The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces

by Seth Harp

A groundbreaking investigation into a string of unsolved murders at America’s largest military base, and what the crimes reveal about drug-trafficking and impunity among elite special operations soldiers

Two dead bodies were discovered in a forested area of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2020. One, William “Billy” Lavigne, was a member of Delta Force, the most secretive “black ops” unit in the military. A long-serving veteran of America’s classified assassination program, Lavigne had done more than a dozen deployments, was addicted to crack cocaine, dealt drugs on base, and had committed a series of violent crimes before he was mysteriously killed. The other, Timothy Dumas, was a supply officer 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, all with some apparent connection to drug-trafficking, as well as dozens of fatal overdoses. Drawing on 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, True Crime, Crime, Politics, Audiobook, Military Fiction

357 pages, Hardcover

First published August 12, 2025

Reviews

[Matthew Petti · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most jaw-dropping pieces of investigative journalism I have ever read. Review forthcoming in Reason Magazine.

[Kyle Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In response to the strange 1 star review that immediately showed up about this brand-new book (Rachel, who blocked comments on her review):

These are weird conclusions that are being drawn and it makes me feel like you didn’t actually read it? Or misunderstood it?

If you don’t believe that proxy wars exist and that our military/ intelligence agencies have a huge influence in other parts of the world (like Ukraine) you can look them up yourself! The CIA has released a lot of their past crimes to their database due to the Freedom of Information Act.

Giving this book a very lazy one star review (with nonsensical statements about it) before it’s even released, and with just enough likes to put it at the top rly feels like weird opposition propaganda from either the several ops groups listed in this book trying to deaden the impact or from some far-right bot farm. Nothing stated in this book was unbelievable and had sources and first-hand accounts for everything.

[Hammerhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachel comment locked "review" above only actual criticism toward the content of the book is that a victim of a murder in the very first case of book is potrayed in a good light by his own family.
The rest are accusations of the author being a conspiracy theorist without any reference to the actual content of the book. Regardless of the author alleged opinions, this book deal with documented incidents which can be verify by court record, police report and newspaper.
If you are interested, you can find review of this book by the Washington Post and the New York Times which certainly have no sympathy with these opinions.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone that lived in Fayetteville for the better part of 18 years this book is very important to me. Anyone who has lived there long enough can tell you how sinister things are and how wrong things feel. Thank you Seth for shining some light on the situation here.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

received an ARC from netgalley, became suspicious of the author when he spent pages telling me about a man doing drugs and drinking through his daughter's 6th birthday trip to disneyworld then tried to convince me that the man was a doting father. more suspicions arose while reading and i DNF when the author stated point blank that covid-19 escaped from a us-funded biolab in china. it's a shame bc he's an engaging writer.

update: i finished the book because i couldn't look away, and in the course of the rest of it the author tries to convince you that america started the war in ukraine, that yanukovych was a democratically elected ruler, that assad was a good guy and preferable to any other government, and that the war in ukraine is over and america lost. i can't get over these politics, which seem to be coming from another reality.

UPDATE: your weird comments will not change my opinion of this book, and i'm not a bot or a military plant. i just didn't like this book. go outside.

[viy]

it's well written, engaging, read the whole thing in a day. Shame he couldn't really develop certain lines further, or stick certain concrete conclusions, but we'll wait for the american glasnost.

[danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tore through this book, which almost makes me a little suspicious of it as a work of nonfiction/journalism - as the chapo guys said in their interview w the author (yes its true I still listen sometimes), it reads like a novel in some of the best ways. And to lead with a minor quibble, I do think there are ways in which this book gets repetitive on certain themes/facts and can feel a little tooo assertion-heavy (I noticed this most when it came to stating lab-leak theory as accepted fact, which makes me feel it was also present elsewhere in ways I was just more inclined to reflexively accept), and I'd be curious to hear how other journalists (not the propagandist type, but maybe like a Ryan Grim or Jeremy Scahill) would rate the quality of research, sourcing, and writing.

