of violent crimes, and operated in the Delta Force's secret assassination program. Dumas used his proximity to the clandestine operations to steal weapons and traffic drugs into the US. He had written a blackmail letter threatening to expose the widespread criminal operations of the special operations teams operating in Afghanistan.

The author, Seth Harp, soon discovered that there had been additional murders and overdose deaths at Fort Bragg, all related to the drug trafficking by Special Forces. Fayetteville is financially dependent upon Fort Bragg, and Harp uncovered a broad pattern of cover-ups and looking the other way throughout the military, police, and court systems in Fayetteville. There were at least twenty-four murders involving Fort Bragg soldiers between 2020 and 2024. Official disinformation was fed to the press by anonymous Special Operations Command officials.

Seth Harp's excellent book presents detailed descriptions of many more crimes and acts of terrorism by Special Forces soldiers and veterans. These criminal acts are often difficult for law enforcement to solve because "tough guy" Special Ops soldiers often intimidate their peers, families, and the survivors of their brutality. Many of the people Harp interviewed suggest that the combination of forever wars, multiple deployments, and the military's cruel, corrupt environment is responsible for converting impressionable young soldiers into addicts and murderers. "Be all you can be," indeed! The Fort Bragg Cartel is one hell of a book, thought-provoking and troubling. It is highly recommended.

John Ketwig is a lifetime member of VVAW, and the author of ? and a hard rain fell: A G.I.'s True Story of the War in Vietnam and Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter.