The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
66 pages • 2-hour read
Seth HarpThe Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
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Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 10 Summary: “Cover Girls”
Harp describes how “untold billions” (120) flow into special operations while Fort Bragg and Fayetteville show visible signs of neglect. Delta Force’s headquarters, known as the Building, sits behind double checkpoints on a manicured 500-acre compound of hangars, kennels, classrooms, and a corridor lined with trophies like the handcuffs used to restrain Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega; wreckage from the Black Hawk Down incident in which US Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu, Somalia; and the clothing Saddam Hussein had been wearing at the time of his capture. Visitors to the facility must surrender phones and pass concealed surveillance as they enter offices renovated after an Obama-era cash infusion that soothed operators who felt slighted when the president did not visit. The colonel commanding Delta Force rotates every few years; Harp lists Mark J. O’Neil, James B. Jarrard, Christopher T. Donahue, and Joshua M. Rudd, noting their earlier JSOC roles and later promotions. Officers pass through quickly. Donahue, for example, eventually takes over the XVIII Airborne Corps. The dining facility serves white-tablecloth Friday meals; downstairs, squadrons A through D occupy team bays that resemble locker rooms with bars where drinking begins midafternoon. Smoking persists in a ventilated room despite the federal ban. Below, a basement leads to a vaultlike portal for a tunnel system. Support squadrons include logistics, intel, engineering, EOD, signals, weapons development, and finance, which launders money with preloaded cards. The Analyst Support Troop works in the Building’s only Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) to “fix” (124) targets, while the Mission Support Troop creates cover identities and is nicknamed the “Cover Girls” (124) due to the perception that the staff are typically women who have been hired because of their “good looks” (124).
Courtney Williams, a former Army interrogator, is recruited by K2 Solutions in 2010. At the interview, she notices that all the candidates are “young, petite, attractive, well dressed, and blond” (125). She and colleague Esther Licea say MST hires to a type, that the unit is overwhelmingly white, and that Delta functions as an “old boys’ club” (126). Williams becomes a signature reduction specialist, paid to manage a controlled repository of valid but fictitious passports, driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, and credit cards issued under memorandums with federal and state agencies to create “fully backstopped personas” (127). She supports G Squadron, the elite covert element tasked with missions that senior officials can disavow. Williams says executive orders arrive to collect, capture, or kill high-profile targets. She keeps front companies alive by paying rent and utilities and making appearances at empty offices. On one occasion, she is dispatched to California with $10,000 to buy phones with no receipts, and on another occasion, she races to Washington to handle a flooded front office which is being rented as a part of an elaborate cover story.
Work culture is unprofessional. Operators play pranks, drink in the bays, and mock staff. Williams recalls sexual harassment, including an operator asking her whether her job would be better if she was “under the desk” (129). A lieutenant colonel tells her she was hired due to her male co-workers’ sexual interest in her. Complaints go nowhere; after she challenges a mediocre review and files with the inspector general and the EEOC, the unit suspends her clearance, straps a red badge on her, escorts her everywhere, and moves her into a closet to proof an eight-million-line spreadsheet. With no local lawyer willing to take on USASOC and a judge protecting classified information, she settles in 2018 for enough “to buy a small house” (134) and is medically retired.
Williams and Licea say the unit treats Israel differently when it comes to spy work. Though operators train there in controlled, bugged accommodations, the intelligence services are restricted in their capacity to operate in Israel. Everywhere else is “fair game” (130). In the modern day, social media complicates the creation of cover stories, so Williams develops “True Name,” a system that pairs an operator’s legal name with altered biographic details to reconcile lingering online traces with travel documents (131). She cites a 2013 incident in Libya where two Americans detained with embassy papers were, in fact, Delta soldiers on a failed mission. Inside the Building, the murder of Mark Leshikar circulates immediately; support staff whisper as the command keeps Billy Lavigne on “light duty” (135). The response looks like a template. Williams describes an “incestuous” (135) local ecosystem of commanders, prosecutors, judges, and police chiefs who hunt, golf, and send kids to the same school. When operators are arrested, “protocols” (135) activate at any hour to bail them out and suppress news. Off duty, the community gathers at Paddy’s Irish Pub, Mac’s Speed Shop, and a hidden venue called Warehouse 13 near the county jail.