So yes, I think I'm definitely the kind of anti-imperialist (read: american hating) reader that this book is for, which doesn't mean that most of the things contained in it aren't verifiably true. The book covers a LOT of ground, and I sometimes worried it was maybe over-inclusive with examples, recounting such a large number of army/JSOC overdoses and murders that it took away from the impact of the stories it slowed down to tell in depth - the Lavigne/Dumas murders, but also the chilling Roman-Martinez shrooms-trip turned decapitation story.

All of that aside, I think the book is an incredible - and incredibly gripping - narration of the so-called 'global war on terror' and the rise of special forces/operations as both a concrete, widespread technique of conducting imperial warfare and also an almost libidinal part of the (white) american male id.

One of the things I was thinking about by the end of the book was how, per Foucault, the barracks resemble the prison, with notable inversions when it comes to power. But both institutions emerge as drug-riddled, corrupt, shielded-from-accountability laboratories for engineering misery and despair. Not to mention places that concentrate and disappear social iniquities and afflictions. So many of the stories and themes could have been taken out of accounts I've heard personally or read about in the context of prison, down to the objectively-heartbreaking phenomenon of families in search of answers and utterly - and without recourse - stonewalled by heartless bureaucracies. And of course, the whole "bases are in the south in part because of the civil rights movement" and focus on geographical context surrounding Fort Bragg also made me sort of crave a Ruth Gilmore-style geographical analysis of how bases operate. I'm sure it's out there, to be fair, I would just be interested in finding it.

As a total side note, this is a really good companion piece to Blowback, and in particular the season about Afghanistan.

Would really recommend to anyone looking for a gripping, very disturbing narration of (some of) the excesses and indignities of the US military.

[Daniel Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

an important book and a story that needs to be told. however, the author can't keep his politics out of his writing. had he simply told the story and let the facts speak for themselves the book would have been more powerful.

[Bonnie_Rae]

This is heavy, dark reading that covers the dark, awful side of the special forces/operations culture of corruption, coverups, and excess. I had to re-read several passages multiple times to absorb what I was reading. The informants - parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, witnesses - were incredibly brave and honest with their recollections and opinions. What the children saw and suffered - oftentimes at the direct actions of their fathers - is something no child should ever endure. This book covers murders, domestic violence, sexual assault, violent attacks, suicides, substance abuse, trafficking, and warfare.

Seth Harp has a definite bias in his writing, which I largely share. He never misses an opportunity to dunk on the New York Times for their credulous and lazy reporting (one reporter didn't check their work and mixed up Fort Hood and Fort Bragg). He comes right out and says the COVID-19 virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China - which I do not believe. He even claims a military dog developed a taste for human brains and gore, which I don't believe. It feels akin to real life stories about starving or sick feral animals eating the flesh of dead people or carrion.

He also throws in several ten dollar words for good measure, a habit from writers that annoys me. Having to stop, look up the word, and then get back into the flow of reading is something I hate doing.

However, I think this is a necessary book akin to Matthew Cole's Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six, David Phillips's Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs, and Michael Hastings's The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan. This is a book that will stick with you for a very long time, so before you go in I feel you should know the violence and destruction practically encouraged and nurtured by the self-serving, self-destructive USASOC will stick with you.

[Cheryl R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is both deeply disturbing and totally plausible. It demonstrates the consequences of America’s forever wars. One of the prime causes of PTSD is moral injury, where the person essentially can’t live with what they have seen or done. Perhaps the ambivalent treatment of Vietnam veterans might not be the worst thing we’ve ever done to veterans. The worst treatment may be how we have ignored what we’ve asked the GWOT veterans to do, and then ignored the invisible wounds those acts have created. When considering whether they are the perpetrators or the victims themselves, the answer is perhaps “it’s complicated”.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest, I‘m having a hard time rating this, and here‘s why:
It‘s a fascinating investigation that makes astonishing, yet in principle believable, claims, and I was pretty rapt the entire time.

