Coked-Up Executioners in the Pentagon's Secret Army w/ Seth Harp

Summary

Empire Files: "Coked-Up Executioners in the Pentagon's Secret Army" w/ Seth Harp

Date: August 7, 2025
Host: Abby Martin, with co-hosts and guest Seth Harp
Episode Overview:
This episode dives into the revelations from Seth Harp’s new book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, exposing shocking details about drug trafficking, violent crime, and rampant criminality within the Pentagon’s elite JSOC units based at Fort Bragg. The discussion connects these issues directly to the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy post-9/11, arguing that the unchecked violence and impunity fostered by the global war on terror have profoundly corrupted America’s most secretive soldiers—and the communities around them.

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Main Themes

• Criminality and Corruption at Fort Bragg:
  The astonishing levels of drug abuse, murder, gang activity, and cover-ups among Special Operations units, especially JSOC and Delta Force, detailed in Harp’s investigative work.
• The War on Terror’s Domestic Blowback:
  How post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy and special mission units’ unchecked violence “abroad” have predictable consequences at home.
• The Culture and Nature of JSOC:
  The composition, secrecy, and selection process for America’s most clandestine soldiers—including a look at racism, drug use, and the normalization of extreme violence.
• Drug Trafficking & the Opioid Crisis:
  How heroin production exploded under U.S. occupation in Afghanistan and the systemic failure to confront drug trafficking facilitated by the U.S.’s local allies and military structure.
• Continuing Impunity and Secrecy:
  Protocols to shield operators from legal consequences, the media’s silence, and ongoing issues at Fort Bragg—even amid major overseas conflicts.

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Detailed Breakdown

1. Origins & Impact of Harp’s Reporting

Timestamps: [00:05–02:16]

• Abby Martin introduces Seth Harp’s new book, calling it “not just an important feat of journalism, but a wild ride” similar to a “spy novel” documenting “thousands of men turned into heartless assassins.”
• Harp explains his opposition to the forever war and post-9/11 foreign policy, which he argues has an “almost genocidal component.”

  “It’s not a deliberate attempt to wipe these people off the map, but it’s nevertheless turned this massive swath of the world into a far worse place as a result...” – Seth Harp [03:08]

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2. Harp’s Transformation from Soldier to Journalist

Timestamps: [04:12–07:18]

• Harp recounts joining the Army Reserve at 19, being deployed to Iraq, witnessing and participating in violence, and seeing events that “transformed” him into an anti-imperialist.
• Specific personal story: A bored soldier in his unit murders a woman and child at a checkpoint, demonstrating the routine nature of unjustified violence.

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3. The Fort Bragg Story: Wild Crime, Weak Accountability

Timestamps: [07:18–13:32]

• Harp details the murder of Green Beret Mark Leshiker by Delta Force operator Billy Levine, who, while on drugs, shoots Leshiker in front of their children, avoids charges, and remains operational in the unit—before later being murdered himself.
• The story was initially covered up by the unit and law enforcement, with key evidence (a phone) removed by a commander.

  “One of the things he did at the crime scene was to take Mark Leshiker’s phone and pocket it...the police did not obtain Mark Leshiker’s phone.” – Seth Harp [13:32]

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4. Inside JSOC: Structure, Culture, and Recruitment

Timestamps: [14:38–24:23]

• Harp describes JSOC as a “secret military within the military” conducting unsupervised black ops since its creation following the Church Committee reforms.
• An internal culture split between derelict, drug-addicted operators and “super-Christian, teetotaler ‘warriors for God’”—but with drug abuse and coverups rampant, especially toward the end of the Afghanistan war.
• The recruitment process reinforces “tough guy” psychopathy and a striking lack of diversity:

  “It’s literally 99 out of 100 white...tall, handsome... They put the tallest ones in front, like North Korean border guards.” – Seth Harp [22:28]

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5. Escalating Drugs and Violence in Fayetteville

Timestamps: [24:23–32:29]

• Cocaine use and dealing within units is depicted as endemic, organized, and linked to local and international cartels—sometimes involving retired JSOC operators.
• Army sources told Harp there is a literal cartel at Bragg, with one source murdered after speaking to him, intensifying the stakes for those reporting on these issues.
• Bragg’s death toll: In one year 105 soldiers died at home, versus fewer killed overseas.

  “For two years, 105 soldiers died at home—less than five overseas. That’s crazy.” – Abby Martin [26:16]

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6. War Abroad, Rot at Home: Surge in Criminality

Timestamps: [32:29–41:01]

• The rise of JSOC during the 2007–8 Iraq “surge”—empowered for nightly assassination raids based often on negligible intelligence, with “error rates” above 50%.
• Massive, underreported civilian death toll (“JSOC may have killed 100,000 people in a year” [37:11]) and psychological damage as soldiers return home.
• The Iraq surge’s “success” was largely the result of a secret deal brokered by Iran and cash payments to militias.

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7. The Afghanistan Opium Scandal: America’s Role

Timestamps: [41:01–47:45]

• U.S.-backed warlords ran Afghanistan’s heroin trade, with no credible evidence of Taliban “narco-terrorism”—in fact, Taliban eradicated cultivation once regaining power.
• U.S. government complicity is “so overwhelming, overt, sustained ... it boggles my mind.” – Seth Harp [40:46]
• The Afghani-origin heroin boom directly ties to the U.S. opioid crisis, with the media failing to connect the dots.

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8. The Spiral Continues: Trump, Biden, and Ongoing Devolution

Timestamps: [47:45–59:03]

• Every president escalates the impunity and autonomy of JSOC; Trump distinguished himself by openly celebrating war crimes and pardoning convicted operators like Eddie Gallagher—further poisoning unit culture.
• Cover-ups and media indifference remain rampant. Even today, deaths and crimes involving JSOC and Delta operators are only loosely reported, with no real mainstream scrutiny.

