Master Sergeant William “Billy” Lavigne was a decorated Delta Force operator whose career descended into addiction, paranoia, and violence. He embodies the thesis of The Fort Bragg Cartel: that America’s overseas wars corrode and decay the social fabric of the homeland. A father and veteran of multiple deployments, Lavigne suffered from PTSD and substance abuse, turning to methamphetamine and cocaine after years of clandestine missions. Harp quotes others, describing Lavigne as “a good man with a good heart, but [with] a lot of damage from his time in the service” (187). The decline of Lavigne’s character is illustrated in these interviews with his old acquaintances. Lavigne comes from a small town in Michigan and, as Harp recounts, seemed like a typical American youth. The events of September 11 changed Lavigne, however. As well as vindicating his decision to join the military, the ensuing War on Terror became a corrupting and traumatizing influence on Lavigne during the long stints he spent abroad. Lavigne returns to America burdened by the trauma of what he has seen and done; he then turns to drugs to cope with his psychological pain and begins to deal drugs to fund his chaotic lifestyle. This cycle of violence, Harp suggests, is representative of the broader idea of blowback, in which the American ideal is corrupted by the violence of its own foreign military interventions.

Lavigne is introduced to the audience at a point when he is in danger of being overrun by his trauma. The book begins with the story of how Lavigne shot and killed his best friend. In the heat of the moment, the book suggests, Lavigne may have been justified in shooting Leshikar. Yet Leshikar’s own descent into paranoia and violence functions as an ominous indication to Lavigne of what awaits him in his own future. The two men were close, even if Lavigne teased Leshikar for not being able to make the cut for Delta Force. After killing Leshikar, Lavigne feels terrible because he sees so much of himself in Leshikar, including their shared trauma and descent into addiction and criminality. In Leshikar, Lavigne is presented with a pressing reminder of his own seemingly inevitable future. In this sense, the murder is a tragedy precisely because Lavigne is unable to escape his current predicament. The government covers up the killing, and since he suffers no real consequences, Lavigne does not have an opportunity to escape his own violent fate. Rather than resolve his trauma, he adds to it, feeling burdened by the responsibility of killing his friend rather than helping him. As such, Lavigne’s role is to illustrate the sheer power and inescapability of the American military and the moral consequences of imperialism.

By the end of the book, Lavigne has lost any sense of himself. Any sense of himself as a professional solider or operator has—Harp suggests—become completed overrun by his addiction and his trauma. Lavigne owes money to dangerous people and is fully involved in the drug trade operating out of Fort Bragg. His training and his history as a soldier prove to be of little value as he is shot and then wrapped in plastic, hauled across an American military base under suspicious circumstances. Tellingly, Harp writes, the authorities would like this murder to be forgotten like Leshikar’s. Lavigne’s murder is a key piece of Harp’s broader argument, a chart on which Harp can project the corrosive effect of the American military and Delta Force in particular. In a tragic irony, Lavigne suffers the same fate as Leshikar. He is killed in a manner inconvenient to the same institutions that shaped, sheltered, sculpted, and ultimately traumatized him. Lavigne’s death is a symbol of the corruption, violence, and unresolved pain that define the culture at Fort Bragg.

Cristóbal “Cris” Vallejo was a Delta Force operator at Fort Bragg whose career and reputation were marred by a 2017 sexual assault case and later drug involvement. Arrested for rape after forensic evidence linked him to the assault of Erin Scalon, he was tried by court-martial at Fort Bragg in June 2018. Harp reports that as soon as the trial was over, “USASOC destroyed the audio recordings” (148), making a thorough analysis of the trial and evidence impossible. For Harp, Vallejo’s acquittal symbolizes the impunity surrounding elite soldiers shielded by institutional secrecy. In the context of The Fort Bragg Cartel, his case illustrates how authorities protect elite members of Delta Force and similar units. Vallejo’s case is one of many, Harp suggests, that demonstrate how military authorities ignore crimes and immorality to protect the reputation of elite operator units and, by extension, of the military itself. The absence of justice for Scanlon shows how the institutions are designed to protect themselves, rather than the people within them.

Vallejo’s extracurricular activities also demonstrate the inherent hypocrisy of the military culture surrounding Fort Bragg. A member of the same motorcycle club as Lavigne, Vallejo reappears throughout Harp’s narrative as part of the close-knit and lawless world of special operations veterans whose loyalty to one another often superseded any loyalty to the country or the law. The Coast x Coast motorcycle club and the parties at Warehouse 13—ostensibly fundraisers for the club’s charity work—show how this community projects morality and virtue while hiding a culture of rampant drug use, rape, and corruption. Harp notes “sloppy and incomplete tax returns” (140), suggesting that money raised for good causes is actually spent on parties, drugs, and criminality. Like the Delta Force itself, the Coast x Coast motorcycle club with Vallejo as its president claims to be working in the public interest but is actually rife with corruption and deceit. Vallejo, as the head of this operation and the apparent perpetrator of a rape, is emblematic of this culture of cover-up.