Here‘s the problem: The author also repeats some things that are basically conspiracy myths as facts, and since I know those are not true — or at the very least presented very disingenuously, presumably to fit with the authors political views — I‘m not so sure about how much to trust the rest, in particular the claims about covert operations of the US military abroad.

To be clear, nobody is apolitical, and I am not somebody to complain about the author giving a political view — however, here it seems like the author doesn‘t want to admit that‘s what he‘s doing, and instead presents things as fact that are at best a disingenuous description of the circumstances, and that I very much disagree with. I‘m also not calling the author MAGA — it doesn‘t seem like he is, but I think he is letting his anti-imperialist views (which I share) blind him to certain realities.

Examples:
- The author presents the idea that the COVID virus “escaped from a US-funded lab” as a fact — so here it’s not just that there is no scientific evidence that this is true; it’s really a conspiracy myth at this point, even though certain US security agencies (aren’t we being critical of those?) have endorsed it. Furthermore, calling the lab “US-funded” is clearly meant to paint this lab in a sinister light that in no way corresponds to reality.
- The Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine is called a “US-funded coup against a democratically elected president”, which is absolutely not what happened and makes a mockery of Ukrainian’s struggle for democracy and independence from Russia.
- The same is true for the author’s implication that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the US’ fault and “a US proxy war” — Ukrainians would in large parts not agree with this. They are fighting for the continued existence of their state, that Putin has multiple times said he wants to destroy. Why is the author letting his hatred of the US military make him a Putin stooge? Shameful.
- Other conflict journalists have literally talked to Russian anti-government saboteurs who have conducted some of the operations that are being attributed to US special forces in this book with no evidence. Weak.

So yeah, these things make me doubtful how reliable the narrative is when it’s talking about what happened in Tajikistan or Afghanistan, sorry, even though that would align with my political views.

[Nathan Mannes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one went crazy thank you TrueAnon

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the research is very interesting, particularly the material on Freddie Huff and the trafficking of drugs through the Fayetteville area. However, much of the book reads as though the author has an axe to grind against USASOC—and makes little effort to conceal it. The pointed language and frequent conjecture throughout undermine confidence in the author’s authority on the subject. The narrative often relies on unreliable sources who merely “knew someone who said something about someone else.”

For readers without prior knowledge of Army Special Operations, it would be easy to fall into the trap Harp sets—that the tip of the American spear is unwieldy and unreliable. This simply isn’t true. The final quarter of the book drifts into unrelated deaths in Fayetteville and generally comes across as unorganized.

[Steven]

An absolutely bonkers account of the shadowy activities of the US’s deeply corrupt and cruel special operations forces. Harp details how elite military units, Delta Force in particular, operate almost completely outside the law, with little oversight from civilians or other parts of the military, and have developed into what is essentially an organized crime operation through the desensitization caused by fighting in the country’s brutal wars throughout the world.

As other reviewers have pointed out, the top review on here bases its criticisms on things not at all relevant to the books main content. Furthermore, many of those criticisms are either mischaracterizations/oversimplifications or outright lies (Harp clearly refers to Assad’s regime as “corrupt and brutal,” Assad is by no means portrayed as a “good guy”). Harp’s reporting is solid throughout and whenever he’s basing an assumption on limited evidence he is forthright in detailing his sources and explaining his reasoning.

There are a few things you could quibble with about the book, but these are mostly unavoidable or minor issues. The endnotes are way too dense at some points and way too sparse making it unclear where exactly Harp is getting his information. But again, with the main content of his book it’s always pretty clear what he’s basing his narrative on. The issues are mostly with background information; his attempt to weave in a brief, yet grand history of the war on terror is a bit sketchy. It’s hard to fault him to much for this though because it’s both necessary to include some general historical context so the reader can understand the development of Delta Force and also beyond the scope of the book to do a comprehensive history of the GWOT. Some of the background sections of the book make the otherwise propulsive narrative lag a bit. All these problems are ones it would have been hard for Harp to avoid completely. Overall, it’s an admirable piece of investigative journalism and a book you won’t want to put down.