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9. JSOC’s Global Shadow War—Ukraine, Israel, Syria, and Beyond

Timestamps: [54:32–59:03]

• Newly revealed U.S. special operations presence in Ukraine and Israel, often in advisory or covert capacities; more open combat roles in Syria, Iraq, and Somalia (against ISIS/Al Shabaab targets).
• No real oversight, public reporting only when the Pentagon wants to tell its story.

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10. Fort Bragg Today and the Next Dark Chapter

Timestamps: [59:03–65:42]

• Harp reveals that, even now, the depth of the problem at Bragg is likely vastly underestimated:

  “I realized in the course of reporting the story that I was only scratching the surface... There is so much that I missed.” – Seth Harp [59:14]

• Recent years have seen a surge in sex crimes, specifically child sexual assault, overshadowing even adult sexual violence.
• Harp draws a chilling parallel between U.S.-backed child trafficking in Afghanistan and the recent rise of similar crimes among Bragg’s returning elite soldiers.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the “Genocidal” Character of US Wars:

  “There’s a strong ethnic quality to this forever war ... almost genocidal.” – Seth Harp [02:33]

• On JSOC’s Recruitment & Demographics:

  “It is literally 99 out of 100 white ... all tall, all handsome … like a casting call.” – Seth Harp [22:28]

• On Coverups and Unit Culture:

  “They have literally protocols for when someone commits a crime—sexual assault, a drug crime—to make sure it doesn’t get out to the press.” – Abby Martin [47:49]

• On Afghanistan Opium:

  “What went on in Afghanistan was a thousand times worse ... the complicity of the US government is overwhelming.” – Seth Harp [40:46]

• On Recent Bragg Murders and Media Silence:

  “Stuff like this gets reported—but the connection to the unit is not drawn.” – Seth Harp [59:14]

• On Child Sexual Abuse:

  “In the past two, three years, I have not read about even a single case of a Fort Bragg soldier raping a woman ... in that same time I’ve seen like fifteen cases of them raping children.” – Seth Harp [62:24]

• On the Depths of the Scandal:

  “I was only scratching the surface … Every single little nugget, morsel of information was so hard-won. But I know there’s so much I missed.” – Seth Harp [59:14]

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Conclusion

This episode of the Empire Files, drawn from Harp’s explosive investigative work, presents a damning portrait of America’s covert warriors and the blowback of endless war. Far from the disciplined heroes of official lore, Delta Force and JSOC are depicted as a toxic mix of addiction, violence, impunity, and systemic criminality. The story is not just about individuals gone rogue, but about a system that creates and protects such outcomes—posing urgent questions for U.S. foreign and domestic policy alike.

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Book Referenced:
The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
— Available August 12, 2025

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Recommended Action:
Follow @EmpireFiles and @AbbyMartin for updates, and seek out The Fort Bragg Cartel for a deeper investigation into these pressing, unresolved issues.

Transcript

[A]

Seth Harp, welcome to the Empire Files.

[B]

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[A]

Yeah, man. I recently finished your book, the new book, the Fort Bragg Cartel. Amazing read. It's not just this important feat of journalism, but I highly recommend it to everyone because it's just a really exciting read. I find at times it reads a spy novel or crime fiction, but also has some really bigger picture stuff I think is very important. So congratulations on finishing and publishing it. You know, there's a lot of really sensational stuff in this book, right? You got lots of cocaine. You got murder of soldiers and even a beheading of a soldier. You have like soldier run illegal clubs, run out of a warehouse with a vibrator seat used for drugs and for rape. You have dogs with titanium denture implants given the brains of enemy combatants as a treat when they've been a good boy. Not coming from the loser regular army, but the most elite and well funded unit of the entire Department of Defense. It's all a really wild ride and like I said, a really massive feat of journalism. But for me, this book, like on an equal level, is a story about U.S. foreign policy and the new reality the war on terror has created. You know, there's so many ways that the world was left a worse place by the global war on terror. And this story is just one of those ways. Thousands of men turned into heartless assassins or a safe space for people who joined because they already were, who were given the money, the skills, and really total freedom to live out whatever fantasies they wanted abroad, which they unleashed first on people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but then on the people of of Fayetteville, North Carolina, including their own families. And throughout the story, I saw the parallels you made with the growth of JSOC units and increased reliance on them in these two lost wards and a surge in criminal activity here at home. And so just to start, before we get into really the nitty gritty of your investigation, I wanted to know how Your view of post 911 foreign policy acted as a grounding rod for your investigation and your narrative here.

[B]

It was a grounding rod, you could say, the entire time. It's no secret that I strongly oppose these wars. It was just like you. I served in the Iraq war when I was really young and it was very eye opening and was a formative experience and turned me totally against like the paradigm of, you know, forever war. Basically, from then after up until the present day, I have been doing as much as I can as a reporter and a rider to oppose. You know what I see as the great injustice of our time. Because there's a lot of things that are messed up about our country. There's a lot of things that are not going well, but just the sheer fact that, you know, the US military has killed millions of Muslim people since 2001 kind of puts it ahead of basically any other sort of bad thing that our country has done. And I point out, you know, I use the term Muslim very pointedly because there's an eth. There's a strong ethnic quality to this forever war, to this post 911 wars, to the terror wars, as I call them. Almost all the people have belonged to one religion. And what does that, what does that say in addition about these wars? That they have this strong ethnic, almost genocidal component to them? When you look at the destruction of so many countries in the Middle east and in North Africa and Southwest Asia, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria to Libya to Yemen to Somalia, you begin to start looking at it from the paradigm of genocide. It doesn't seem to be in a deliberate attempt to wipe these people off the face of the map, but it's nevertheless turned this massive swath of the world into a far worse place as a result of 20 years of dropping bombs on them and assassinating people and so forth. So I try to keep it under control. But a very real sense of anger, I would say, animated me in terms of investigating stuff that was going on at Fort Bragg.