Part 3, Chapter 11 Summary: “Warehouse 13”
Erin Scanlon, a 25-year-old 82nd Airborne lieutenant new to Fort Bragg, heads to a Sept. 9, 2016 fundraiser at Mac’s Speed Shop honoring five Green Berets. The event centers on Coast x Coast, a special-operations-adjacent biker club led by Cris Valley, also known as Sergeant First Class Cristobal Lopez Vallejo, an active-duty Delta Force operator. Billy Lavigne is there too, though he barely registers to Scanlon. Coast x Coast bills itself as a memorial charity with cross-country rides to “raise money in honor of fallen special operators” (138). Vallejo, unusually public for a JSOC operator, does TV hits and even throws a first pitch for the Padres. IRS filings show the 501(c)(3) raises about $451k, disburses about $187k (often to friends for dubious therapies), and leaves roughly $264k unexplained amid “sloppy and incomplete” (140) tax returns and a temporary revocation of nonprofit status.
After Mac’s, the group moves to Paddy’s Irish Pub, an infamous operator haunt. While posing for a group photo, Vallejo grabs Scanlon’s rear without her consent. Near closing, he invites her and a friend to an “after-after-party” (141) at Warehouse 13, a hidden, razor-wired warehouse down Worth Street by the county jail which he rents as an off-the-books party spot. Inside, there is a full bar, games, a stripper pole, sex toys, and more. Earlier that year, alcohol-control agents and a city inspector flagged the site for possible illegal sales, drugs, and fire hazards, but issued only a verbal warning.
That night, besides Vallejo, Lavigne, two other Delta soldiers, and a retired JSOC EOD tech, attendees include two 95th Civil Affairs officers, a Green Beret’s widow, and a Las Vegas performer. Scanlon decides to stay just long enough for her Uber. After she uses a porta-potty, she alleges, Vallejo blocks her, lifts her onto a junked car, and rapes her. She stops resisting, hoping it will “end quickly” (143). Minutes later, she flees to meet her driver. Vallejo sends her a message, asking whether she is well and wanting to know that she is “home safe” (144). She responds, asking whether he realizes what he has done to her. He does not respond.
The next morning, before showering, Scanlon undergoes a forensic exam at Womack. The nurse documents genital lacerations, torso bruising/scratches, and semen; Vallejo’s DNA matches. Because the assault occurs off base, Fort Bragg CID sends her to Fayetteville police. Detective Paul Matrafailo pulls texts, video, and swabs from the junked car, interviews witnesses, and finds probable cause; on Sept. 30 he arrests Vallejo for second-degree rape, second-degree sex offense, and sexual battery. Vallejo pleads not guilty.
As a civilian trial nears in February, 2018, Army JAG officers assert concurrent jurisdiction and press Scanlon to move the case to a Fort Bragg court-martial, arguing it improves the odds of a conviction since guilty verdicts in military trials do not need to be unanimous. She accepts, so county records are expunged and months of delay follow. Meanwhile, SOCOM’s reputation strains under news reports that allege misconduct, though Delta Force and the Green Berets mostly escape the harshest glare. Quietly, Fort Bragg now faces two crises: Vallejo’s case and Lavigne’s arrest in the shooting of Mark Leshikar, a dual threat to special operators’ reputation as “quiet professionals” (146).
