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

“She looked up and saw Billy pointing the gun at her daddy. And she looked at her daddy and it was like he was dancing.”

Melanie Leshikar witnesses her father’s death, showing how cycles of violence echo across generations. Harp writes from Melanie’s naive perspective, drawing pathos from the juxtaposition between the pleasant image of “dancing” and the violent reality. This incident illustrates the human toll of Cycles of Trauma and Addiction in the Military.

“This pat narrative, a sort of morality tale intended to illustrate the cherished principle of joint warfare, is not factually inaccurate.”

Harp notes that the founding myth of JSOC is “not factually inaccurate,” using ironic understatement to suggest that even if it accords with the facts, this “pat narrative” is misleading in more important ways. Over the course of the book, Harp demonstrates why this founding myth is pointedly ironic, since the institution seems to have few principles other than its own self-preservation.

“During the very same week that Billy Lavigne enlisted, in February 2001, American warplanes were bombing radar stations across Iraq in preparation for a wider war that many people in government and media devoutly hoped and prayed would soon come about, but the strikes garnered little attention in the press.”

Lavigne is a useful narrative device for Harp because of his continuous proximity to the evolving War on Terror. Much like the War on Terror, Harp points out, Lavigne’s career did not begin on September 11, 2001, yet the time before the terrorist attack on that day is largely forgotten. If incidents such as the bombing of Iraq or the murder of Mark Leshikar can be kept out of the press, Harp implies, they may as well not have happened.

“‘Because of the continuous operations,’ he said, ‘our own medical personnel became drug dealers.’”

The addiction to drugs which fueled much of the violence in the book does not begin in America. Rather, many of the Delta Force operators are deliberately given drugs by the military to make them as effective as possible. This reliance on drugs to maintain “op tempo” (67) becomes a process of self-medication when these men return to America and must adjust to regular society. In an example of Blowback as a Consequence of Military Interventionism, the issues created on the military frontier bounce back to the society in unexpected ways.

“Violent deaths in Afghanistan rose sharply across the board after McChrystal took charge. To conceal the rising death toll, he directed unit commanders to stop reporting body counts publicly.”

McChrystal’s response to the increase in violent deaths is indicative of the military’s attitude to the incidents at Fort Bragg. Rather than deal with the root cause of the issue, they cover up the problem through managed publicity. Just as this did nothing to pacify the people of Afghanistan, it is ineffective in bringing Fort Bragg into line.

“In his second term in office, President Obama completely abandoned any remaining effort to counter narcotics in Afghanistan, and it became implicit U.S. policy to allow poppy to flourish unimpeded.”

The rampant drug use on Fort Bragg is mirrored by the United States’s actions in Afghanistan, where soldiers, the military, and American politicians helped to cultivate a massive increase in the production of heroin. In the United States, the returning soldiers became addicted to many of the same narcotics that their invasion had allowed to proliferate. The consequences of the War on Terror blow back onto American society.

“A good number of those who stayed in the Army for the second decade of the GWOT were animated by baser character traits, including a sheer love of fighting, addiction to the gunslinging lifestyle, and a mercenary attitude toward killing. Theft of government funds, seen as a victimless crime, became commonplace.”

The attacks of September 11 lead many people to sign up to the military for principled reasons. As the Global War on Terror drags into a second decade, however, Harp suggests that those principles erode and vanish, so that the people left fighting the war have become cynical and disillusioned with anything other than self-interest and violence. When the war ends, these same people bring their disillusionment and violence back to Fort Bragg in an example of Blowback as a Consequence of Military Interventionism.

“But the war machine, fueled by the defense industry’s thirst for hyperprofits, wins even when it loses.”

Harp alludes to the military industrial complex—a phrase coined by former president Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to describe the vicious cycle in which the US military and private defense contractors feel each other’s perpetual growth. As the military engages in actions around the world, with mixed success, the “hyperprofits” of the defense industry are the one constant. Such vested financial interest in the continuation of the so-called forever war, Harp implies, is largely responsible for the proliferation of American military action around the world.

“You might even see a few ornery old sergeants major puffing on cigars at their desks, as little concerned about Executive Order 13058 as they are the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980.”

Harp draws attention to the flagrant ignoring of federal laws against smoking on military bases as an example of the way in which the Fort Bragg personnel disregard rules. Such laws, the people of Fort Bragg believe, are for other people. That they would ignore the smoking ban, Harp implies, becomes an indication of the ease with which they ignore any sort of oversight or accountability, even when required by law.

“But I was this lowly lieutenant up against Delta Force and USASOC and JSOC, and all that that entails. Only afterwards did I realize I didn’t stand a chance.”

Looking back on her case, Scanlon has developed a cynical attitude toward the institutions of the military. Rather than fighting for American principles and morals, she comes to realize, the institution is only interested in protecting itself. As justified as she may have been, she could not win a case in which the entire might of the American military was against her.

“The letter is addressed ‘Dear Ma’am,’ and in places refers to ‘William’ as ‘your husband.’ But Judy was deeply touched.”

The letter from Major Davidson to Judy Lavigne bears the hallmarks of a hastily filled in form letter, but it still has meaning for her. She treasures the letter because, having seen how which the war has changed her son, it allows her to believe that his change is a sacrifice well made. She can believe—even if it is not true—that she has lost the son she once knew for a good cause.

“On March 16, 2014, Trooper Huff pulled over an inebriated insurance executive from Asheville who—he later learned—was a donor to North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory.”

Freddie Huff’s descent into criminality begins with an undeniable display of corruption. Even though he has raised a huge amount of money for his department through his ability to correctly identify drug traffickers, his refusal to allow a political donor to skip out on a (rightful) charge leads to him being fired. Huff is fired for being too honest in his job. Since he has been shown that the system has no place for morality or conviction, he does not feel bad about turning his talents to a criminal end.