[C]

Yeah. And unfortunately, I mean, we're in a full blown genocide today that has that characteristic, you could say, driving it, which is just anti Muslim bigotry. I mean, I cannot think of any other instance where you could cage millions of people, deprive them of water and electricity and food, and then just carpet bomb them for two years and have the world justify that somehow without this fervent Islamophobic bent to the way that, you know, the collective consciousness of humanity. It's very disturbing. But I want to talk a little bit more. Let's unpack your origin story just a little bit more because it is fascinating. I mean, I think, you know, the war on terror was an awakening moment for so many of us. Seth. But someone who actually served in the Iraq war, like Mike, is there anything you would be comfortable sharing about how that transformed you as a person and made you an anti imperialist?

[A]

Yeah. In your, in your bio, in your book. It's, it's a foot, really, like, like a three word. There's more about you being an attorney in the past than about you being a veteran. But I imagine to you personally, it's more than just a little footnote.

[B]

Well, yeah, because, you know, I was so young when I have. I'm not sure how old you were when you joined the army, but I was 19. And so, you know, then I was immediately deployed. You know, I was, as a college student, so very naive. Signed up for the Army Reserve, honestly believing that I would never be deployed. My. It's not that it's on me for being dumb enough to believe the recruiter, but, you know, recruiters have an easy job, which is lying to 18 year olds. That is not a hard thing to do. I mean, you, you can, you can convince a kid that age of a lot of things that you wouldn't be able to convince someone who's 25 or 30 of. But I honestly didn't think I would ever deploy. I really didn't connect it to the wars that were going at the time. Also, a lot of people forget that even the people who opposed the Iraq war originally, and no one thought it was going to last for eight years. I mean, that just came. That was completely unexpected. If you, everyone, you know, even the opponents of the war bought the propaganda, they would be over in a matter of months. I mean, the reality was infinitely worse than what the most pessimistic anti war protesters were saying at the beginning of the war. And seeing that unfold in front of my eyes when I was really young and being exposed firsthand to violence, being shot at, seeing dead people, having guys in my unit killed, having guys in my unit kill people. In one case, you know, I witnessed a soldier in my unit just murder some people, you know, because he, it was that classic thing. I'm sure, you know, Mike, how often this happened. You're manning a checkpoint, you're bored. You don't like how fast that car is coming. He said, oh, they're coming too fast. I'm just going to unload on them with a machine gun. Then when we walk over there, we realize, oh, that's just a lady and her kid. That's literally what happened. And, you know, that kind of thing to me was, it was, you know, transformative, not in a really good way at that age, but completely turned me against everything that was going on in terms of the war. So, yeah, that was, yeah, like I said, very formative. Yeah.

[A]

Well, I appreciate you sharing that. And yeah. So let's get into the book. So your book is this kind of broad investigation, but it weaves in and out of a story that you initially reported on for Rolling Stone about a Kind of wild murder at Fort Bragg, which starts with let me know if I get this right. You have a Special Forces guy and a Delta Force guy who are on like a week long drug binge with their kids at Disney, but they've been up for a long time on a lot of drugs. One of them starts hallucinating or freaking out, murders the other guy by shooting him a lot of times in front of his daughter, is given a special treatment by the police, isn't charged with anything. When the police find, oh, this guy's, this guy's Special Forces, he's really cool, I want to be him. We're going to not even cuff this guy, not charge him with anything. Then he returns to his unit and despite the fact that, you know, everyone knows this guy just killed his buddy on drugs, or it's at least they should know. He, he's just still in his unit, operating as a guy in the unit. And then you follow his life throughout the course of the book, which ends in his own execution alongside another Special Forces guy. He eventually became a local criminal and then meets this death, the same type of death he issued on his friend. And so walk us through. Not that part, but you start with this investigation, but then it opens up this other door to a much bigger story, many more deaths and all of that. And so tell us how that story unveiled a bigger phenomenon there at Bragg, which really is the core of this thing.

[B]

Yeah, you know, this whole story, that's a very accurate summary. Thanks for reading the book so carefully. That's. I first started reporting on this and it first came on my radar when that guy you're talking about, Billy Levine, the Delta Force guy, and the other one who was, his name was Timothy Dumas and he was actually, he wasn't a Green Beret, but he worked for the Joint Special Operations Command. He was a JSOC support soldier. Those two guys, bodies were found on Fort Bragg in like a remote training range of Fort Bragg. I just happened to read an article in the New York Times about this two deaths and also saw on a blog that one of the guys was Delta. And the very fact that, you know, his membership in Delta Force, because in all the time I had been in either reporting on the military, reporting on foreign wars or serving in the military myself, I had never heard of Delta Force. A Delta Force guy being in the news for any reason, positive, negative, what have you, like, these guys don't exist. You know, this is the most elite unit in the military and they don't get talked about. So I knew there had to be. And they're saying, oh, this is a drug deal to double homicide from a drug deal gone wrong. That I knew that there had to be more behind the story to that, that same story. You know, the murder, the after Disneyland murder, you talked about the, the murder of a Green Beret named Mark Leshiker by the same guy, Billy Levine. You know, when, after that happened, not only was it totally covered up in a transparent way by the military investigators and civilian law enforcement, but also they kept it from being in the news at all. Like Billy Levine was not named his name. If you searched his name in a news and whatever beforehand before his own death, you would have found nothing. So I was able to. The story really opened up to me by. I was able to make contact with that guy, Mark Leshinger, his mom, his sister and his ex wife. Turns out, not surprisingly, ever since their son slash brother slash husband had been killed. And in a way that was just obvious murder and that had been covered up. Ever since then, they have been trying to get the attention of basically anyone who had, who would listen. They had been writing letters to Dateline NBC and to, and to NBC and to CNN and to, you know, various military officials, to the commander of army cid, the Criminal Investigative Division, and nobody had paid attention to them. So I had what we call, you know, a squeaky wheel, which is often a great way to, to get into a story because they had been saving all these documents. They had every. They had everything needed to prove what they need, what they were saying, which was that their, their loved one, Mark Leshiger, had been killed by this guy. That had all been covered up. And yeah, it sort of all unfolded from there. Unfortunately, there's not.

[C]

What did the police say? Like what, how was it covered up? I mean, what was, what was the official explanation like?