Vallejo’s court-martial convenes June 25, 2018. No media attend. The Army later deletes the audio under then-standard practice. Scanlon is sequestered except to testify. Victim advocate Lindsey Knapp (a former Bragg officer working for USASOC) watches a pair of junior captains prosecute against Vallejo’s seasoned civilian lawyer, Kris Poppe. Judge Col. Jeffery Nance permits a Military Rule of Evidence 412 carve-out so the defense can delve into a prior consensual relationship Scanlon had with an enlisted soldier to suggest a motive to lie to avoid “fraternization” (150) charges. The defense even compels Scanlon’s own JAG counsel to testify against her, unprecedented moves that Knapp condemns. The prosecution, puzzlingly, does not call the detective. The defense calls nine witnesses, including Billy Lavigne, whose testimony is unknown because the audio has been deleted. After three days, a panel of Special Forces officers finds Vallejo not guilty.
Knapp files a detailed complaint to USASOC commander Lt. Gen. Francis Beaudette. She is put on leave, investigated for spillage (naming Delta in an unclassified letter), reprimanded, and fired in 2020. Scanlon leaves the Army in 2019 and later concludes she never had a fair shot against USASOC/JSOC’s institutional weight. Vallejo, though acquitted, effectively ends his Delta career. His public profile, social-media-promoted charity work, and indiscriminate womanizing violate the unit’s ethos of secrecy. He has already been removed from Delta (April 2017) and finishes as a “SURPLUS SLDR” (152) at USASOC HQ. An ABC News story in 2020—which is careful not to name or show him, inaccurately labeling him a former member at the time—marks the first negative national piece to affect Delta Force in years. Vallejo retires in 2021, moves to Colorado, marries, and has a child but dies soon after in an accident. Billy Lavigne, Harp suggests, will suffer a similar fate.
Part 3 Analysis
Part 3 of The Fort Bragg Cartel illustrates the cultural effects of Blowback as a Consequence of Military Interventionism. In Part 3, the close examination of daily life at Fort Bragg shows how years spent without accountability has begun to manifest in many different ways. Harp notes that “A blanket ban on smoking in federal workplaces has been in effect since 1997, but no one is going to enforce it here” (127), a minor detail that Harp presents as illustrating a larger culture of impunity at Fort Bragg. Similarly, the prevalence of alcohol on the base shows the extent to which the typical working culture of the military is not applicable in this locale, so that the staff begin drinking “around three or four o’clock in the afternoon” (127). As well as laws and rules, then, expectations of professionalism have been completely cast aside, as though Harp were holding a satirical mirror to the actions of the United States in invading Iraq in 2003.
Part 3 also describes much more serious breaches of the rules at Fort Bragg. Cris Vallejo is a recurring figure in the text, but Part 3 goes into detail on his alleged rape of Erin Scanlon. Throughout Part 3, Harp describes a broader culture of drug and alcohol abuse coupled with disorderly and arrogant behavior at Fort Bragg. The existence of clubs and societies such as Warehouse 13 and Coast x Coast demonstrates how the men of Fort Bragg—and Harp notes that the antisocial behavior he describes is largely perpetrated by men—feel so emboldened that they have set up physical spaces and organizations to facilitate their behavior, hiding these semi-criminal organizations under the flimsy cover of charitable fundraising. The Prevalence and Power of Hidden Networks here is so great that they barely need to hide at all. Scanlon only spends a short time at Warehouse 13 and is immediately “creeped out by the griminess of the location and lack of outdoor lighting” (143). Vallejo, in contrast, feels at home and emboldened by his locale. His abuse and rape destroys Scanlon’s military career, but he barely registers what he has done. In this context, Harp implies, the notion of anything like justice or accountability is almost laughable.
Just as he used Lavigne’s story as a useful lens through which to chart the corrosive effect of life in Delta Force, Harp uses Vallejo’s trial and acquittal as a useful example of the insulation of these men from any repercussions. Scanlon is not only hurt by an individual, but she is hurt by the institution as a whole. In Scanlon’s telling, as told by Harp, the entire legal institution of the military seems to work to protect Vallejo (and, by extension, Fort Bragg) at her expense. Scanlon emerges as a key representative of the way in which Fort Bragg and the military insulates these men from any legal consequence for their actions, allowing the Fort Bragg cartel to metastasize into violence, corruption, and much worse. On an institutional level, Part 3 shows, the corruption runs deep.
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