The Fort Bragg Cartel

Praise for The Fort Bragg Cartel

“Probably the most gripping, memorable, eye-opening book I’ve read in months is Seth Harp’s The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. It’s gripping because it’s a nonfiction narrative written with the energy of a pulpy thriller — full of guns, drugs, murders and coverups. It’s memorable because it documents an almost hard-to-believe scandal — two dead bodies found on a U.S. military base, one an elite Special Forces soldier and the other an Army quartermaster, and their connection to a large-scale weapons-smuggling and narcotics ring.”
—David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times

“A propulsive and deeply troubling account of military involvement in the drug trade, both domestically and abroad.”
—The Washington Post

“Astounding. . . . Nonfiction that reads like a novel.”
—Will Menaker, Chapo Trap House

“Propulsive. . . . Harp opens his story with the killing of one strung-out super-soldier at the hands of a Delta Force operator. Soon, Harp’s aperture widens to a field of death and drug dealing, and to a conspiracy that seems to link the poppy fields of wartime Afghanistan to the U.S. military’s most dangerous fighters.”
—The New Yorker

“Engrossing. . . . Harp chronicles some of the more troubling goings-on in this haunted region and the secretive, self-destructive warrior culture that has defined it for decades. . . . Truly shocking . . . Harp digs into the region’s thrumming undercut of plunder and violence, tracing a bloody trail that includes bullet-riddled bodies, sexual assault, a suspicious drowning, and a severed head. In July 2022, one man even fell from the sky.”
—Jasper Craven, The New Republic

“The most mind-blowing piece of investigative journalism I’ve read since Chaos.”
—Spike Carter, Air Mail

“The Fort Bragg Cartel focuses on the sleazy world of a couple of U.S. Army special operators who got heavily into dealing drugs and using them in vast quantities. . . . It seems that we all are doomed to continue finding new ways to pay the bills—physical, emotional, financial, moral—of wars that never seem to end.”
—Thomas E. Ricks, The New York Times Book Review

“[An] explosive investigation into drug dealing, murder, and suicide within America’s special operations forces groups, notably superelite Delta Force. . . . A book to be taken seriously by the country’s political class and military establishment.”
—Jeff Calder, The Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Unlike most of what passes for military affairs journalism, Harp’s book refuses to abide by the worshipful clichés or even the occasional ‘bad apple’ explanations. To the contrary, Harp paints a picture of Fort Bragg—and with it, the entire military-industrial-carceral complex—that, in keeping with his opening vignette, shows it to be not only pernicious or criminal but downright fratricidal. And this fratricide, far from being contained within the darkest corners of the warfare state, is actively reinforcing an ever more war-addled United States.”
—Lyle Jeremy Rubin, The Nation

“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

“The characters in his book are middle-class American men, often fathers and usually white, massacring families while high on drugs they bought with money they stole while defending a regime of pedophile warlords, who were themselves extorting a country in which about one-third of people knew how to read. . . . The most affecting parts of The Fort Bragg Cartel are the vignettes Harp collects showing the devastation soldiers inflict on their families.”
—Grayson Scott, The Baffler

“Throughout the early 2020s, there was a wave of disturbing crimes related to the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Harp demonstrates that government officials turned a blind eye as JSOC operators stole, killed, raped, and smuggled, shielding them from both military and civilian justice. . . . The wild story of [Freddie Wayne] Huff’s rise and fall by itself makes the book worth reading. . . . What all the characters involved in this bizarre saga had in common was a total lack of accountability. As long as America treats JSOC as a warrior caste above the law, some of these warriors will abuse their privileges.”
—Matthew Petti, Reason

“A searing and absolutely essential exposé about the toll that decades of war has taken on our soldiers, our military, and our government. Harp has produced a stunning, masterful work of reporting that every American should read. Riveting and unforgettable.”
—Christopher Leonard, New York Times bestselling author of Kochland and The Lords of Easy Money

“By turns informative, explosive, and provocative, The Fort Bragg Cartel reveals in gritty detail how drugs have corrupted the U.S. Army’s most elite units from the inside out.”
—Sean Naylor, New York Times bestselling author of Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command

“A deeply reported, terrifyingly vivid plunge into the drug-fueled underbelly of life in the U.S. military’s elite special forces. The psychic cost of killing in the name of America haunts every page. This is an anti-war book for our time.”
—Jeff Goodell, New York Times bestselling author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

“With The Fort Bragg Cartel, Seth Harp offers a chilling glimpse inside the rotten core of American empire. This book lays bare the secretive cult of U.S. special forces and follows a trail of murder, drug-smuggling, and corruption, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the pine forests of North Carolina. The Fort Bragg Cartel is at once a meticulous investigation of rampant criminality and impunity within Delta Force, a tragic study of young people chewed up and spat out, and a dire warning of the devastation wrought at home and abroad by forever war.”
—Noah Hurowitz, author of El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord

“A fantastic book, the best I have seen on the global war on terrorism and the wreckage it left behind. The depth of Harp’s reporting is awesome.”
—Andrew Cockburn, author of The Spoils of War: Profit, Power, and the American War Machine

“A page-turning true crime story that tracks the downward spiral of drug-addled lunatics trained by an immoral government to kill innocent people for political reasons. The implications of this book are more important than ever as the U.S. moves towards fascism in the age of Trump.”
—Christopher Ketcham, author of This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West

“A blistering exposé of criminality within the U.S. Army’s Special Forces. . . . Harp’s investigative rigor and visceral storytelling make this a disturbing must-read for anyone seeking to understand the full cost of America’s overseas conflicts.”
—Publishers Weekly

“In 2020, two bodies were found near Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Harp’s chronicle of a group of soldiers, all of whom were damaged by their experiences in the Middle East, is a tale of drugs and murder and illustrates how such emotional damage can lead to tragic consequences. Harp, an Iraq War veteran and investigative reporter, also shows how colleagues seeking to protect their ‘brothers in arms’ only made matters worse.”
—Booklist

“An unsettling read, the book will nevertheless enlighten anyone concerned about U.S. foreign policy and the role of the military in it. A scathing exposé of drug trafficking, homicide, and suicide in the U.S. military.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[Harp] knows the law and the military and brings a muckraker’s sensibility to his subject. His revelations keep coming, page after page.”
—The Shepherd Express