[B]

Yeah, good question, Abby. I mean, they say that it was a justified homicide. And Levine's official story was that the other guy. So the other guy, Mark Leshiger, after they drive home from Disney World on literally every drug that I know of. Like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't think they tested positive for marijuana other than that they were on all of it.

[A]

Damn, even they were on her.

[B]

I mean, Mark Lecher's autopsy was positive for bath salts, which is crazy. And those like basalts, those can really give you hallucinations and make you psychotic. And that's what was going on with him. He, he was hallucinating there, being followed, and he started to take the car engine Apart when they got back to Billy's house in Fville with a screwdriver and Billy grabbed the kids, the two girls, their respective daughters took him in the house. But then one of the little girls. So then Mark starts banging on the door, demanding to be let in, demanding to have his daughter back. And while Billy's, while locking the back door or something, the little girl let him in. And so Billy comes around the kitchen and sees Mark Leshinger coming in the front door unexpectedly. And at that point he just draws his sidearm. He carries a Colt 1911 at all times and just shoots him three times or possibly more. At least three times. So when the police show up. So first he calls, first he calls a buddy in the unit, he calls his commander in the unit before he calls the police. And his, the commander is a guy named Jen Merritt. Let me make sure I say this completely accurately because, you know, this is a real living person. His commander, Billy Lavine's commander in Delta Force, Jen Merritt arrived at that crime scene shortly before the police, according to what I was told by the family of Mark Lesher.

[C]

Incredible.

[B]

And I also gave him a chance to comment and he didn't. One of the things he did at the crime scene was to take Mark Leshiker's phone and pocket it and make sure that police, or as a result of his actions, police did not obtain Mark Leshinger's phone. They never.

[C]

I mean this just, this just says it all, doesn't it? This culture of secrecy and the lack of transparency and the fact that you think that you're above the law. I mean essentially you are because of how you've been operating and being shielded with immunity, impunity for so long. And let's talk really quickly about just the Joint Special Operations Command, jsoc, because this is, this is the lore that we see in every spy movie, you know, that these special operation units that are sent in to be the heroes of the day and to do the dirty work that needs to be done. But who are these guys really? Because like they just seem like drug addled lunatics, especially just given the climate that, that you know, this is all operating under. So, so talk about what JSOC is. How, how does this actually work for like non military minded people about the units under, under this.

[B]

I think that a lot of them at the tail end of the global war on terrorism, so called at the tail end of the war in Afghanistan, a lot of them really were drug addled lunatics who have killed countless people and are completely psychotic and dangerous. That's not to say that every single person in JSOC is like that. I don't think it's realistic to claim that they are. And some of my sources have told me, you know, it's. I. It's very difficult to. To penetrate this culture. But for the best horses I have, you know, they'll say things like, you know, maybe 50. They say the unit guys try to kind of separate themselves into two groups, and one group is a sort of teetotaller, like super Christian, like warriors for God is the quote that I include. Who are. Who are not like that. They may. Their actions may be morally objectionable in another way. You know, serving in assassination programs in countries with which we're not at war. But, you know, on a personal level, they're not just complete freaking derelicts, but a large contingent of people in Delta Force are. And you asked about jsoc. What is jsoc? JSOC is a secret military within the military that exists to do black operations. That's what's called black Special Forces. Most Special Forces, Navy SEAL teams, Green Berets, Army Rangers, Marine Raiders. They're, you know, white Special Forces is what they call them, or vanilla Special Forces. But there's a much smaller group of more elite guys who do black operations that are how small? So JSX, so Delta Force is about 300, maybe 400 operators. And then the unit itself is about 2,000 people, 60% civilian. And then I think that. So that's the largest and most central component of jsoc. So I talk about Delta Force. Delta Force is like the core of jsoc, but. And it's the army component of jsoc. But JSOC includes also Navy and Air Force. The Navy component of JSOC is Seal Team 6, which is a lot more, well, better known than Delta Force. And sometimes I think that that SEAL Team 6 is like deliberately almost like the black sheep of this community. We hear about them so much, but never anyone. No one ever talks about Delta Force. And so probably it's about the same size, maybe 300. I'm not sure. Maybe they have probably fluctuated at some points. At the height of certain wars, they have probably have 500 operators and Team Six or on Delta. And then there's other. These are called special mission units. There's a few other special mission units. There's the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, which is an Air Force squadron that does like, par. Rescue and like combat, like air strike targeting and combat reconnaissance. And then there's the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which is their aviation assets. And it's like helicopter. Some of the best helicopter pilots in the military also army belong to jsr. And you know, the reason why they have assets from every branch is to give them the ability to carry out, you know, what they call full spectrum operations, to be completely independent, to be able to be downrange for long periods of time, and to have all the equipment that they need. And jsoc. You know, I talk about the origin of JSOC in the book and how it was formed suspiciously soon after the CIA had its wings clipped in the aftermath of the Church Committee. You know, I'm talking about, like, as soon as those oversight laws were passed in the late 70s, like, JSOC was stood up, like within a matter of months. And so was Delta Force. Delta Force first, then jsoc. And you know, I talk about how these units are subject. Are much less subject to oversight than the CIA, but they have a lot of the same capabilities. Also, who was in the. In the White House right then, or, excuse me, who was the vice president? Was George H.W. bush the only former CIA director to be president, someone with deep, deep experience in the CIA and who. Who knew a lot about COVID action? We don't know how deep Bush's history went with those with that community, but, you know, suffice it to say he was very canny, savvy, bureaucratic operator who understood things like congressional oversight over covert action and how to do things without, you know, in secret. And so a major, major theme of the career of H.W. bush as a politician was the transfer of power over covert and clandestine operations from the CIA to Milk to the military. And that was sort of institutionalized and formalized in jsoc.

[C]

Yeah, well, it just reminds me of, like, how are these people even recruited internally? Because, you know, you look at. I hate to keep going back to Israel, but it just so. It just so egregious and so crazy as just basically your book is like, all these soldiers are like. Like the idf, you know.