[cheer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four years after the release of his first Rolling Stone article about a drug-related double murder at Fort Bragg, Seth Harp delivers a full-length account of corruption, drug-trafficking, and gruesome murder at the base that is both thrilling and harrowing.

Harp starts by detailing a murder case involving a few specific Special Forces soldiers at Fort Bragg, then zooms out to discuss the history of American special operations forces in order to contextualize the murders in the grand scheme of American foreign policy and military history, then zooms back in again. The result is a "true crime" narrative where the true perpetrator is the American Empire, whose tentacles grab hold of and destroy everything they can.

Curious why the CIA and FBI seem like they aren't what they used to be? That's because those guys got kinda owned by the Church Committee back in the '70s, which resulted in them being subject to the barest minimum of a horrible thing called "congressional oversight". A couple years later, Delta Force, then JSOC and a bunch of other special forces organizations are founded; these guys take orders directly from their commanding officers and the President, so the CIA and FBI just work through military special forces to conduct their illegal wars now.

Soldiers trained to conduct covert ops overseas, which consist largely of drug trafficking and indiscriminate slaughter, bring their skills home once the Empire has used them up overseas. You'll never guess what they do when they get back to the States!

The writing is engaging and it's hard to put down. Also, this book is a big one for acronymheads; if you want to know the difference between USSOCOM, JSOC, USASOC, and a lot of other evil military organizations, I can't recommend it enough.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a time where actual good truth-to-power journalism is so rare, this is a book very much worth your time.

An investigation into a murder is followed by the culprit becoming a victim in a double murder, exposing a culture of criminality in a shadow world of elite special forces operators and a generally low morale and war-weary army. Many of the details are harrowing, some are tragicomic, all paint a disturbing picture of the gruesome legacy just here on the domestic front of the global War on Terror.

As an aside, I have had a very lengthy piece about 'the war coming home' focused on similar themes, especially about how empires and soldiers bring their fronts back home with them and it is overlooked when the wars are small and ignored in the popular consciousness, which is in editorial limbo with someone else for quite some time now, long before I knew about this book. So if that never sees the light of day I am glad that this much longer and more primary sourced version is out there.

One thing I think risks being overlooked when people read this and focus on all the lurid murders is just how important all of the Afghanistan War was to the opioid epidemic, how the government lied to cover for the war's role in the flood of drugs by stating they all came from Mexico (still something many people believe today) while often turning a blind eye to the problem of soldiers becoming international drug smugglers.

Additionally, there is one highly ranked 1 star review on this site that I suggest you ignore if you are curious. I am a foreign policy analyst by trade and that particular review is nothing but someone who is extremely credulous with their media consumption. The whole rotten edifice of unnecessary interventionism is kept on public opinion life support through manufactured consent through media narratives, after all.

[Keegan Schuchart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Non-fiction that reads like cinema. Shocking revelations of the realities of special forces, at home and abroad, and the sheer extent the powers that be go to keep them in the shadows. Never have I been a huge proponent of the armed forces, but this book really soured my already spoiling view. Back 1/3 becomes a little disjointed, but that honestly reflects the scant publicly available information obviated by military investigative body’s. Tremendous feet of investigative journalism. Weird sentence about Covid I don’t love, but over all great book if you like true crime, military history, or conspiracy adjacent stuff.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the fringes of my usual reading but picked this up after listening to an interesting interview on a lawfare podcast. Listened to the audiobook on a roadtrip (fairly boring narrator).

The true crime parts and the focus on the special forces units were the most interesting parts. The broader disquisitions on the GWOT felt tired. My biggest issue was wondering about sourcing a lot of the time. And I’m just not sure what’s normal to include/not include about that in a book of this nature. But there were parts pinging my doubt throughout.

