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

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is responsible for investigating serious crimes involving military personnel. In the book, CID functions as both detective agency and bureaucratic barrier, often mishandling or concealing evidence in cases involving Fort Bragg soldiers. Harp portrays CID as emblematic of the Army’s culture of opacity, where investigations routinely end in uncertainty or cover-up.

This acronym describes the special operations targeting cycle developed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It outlines how elite units locate and eliminate enemy targets, then analyze those targets and disseminate information to the relevant parties. Harp invokes F3EAD to illustrate the industrialization of killing by JSOC and to show how this methodical process—designed for counterterrorism—migrates back into domestic military culture at Fort Bragg.

The Global War on Terror refers to the worldwide military campaign launched by the United States after September 11, 2001. Harp situates the rise of Fort Bragg’s elite culture within this prolonged conflict, showing how it generated unending deployments, psychological trauma, and impunity. The GWOT becomes the backdrop for the normalization of covert warfare and the erosion of moral boundaries within the special operations community.

An IED is a homemade bomb commonly used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers’ exposure to IED blasts recurs throughout The Fort Bragg Cartel as a source of physical and neurological injury leading to addiction, anger, and erratic behavior. Harp links these injuries to the cycle of self-destruction and violence that consumes veterans after their return to Fort Bragg.

The JAG Corps is the military’s legal branch, responsible for administering justice under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In the book, JAG officers often appear as institutional gatekeepers who frame misconduct as administrative error rather than criminality. Harp uses JAG’s limited interventions to show how legal systems within the Army protect the command structure instead of enforcing accountability.

In context of the book, jihad refers to the militant form of Islamic struggle invoked by US policymakers to justify counterterrorism missions. Harp uses it less as a theological term than as the ideological pretext that sustained America’s endless wars abroad. By contrasting jihadist extremism with the violence that festers within the US military itself, he highlights the moral inversion of the GWOT era.

Headquartered at Fort Bragg, JSOC is the top-level command overseeing America’s most secretive special operations units, including Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. Harp presents JSOC as a “shadow military” born after Vietnam and empowered by the GWOT to conduct global assassinations and covert missions without oversight. Its autonomy and culture of secrecy drive many of the moral and criminal failures that dominate the book.

An “operator” is the term used within the special operations community to describe elite soldiers from units such as Delta Force or SEAL Team Six. In The Fort Bragg Cartel, the operator becomes a symbol of post-9/11 militarism: highly trained, heavily armed, and morally and legally unaccountable. Harp depicts these men as both products and casualties of a system that glorifies violence and conceals its consequences.

PTSD is the psychological condition resulting from exposure to traumatic events, particularly combat. Harp repeatedly connects PTSD to the epidemic of suicides, overdoses, and domestic violence among Fort Bragg soldiers. The condition becomes a pervasive undercurrent of the narrative, illustrating how the mental toll of war seeps into every aspect of post-deployment life.