[A]

Well, I mean, it's actually one of the interesting comparisons is that a lot of. One of the big things people know now is the IDF soldiers putting on, like, women's lingerie and posing them for photos where you talk about these Delta guys doing the same thing where they're, you know, because you're. You're supposed to infiltrate the population, right? So you, like, there are teams that will dress like civilians in order to sneak in and do hits on people. And so you have these Delta. You'd write about these Delta Force guys who put on like Iraqi women's dresses to go do these hits and stuff, but they're obviously not blended. You put a, you, you put a dress on a, on a JSOC guy. He's not, no one's going to think, oh, that's probably just some Iraqi woman. Like, it's more like they were doing it for the fun of it. Putting on dresses, dressing in drag to go kill people versus, like this actually has some kind of strategic purpose. So, yeah, I feel like there's, there's probably a lot of parallels there that, that people think the IDF is uniquely depraved. But, but maybe not.

[C]

Well, that, well, that's what I was going to say is like the idf, it does seem like a natural extension of just a society that has been indoctri from cradle to grave. It's like everyone serves in the military. Everyone is bred, born and bred to hate and otherize Palestinians. And that's just the way that the society functions. Unlike, I mean, obviously, yes, we're, this is a racist society. There's a lot to say about, about the US and the way it operates. But, but it does seem like this is just utter depravity being elevated to the, the status of JSOC and, and these special commanders or special operations units. So I don't know, it's just weird how, how do they like, get found and elevated? The most depraved of the depraved.

[B]

Well, the most depraved of the depraved. I mean, certainly there's, that's an aspect of it. You know, there's, there's a lot of that sort of tough guy posturing and showing how what a killer you are and how. What a psycho. That's where the term pipe hitter comes from. You know, someone who's so like, addicted to war and killing that he's like addicted to crack a pipe hitting a crack bite. But selection is very competitive for jsoc. You know, I know the most about Delta Force, and they recruit from all service branches, but primarily from the army. And so most Delta operators, you know, easily 90% of them are Green Berets or Army Rangers. So if you're on a, if you're on a Green Beret team, let's say you're, I don't know, 29, 30 years old, and you're, you've, you know, recently you, you've had two years on the seventh, seventh group or on fifth, in fifth group. If you're looking to continue dancing in the army, you know, you're probably trying to make, make it through selection. I mean, a lot of these guys, that's like their main goal in life. They just, they want to be the ultimate badass and they want to be in Delta.

[C]

It's just weird because like, they're mostly white guys. So it's like what? You know, it is just this weird kind of like selection of just white guys. And then it's like the women who are hired are just hot and like used as, as toys for like these guys. It's just like so dark on so many levels when you unpack it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The race aspect of it, I had no idea until I started reporting this story and people told me, yeah, by the way, these guys are literally 100 white. Although on closer inspection, I think that a few of them are like light skinned Latino type guys. And there's probably been, or I want to be precise, that was told 99 out of 100. So when you're dealing with 300 guys, yeah, there are, there's an Asian guy here and there from time to time. There may be a black operator on Delta Force, but we're talking about an institution that is 99 white, white males who look the part. I mean, it's kind of a silly aspect of this casting call. It's like Trump, who's all, he's always talking about handsome the generals are and how handsome these guys are. If you ever listen to a Trump speech, which I have to do sometimes for reporting, he's constantly, whenever he's talking to the troops, he's always talking about how handsome this guy is and how handsome this guy is. And that's how the Special Forces works, man. Like that. When I was in Trump's parade in D.C. it was so funny when the, when the Green Beret platoon marched fast because you go from having a platoon, every single formation that goes before that is its as diverse as the United States. And then the Green Berets walk by and it's literally not only are they all white, but they all kind of look the same too. They're all tall. Some of them are like exceptionally tall. And they put the tallest ones in the front, like North Korean border guard. I'm serious. Look at the video of Trump's parade. Yeah, you look at the guy in the middle and the two guys next to him. It's like both of those dudes are over six, five.

[C]

Well, that they at least they probably were marching. Well, the rest of the parade was so lackluster. No, no, I mean. I mean, everyone was half assing it. It's like, what kind of military parade is this? This. It was so sad.

[B]

The Green Berets were half assing it the most. They were.

[C]

They were.

[A]

That's their thing. They're not regular army. Like, they're mad that they had to march in the first place.

[B]

The Special Forces even put out a statement defending that display of ins.

[A]

Yeah, like, we don't march. It's also clear, Seth, obviously you notice this too, that it seems like drill and ceremony is not so much a thing in the military anymore, even for the regular soldiers. But I do want to say we'll talk about Shitty Empire specifically, like, what JSOC does overseas and kind of the. The evolution of them and how that evolution of JSOC coincides with this surge in criminal activity. You know, like, you mentioned this, like, the widespread drug use. You know, we're talking about a widespread use of. Of cocaine. Widespread dealing of cocaine on base, like on Fort Bragg. Like, we're not talking about going to a McDonald's and meeting someone, but you're. You're dealing it and trafficking it on base. Some. A network that extends outside of Bragg. Because you write about when these guys went to Disney World, they were able to meet up with other military guys to sell them drugs, probably from MacDill Air Force Base and the Special Operations Command that's there. So there's kind of this broader network of legal activity.

[B]

Army airfield, sorry.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

In Savannah, Georgia is where I think they were getting the re up in that case.

[A]

But yeah, yeah, so it's like it extends outside of Fort Bragg. And you know, when you talk like, the extent of drug use, it's like one of the people you quote said that they'd walk in the house and there'd be cocaine everywhere. Where, like, I think it's not. It's not unusual for people at some point in their life to go to a party where, you know there's cocaine being done, or, you know, people have cocaine. But it is a different thing to go in somewhere and there is cocaine everywhere. That's just like movie. Movie type stuff. So the level of this stuff is kind of wild, which. Which we'll get into. But I think we. We were talking about, like, how this opened up a bigger story. The bigger story was not just this widespread drug use, but a high number of deaths on Fort Bragg, where in one year you had 105 soldiers die for different things, but all kind of sucks over two years and over that same time, you had, like, less than five soldiers killed for.