Then, in introducing COVID era, Harp simply states as fact in passing: “On March 4th, North Carolina reported its first case of COVID-19, a highly contagious respiratory disease that escaped from a US-funded bio lab in Wuhan, China.” Record scratch. Say what now? If that can be stated as if proven fact with no discussion or sourcing, then how much confidence can I have in anything Harp states? Especially where he isn’t explicit about the source of information. (We also get some weird bits about the cause of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, etc.) Hard to appreciate the interesting parts of this book when feeling more and more suspect of the reporting as I went.

I almost would’ve preferred this as a true crime podcast, because then at least I would’ve heard many of the people in their own voices to get a better sense of them and we probably would’ve hewn closer to that story. Also, I probably wouldn’t have paid for a podcast.

[Ainsley Kerr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is shockingly good. I read it in like 3 days. I couldn't put it down. I walks this perfect line between being a pulping gripping narrative which branches off into a lot of fascinating areas: how military power has been concentrated under the US executive, the rise of special ops following the Church commission and inquiry into the CIA, the global drug trade, the impunity of the intruments of the US state.

Even though Harp doesn't really feature in the bookhow much you get out of the it is going to come down to how credible you find him. I can be a pretty harsh sceptic and have hated a lot of classic non-fiction for this reason but the books sourcing is kind of incredible and despite the more shocking and wild aspects Harp is very careful to outline where he has evidence for claims and where they are just other people's accusations. And like, some of the claims in this book are wild but a lot of the counter-claims proposed by the US military or Justice department also strain credulity to the extreme.

I was a bit worried going into this book that it was going to be too true crimey for me- like just needlessly depressing and scary. Or worse that it was going to be about how the real victims of American Imperialism are US soldiers with PTSD but was actually pleasently surprised that it was actually a pretty incisive critique of power and the moral bankrupcy of the US empire at large. Highly recommend.

[Amadeo Torrero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learning about the origins of the SF community and how it has had internal flaws with drugs and violence since its inception was interesting and not entirely too surprising. At times some of the views seemed to be conspiracy theories but overall some pretty believable stuff.

Living in the area it’s not surprising to hear about these activities happening on base but it is a little shocking to hear how much gets swept under the rug (allegedly).

3.5 stars rounded down.

[Andrea Jo B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me a little longer to read because there is a lot to take in and unpack in each chapter. I'm thankful for this book and the awareness I hope it spreads that Fort Bragg is not normal. Unsolved deaths and disappearances of service members are not normal, especially at the scale it happens here. Many people chalk this up to sensationalism and such, but that's not this book. Highly recommend reading it and researching alongside. I will read this book again (which I rarely ever read a book more than once)

[Ruthie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional reporting. Seth Harp will either be the next Krakauer or the next Gary Webb.

[William Moriarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely insane true story. The U.S. is so fucked.

[Breann Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

i recommend all aspiring drug dealers join the army today for free protection from legal consequences. let's help them hit their recruiting targets :)

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

thanks to seth harp i can now replace cia conspiracy theories as my personality with jsoc conspiracy theories

[Misty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to go back and reread this book with a notepad, an encyclopedia, and an atlas. Densely packed with military history, foreign policy, and criminal intrigue, this book sparks curiosity and a touch of horror regarding the toxic culture of military special forces operators. A double murder sets the framework for the book, but Harp has so much more to offer than a simple true crime tale. I will definitely purchase this one for our library.

[Nathan Steinmetz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal. Shocking. Clearheaded.

[Tom Buchanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

God I swear i will never take kratom, pre-workout, or Zyn again. I have been scared straight. I would still like to try steroids, though.