“In late 2019, Lavigne fell into a romantic relationship with an exotic dancer named Amanda Marie Tostado, a thirty-two-year-old white woman who went by the stage name Amanda Panda.”

As Lavigne’s character becomes increasingly corroded by his extended time in the military, his parents find themselves less able to justify his decisions. They do not like the people he surrounds himself with, creating a juxtaposition between the exotic dancer Amanda Panda and Lavigne’s first wife. As he begins to lose his parents’ support, his agency over his life and his addictions seems to falter. He is becoming increasingly unmoored.

“The first months of the COVID-19 pandemic were a time of record profitability for Freddie Wayne Huff and Timothy Dumas.”

The drug trade feeds on misery and death, the book suggests. Not only is it perpetrated by men who are violent and amoral, but business actively booms during a global pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic leads to soaring profits for drug dealers, at the expense of those who are suffering from the disease or the lockdowns. This juxtaposition between pandemic and profits presents the drug trade as inherently immoral.

“Lavigne was dead, Speer’s colleagues told him. His bullet-riddled body had been found in the back of his own truck in the woods near McArthur Lake.”

The book presents Billy Lavigne as an embodiment of many of the issues endemic to Fort Bragg. Though he lacks rank or power, he is representative of widespread cultural problems within the base. Despite having played such a significant role in the book, his murder is anticlimactic. Lavigne is killed away from the narrative focus, his body is dumped unceremoniously, then folded into a larger mystery which the government seeks to cover up. In death, Lavigne is swallowed up by the same duplicitous government forces that altered his life. The institution responsible for so much of his trauma washes its hands of him as an inconvenience, a move the book mirrors by shunting his death out of the narrative focus.

“In additional to a personal computer and several cell phones, these included the thumb drive that—according to Huff—contained the blackmail letter Dumas had written, purporting to name the members of a drug cartel embedded in the Special Forces at Fort Bragg.”

The thumb drive becomes an important symbol of the struggles to spread the truth about what is happening at Fort Bragg. While Dumas was not exactly a reliable narrator, his confessions and accusations were powerful. These statements, however, fall into the hands of the same institution that has a habit of covering up the truth. The confiscated thumb drive represents the ease with which the truth can be buried by powerful institutions.

“Today, soldiers in the market for a recreational high prefer LSD for straightforward reasons.”

LSD is the drug of choice for those who wish to pass drug tests and avoid the attention of police dogs. Yet the hallucinatory qualities of the drug also hint at an inherent desire to alter reality which is found in many cogs within the American war machine. As part of the corrosive institution described in the book, the soldiers can escape from their punishing, decaying reality by disappearing into an acid-driven hallucination. This reprieve is neither real nor lasting, but it speaks to a desire to escape.

“With the exception of Private Samad Landrum, a young black man, the only African American in the group, whose parents had the good sense to make sure that he was represented by a lawyer, the campers all signed the same Miranda waivers as Cochell.”

Harp’s description of Landrum as having the “good sense” (235) to hire a lawyer suggests that he believes that the other recruits were foolish in trusting the military so much that they surrendered their basic legal rights. Harp, with experience in the legal world as well as the military, implies that the institution does not have the recruits’ best interests in mind.

“No one at Fort Bragg will talk to me at all. They say get a lawyer.”

The same institutional representatives who urged the recruits to forgo legal representation while being questioned use the law as a defense against scrutiny. Lynda Lewis only wants to find out the truth, but she is told to “get a lawyer” (250). The recruits are urged to open up, while the institution itself remains deliberately and legalistically silent, showing how the law and lawyers are deployed to protect the institution rather than to work toward any kind of objective justice.

“In November 2019, Trump had issued a pardon clearing a Special Forces officer named Mathew Golsteyn of summarily executing a suspected member of the Taliban, a murder to which Golsteyn had admitted on live television.”

The use of a public presidential pardon to help a soldier avoid prosecution is a public show of support for the Delta Force recruits who do not feel bound by rules, laws, or expectations. In contrast to the brief suggestion of accountability, the public pardon is a tacit show of support for the brutal, illegal means of conducting war described elsewhere in the book. As before, Harp notes, this moral untethering of the American military is ultimately ineffective.

“It was ‘the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history,’ said an expert quoted in The Telegraph.”

Harp makes the wry observation that the United States’s enemy in the War in Afghanistan was actually more proactive in ending the cultivation of opium and heroin that the United States. The Taliban’s anti-drugs measures are presented as a means of sarcastic juxtaposition, designed to reveal the hypocrisy of the American military. The War on Drugs means little, Harp implies, when American wars only serve to supercharge the production of dangerous drugs.

“Colonel Burns, the chief of public affairs, wouldn’t let me finish. He rushed over to hustle me away on the grounds that I wasn’t on the approved list of journalists, and six military policemen swiftly arrived to escort me off the premises of the installation now known as Fort Liberty.”

In a rare instance of Seth Harp including himself in the narrative, his attempts to get answers directly from the military are met with aggressive silence. He cannot even finish his question about Fort Bragg before six military policemen escort him away. His lack of power is evident, yet only illuminates the desire of the American military to prevent journalists from discovering the truth.

“He was going to find the truth and put it on the news. He threatened them, and they killed him for it.”

Harp avoids accusations of editorializing by allowing his interviewees to make direct accusations that he will only imply. Dumas’s son, T.J., makes the conspiratorial accusation directly, putting into words the theory that Harp has implied throughout the book, that the American military is prepared to go to great lengths to protect Fort Bragg. Without the evidence, however, Harp can only allude to these theories via others, rather than make them directly.