[B]

Overseas for. Yeah, got it. Exactly.

[C]

That's crazy. So what made. What makes Bragg special here? Because Special Forces isn't just at Bragg, but Bragg seems to have these problems at such a higher level.

[B]

Well, there are Special Forces groups elsewhere, but. But Bragg is the headquarters of the Special Forces. So every single Green Beret is trained at Bragg before being sent to, like, Fort Carson or Fort Campbell or MacDill or what have you. It's also, as I mentioned, it's where the Joint Special Operations Command is, and it's where a third group is and one of the largest Special Forces group. So it is certainly the center of gravity, the entire U.S. special Operations community to what you're talking about, Mike, about the coke stuff, you know, and it being all over the house. I. I really struggled at the beginning of reporting this story to credit some of what people were telling me, because as a reporter, you're naturally skeptical. And people were telling me stuff like, oh, yeah, all those guys do coke. And I'm like, okay, so probably the ones that you met are cokeheads. That's crazy. But, you know, I don't think it's really that. Probably not that widespread. You know, I'm thinking specifically about this woman named Jessie Marie Lindsley, who called me, got my number somehow, when I first was reporting this story, told me that she was one of the last people to see Billy Levine alive. You know, this is a woman who, by her own account, she's a drug dealer. And by accounts, people who close to her, she's also, you know, a sex worker. Someone who talked in a voice is very clearly the voice of someone who does a lot of drugs. And so I'm talking to her, and she's the first person to tell me, she said, there is a cartel on Fort Bragg. No, she told me Billy Lavine, she said, Batman worked for the cartel. And my response was, okay, you don't mean that literally, do you? And she said, oh, I definitely mean that literally. A lot of guys who come up through third group or retire from Delta Force do. So I didn't even. I didn't even quote her for the first Rolling Stone article that I wrote because that claim to me seemed so outlandish that I honestly made the mistake of I did fly. I immediately flew out to meet her in Fayetteville. I wanted to get her full story. I didn't just dismiss it, but unfortunately, and I don't even know what to make of this, Jesse Marie Lindsay was murdered Shortly after telling me that. And I'm still not clear exactly, you know, what the circumstances of who killed her. I mean, a person has been convicted. It's unclear. It may not have had anything to do with this stuff, but that was when I first started to realize just how deep and dark a place Fayetteville, North Carolina is next to this military base and how much drugs and violence are sort of blowing back, you know, from the forever wars that we were talking about.

[A]

Yeah, I think you quote, I think you quoted her in the book as. When you said, what do you mean by cartel? And she said, mexicans who will kill you if you don't pay them for drugs.

[C]

Well, that's what I was just going to say. When you hear the word cartel, you think of Mexican cartels. And so what the hell.

[A]

Yeah, the fact that.

[C]

Is that what he was working for,

[A]

Retired special operations guys just stay in town and work for the cartel.

[C]

But in North Carolina, it's like, North Carolina, North Carolina. We're not talking about a border town. Like, what is going on here?

[B]

North Carolina, actually, come to find out, is a major drug trafficking corridor. I had no idea either. But it actually has that coastline that's perfectly positioned towards the Caribbean. I mean, it's just, if you look at a map, you know, you can see why North Carolina is that way. It's also right in between the north and the south in the middle of I95. Like, North Carolina is a cartel state. Like, I, I really didn't realize that. By the way, Mike, that quote, she actually said, someone who's associated with Mexicans who will kill you if you don't pay for your shit. And, you know, there's a lot of living people named in the books. I have to be careful who. I have to be careful what I say. But there's someone who matches that description. Someone who's associated with Mexicans. In other words, what she means by that, because, you know, I worked in Mexico reporting on the cartel wars and some of the worst cartel battle zones of Mexico. So I'm familiar with those organizations too, and how they work. And that's why I wanted to understand what people mean when they talk about cartel. Because come to find out, a lot of people talked about a cartel in Fort Bragg, and I eventually realized there was something to it. But what does that mean, cartel? Well, you know, Mexican cartels like Losetas or a Sinaloa cartel, they're not. Would they have operatives in the United States? They have operatives all over the United States, but I don't Think there are people who carry guns. I think there are people who live quietly in suburban houses and then just distribute wholesale product. And it's the people, they have local point people that they sell to. And it's those people, you know, who we can call the cartel in the United States. And, you know, they're not all Mexican. They're the people carrying drugs.

[A]

They're JSOC guys.

[B]

Well, people carrying guns and selling drugs at a really high level, you know, are not necessarily Mexican because those guys try to really blend into the background. Anyway, I digress.

[A]

No, no, that's. That's a really important point. And I do want to. I do want to get into how this all formed, right, and kind of its parallels with. With the war on terror, because I think in a lot of ways, it begins under George W. Bush when you have the Iraq war starting to go very badly for them. You mentioned the beginning. No one thought it was going to last a long time. Easy in, easy wasn't an easy in and wasn't an easy out. So you had this hidden surge in Iraq under General McChrystal, where essentially there was this, this, this hidden, heavy reliance on special operations, where essentially the strategy was cell phones are new. The intelligence services can turn every cell phone into a listening device. So what we're going to do is we're going to listen to all Iraqis, people who say stuff that's suspect. A special operations every night is going to go in and shoot them in their beds in the middle of the night. And that becomes like a modus operandi for the special forces in Iraq before the official troop surge. And so this begins kind of a new era for jsoc. And also this is where drug abuse starts to begin, where you don't have cocaine use being seen there, but you have them getting drugs from their medics and abusing those drugs and things like that. And so talk about this kind of first phase of where this all kind of kind of begins.