[Christopher Mclaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fort Bragg Cartel will hook you with the first two chapters. They tell the story of Delta Force operator Billy Levine and his best friend Green Beret Mark Leshikar. I don’t want to spoil anything for readers, so I’ll just say read the damn book. The book is well researched, Seth Harp gets some things wrong, but he gets a lot more right, and as a voracious reader believe me all nonfiction gets things wrong. 3rd Group, Green Berets, JSOC, Delta Force, these are incredibly complex networks operating out of Fort Bragg. Operators under JSOC are covert, and they report directly to the Executive with little to no Congressional oversight.

Because everything they do for the military is covert it is unacceptable for operators in JSOC to be under oath in a court of law or to be incarcerated. This is less true for Tier 2 operators like Green Berets, but the level of impunity they receive in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the home of Fort Bragg, is still astonishing. Murder, rape, drug trafficking, all of these felonies can be made to go away. Victims are promised by Fort Bragg CID that if the investigations are transferred to them from civilian court they’ll receive the justice they deserve. They don’t. Local, county and state police departments, attorneys and judges are complicit.

This is an important book. SOCOM and JSOC don’t want operators acting as criminal organizations. Operators don’t want that either. Yet they create the conditions that enable it and shield operators from consequences. 24 years of the GWOT, Global War on Terror, has created the situation we’re in. The way the United States wages war has changed. War is now carried out by Special Forces covertly under the cover of night. “Night Raids” was most Americans’ first introduction to this kind of war. The constant procurement of intelligence provides a never ending list for targeted killings. Never ending nights of assassinations. No one but a psychopath could come out of that meat grinder without serious damage, and JSOC attempts to screen out psychopaths for obvious reasons.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone when these operators use the skills the military has taught them to commit crimes. Particularly the Tier 1 operators in Delta Force. PTSD does not begin to capture what their job does to them mentally. JSOC gives them amphetamines and dextroamphetamines to stay awake and focus, hypnotics to sleep, opiates to overcome pain, and steroids to increase endurance and heal faster. At home they escalate to cocaine, methamphetamines, and stronger opiates. Some begin dealing to support their expensive drug habit. None of it is surprising. All of it needs to change.

[Will Strickland · Rating 5 out of 5]

IF THERE WAS A MILITARY ACCOLADE FOR WRITING GOOD ASS BOOKS ABOUT THE MILITARY, THIS BOOK WOULD GET IT 🎖️🎖️🎖️🎖️🎖️🎖️🎖️

4.75/5, no spoilers! This book is INCREDIBLE, I had never realized that such a big part of why NC’s very own Fayetteville is nicknamed Fayettenam was Fort Bragg and the military personnel that live/work there. Learning about the decades-long mysterious history of criminal doings at Fort Bragg or by Fort Bragg-associated people was shocking.

This book doesn’t just give a detailed look into Bragg’s criminal underbelly but also goes into great depth to paint a picture of how the war crimes perpetrated by America in other countries as a result of post-9/11 foreign policy can be directly tied back to so much of the concerning activity going on stateside.

The ONLY slight I have towards this book - which might be small in the grand scheme of the story being told but still didn’t sit right - was author Seth Harp’s repeated identification of any non-white person’s race. I don’t recall ever being introduced to “Sergeant John Smith, a white man” but I was repeatedly introduced to “Sergeant Jack Smith, a black man.” There was also a reference to a “dreadlocked” black man from Atlanta???? Race descriptors can be important when someone’s race influences the story being told such as racism in a criminal trial or prejudice within the army ranks, but that’s never really a topic of discussion so I don’t personally see why that was necessary. The implication is that the reader should assume every subject of the story is white unless otherwise specified which is just kinda distasteful. I don’t know, I hope I’m explaining this in a way that makes sense!

REGARDLESS…the facts being covered in this book are very important for Americans (especially of the taxpaying variety) to be aware of. The blind eye turned towards military personnel when they commit crimes from petty theft to first degree murder makes me worry about the types of horrible disgusting things our soldiers are permitted to do overseas in the name of the United States of America. I strongly recommend everyone read this book!