[B]

Yeah, just what you said around 0708, the surge. There was the surge that was sort of on the surface, which was the conventional troops that were sent to hold down the fort in places like Baghdad. But the real surge was behind the scenes, where JSOC was radically empowered to carry out assassination operations. You mentioned the NSA and how these developments coincided with the adoption of cell phones in Iraq and in the Middle east and how, you know, people at that time were just completely unaware that, hey, the US Government can listen to everything you say. However, it's shocking how few Arabic Speakers are employed by chase soc and also the CIA. The CIA probably has a few more. But so I point that out because a lot of the times, the assassination missions, you know, you're talking about shooting people in their beds. A lot of times that wasn't because of anything that they were heard saying on the phone. It's simply because of who they called. So because of the lack of oversight, because all this happened at night because there's no reporting around it, you know, because of how aggressively they decided to implement this program. A lot of times it was just a matter of, you know, we think this one guy, maybe he is part of the insurgency, so we're going to kill him and everyone that he's talked on the phone with, you know, who we can identify through, you know, through drone fees or whatever, that makes them look anyway, suspicious. So, you know, there was. They really, really painted with a broad brush, what have you. They. Yeah, they just swept a lot of people into it. And there's reason to believe that the error rate, like the people that they killed was. It was certainly higher than 50%. Like, that's the sort of back of the envelope, rough and ready estimate that people involved in this will say, yeah, about half of the house we hit. You know, it was bad intel. So that in itself, to me, I was shocked by that. I thought that night raids were a lot more precise and they're just not. A big part of it is just sort of maintaining the appearance of offensive momentum and terrorizing these populations in the submission, you know, so from there, that was the Iraq war. It ended in. It ended a few years later when Obama came in and basically withdrew almost all u. S. Troops by 2011. However, what Obama went on to do after that was to escalate the war in. In Afghanistan. And because the surge, including the JSOC hidden surge, had been perceived as a success because it did succeed in reducing. It was kind of a fluke. And I think it had more to do with a truce that Iran brokered.

[A]

But yeah, that's the thing is these raids, like, you know, to give people an idea of like, the scale of like, how much this was happening. You cite in your book that, you know, Special Operations claims 90% of insurgent deaths in Iraq during this time, which. Which is insane because when you think about how many people, like conventional units were killing, to say that 90% was coming from these, like these night raids is. Is really wild. But yeah, I mean, the idea that this succeeded when it really was, you know, both a deal that Iran brokered that you mentioned, but also just literally paying the US paying tons of militias to like stop shooting at them to give the appearance that they had won. Yeah. You know, McChrystal gets credited as, as the mastermind of the victory in Iraq.

[C]

Wait, wait, I, I need Seth to say this again because that is a crazy statistic because I mean, we, I, I, you hear about summary executions, you hear about some of these massacres that stuck out as the worst atrocities during the Iraq war, but I had no idea that these night raids were taking place, summary executions were taking place of just like hearsay on cell phones that imprecise and that frequently. Can you just really quickly summarize that, Seth, because that is horrifying.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. They called it nodal analysis. And McChrystal is very good at coming up with these kind of like McKinsey style jargon. But nodal analysis, I think is what, what they mean by that is they say, okay, you're a node. We think you're an insurgent, and therefore everyone that you're connected to in a circle that you've made a phone call to, who's like a male, there may be other indicia that they look for, like maybe someone who owns a weapon, although a lot of men in Iraq owned weapons. But that's how they're basically doing it is through that type of imprecise calculations. And actually an early draft of the book contained my attempt to do some math and come up with an estimate of how many people JSOC killed in Iraq in just 2007 and 2008. We ended up scrubbing it from the book because it was a little bit too speculative. But, you know, I think that JSOC may have killed a hundred thousand people in a year, which is astonishing when you think you realize you're talking about

[A]

these, the number of JSOC people.

[B]

This is going on. Yeah, this is the ratio. Yeah, the ratio is insane. And also, you know, that's a little bit corroborated by the type of bragging that some of these guys will do, because I talked to the wives, ex girlfriend, sisters, and it's commonplace for Delta operators who are active during this time to claim to have kill counts that are higher than 100. You know, they're talking about, I personally killed more than 100 people. Which is, just think about that, let that sink in.

[A]

I mean, that gives you everything about, like, about this story, right? Where it's like, how is it possible that this elite professional fighting force has, has become these, these derelicts on Fort Bragg. And it's like, well, one thing that this accomplishes, you've got a bunch of these guys and then you set them out on deployment, after deployment, just, just create people that have killed massive numbers of people. And what kind of people do you think that that produces? You know, people that are also coming back with large sums of money that they have strapped to their bodies because they have stolen them from the pallets of cash, unaccountable cash that have just gone to the country.

[C]

Yeah, I know that we want to move on from this, but it is just so crazy. Like the bad apple depiction of like, those who committed, like I, I said again, those atrocities that we all know about, the Hadith, the massacre and the, you know, Fallujah and all that. But it's like this seemed so systematic and institutionalized and the amount, the sheer volume of people who were being executed, I mean, it just makes you think of like the Sam Harris argument that all, you know, they're just killing each other. And like, the direct deaths were actually just insignificant. When you look at, just see Rockies let loose and like, ended up killing each other because of all the sectarian violence. It's just so offensive and crazy on his face. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Well, that's because, you know, he's a mouth breathing Islamophobe and he really hates Muslims. He just hates them just the same way that Klansmen hate African Americans. That claim.

[C]

He really does.

[B]

That claim is for bosses. That isn't true.

[C]

Yeah. And then on the other hand, he's. He has a mindfulness, apparently. So it's like, you know, you, you balance your Islamophobia.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Hatred for Islam with just meditation. But let's talk about what you were just talking about, which is McChrystal was rewarded by Obama, put in charge of the Afghanistan war, where we then see two things happen simultaneously. A surge in overdose deaths among special forces and nearly 8,000% increase in heroin production under US occupation. So this is one of the things I'm most excited to talk to you about because this is one of the least reported aspects of the Afghanistan war that I think everyone knows. In the background there was like, heavy drug trafficking going on, opium production, surging the protection of opium crops. All of this was just, you know, happening under the radar and never really reported on in, in the way that it should be. So talk about this.

[B]

I'm glad you brought that up. A lot of people are familiar with the whole dark alliance thing with Gary Webb, and to this day it remains, like, controversial. Although Broadly accepted that the Contra rebels of Afghanistan or Nicaragua, with CIA backing and CIA knowledge, were trafficking cocaine into Los Angeles, and that that cocaine supply fueled the crack cocaine boom. You know, that was hugely controversial for decades before they finally made that movie with Jeremy Renner not too long ago.

[A]

That's what it takes, like a Hollywood film about it.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[B]

My point is, what went on in Afghanistan was a thousand times worse, ten thousand times worse than. Than anything that the contrast did. I mean, the complicity of the US Government as a whole. I'm talking about the military, State Department, CIA, usaid, dea, FBI, all of them. Their complicity in all of this is so overwhelming, overt, sustained, winning, that it boggles my mind that. That the true story of Afghanistan war really hasn't been told until, you know, I like to think now that my book kind of shines a light and begins to tell it for the first time. And, you know, there may be a reason for that, because while I was writing the book, not only did the. The US withdraw from Afghanistan, but the Taliban took over in 2021, and then after about two years of being in charge, had managed to completely eradicate all drug production from Afghanistan. So it was really that event taking place in 2023, where the United nations certified that the Taliban, you know, those narco terrorists we've been told are responsible for producing all the drugs in Afghanistan. In most credible mainstream institutions in media and government have all made this claim for 20 years without qualifying in any way that the Taliban were behind all of this. But once they get back in power, so weird. They eliminate this massive drug industry that's producing a thousand metric tons of pure heroin per year. That's so weird. Why would they do that? Why would they. I thought this is how they made all their money. And that's when I really realized that I didn't need to hold back and pull. Pull the punches because there's a lot of, like, you know, fog of war around the heroin production, Afghanistan. But that kind of clinched it in a certain way. Up until then, I was already, like, struggling to identify, okay, so the Taliban, they're narco terrorists. They're producing heroin, Afghanistan. All right, who is one of them? What is one named, like, Taliban figure who's involved in this? What is the proof that they're. They're involved in this? And to cut to the chase, I was unable to find any evidence that there was any member of the Taliban or any, like, Taliban figure, any official who was important to the Taliban movement, who was in a. In a. In A serious, sustained way, for sure, verified way, like involved in the drug trade. You just can't find that proof. I even, I was so concerned that I was missing something. I didn't use very many research assistants, but on this point I actually hired a research assistant. I said, prove me wrong. Oh, here's your job. Find a Taliban who was actually involved in the drug industry. And she was unable to come. Actually she did come up with two names, but come to find out they were actually CIA assets.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[C]

Well, that's what I was just going to say. How did it work and who was involved in it? Because clearly you came across the real culprits here who were facilitating this massive operation.

[B]

So that's the flip side. It is so easy to find members of the US backed client state who were for a fact involved in the drug trade at the highest level. Starting with Hamid Karzai and his brother Ahmed Wali Karzai. It's the biggest narco in Afghanistan. I mean, this was a drug cartel. Hamid Karzai was like El Chapo Guzman. It was that just blatant. It's just on its face. And his top defense minister, Fahim Khan, also one of the biggest narcos in Afghanistan. I listed a lot of names in my book, Hazarat Ali and I have citations too. The book is full of citations. I'm not looking at crazy stuff. I'm looking at real reporting, often from US government sources, especially the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan and Reconstruction.

[A]

You mentioned the UN report that showed that the vast majority of poppy profits were from drug trains, drug chains outside of Afghanistan, which, you know, interestingly enough, there's drug trafficking happening by soldiers coming back and forth from Afghanistan frequently and being distributed.

[C]

Well, that's what I was wondering. How is it being brought back? You know, because it's. There was such a surge in an opium deaths, heroin overdoses here in the US like because of just all this production was going through the roof. And it's like, I wonder if there's, you know, the CIA trafficking planes, like bringing back giant blocks of heroin. Like how the hell was this? How is this working? It wasn't just soldiers individually stacking and bringing it.

[B]

Well, that's how. That's where people who really want, you know, to prove that. That's where I diverge with folks who really think the worst of this. Because I don't think that the c. I think the CIA and the military simply don't care about the drug. Exactly. They don't think it's part of their Mission, they couldn't care less. And it turns out that the war, the narco warlords and their militias, well, those are the guys who you can just pay them to do whatever you want. They're the guys who have no sense of patriotism. They're the guys who will walk up to their neighbor and put a bullet in their head. Why? Because they're fucking drug dealers. The drug traffickers. Workers. And so those people make natural allies for the US military. And you see that, that pattern repeated again and again, going all the way back before Vietnam, you know, to the, to the Kuomontang and to the Corsican mafias that the CIA worked with in World War II. I mean, it's. And the Cuban exiles you already talked about, the Contras, Colombian government and military. Like all of these forces are some of the biggest drug trafficking forces in the world and in history. So I think that it's. That that's like the structural reason why we see this happening again and again in American history. But nevertheless, my mind is blown to the extent to which the American public, including myself, I thought, I consider myself a relatively well informed person. But for the 20 years that the Afghanistan war was going on, I really had no idea that. That Hamid Karzai's government and Ashraf Ghani's government were gigantic drug cartels that were doing nothing but pumping heroin into every continent on earth and causing massive heroin crises, not only in Europe and in Russia and in Australia, but in neighboring countries around Afghanistan. We're devastated by Iran and Pakistan has some of the worst rates of addiction in the world. And of course, Afghanistan has the highest rate of drug addiction of any country in the world. The last thing I'll emphasize then is that the heroin crisis in the United States, which we're living with today in the form of the fentanyl crisis, because all those people who are addicted to heroin went over to fentanyl. It's the number one cause of death in the United States for adults age 18 to 45. Number one. That all traces back to the massive supply of heroin that came out of Afghanistan, where they increased the world supply of heroin by an order of magnitude. And so it was extremely cheap and extremely potent, cheaper than prescription drugs. And the failure of our press to link those two phenomenon is just a gigantic dereliction of duty.

[C]

It's just crazy that no one links that to foreign policy. No one links the most obvious thing in front of our faces.

[B]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[A]

8,000% increase. I'd never heard of an 8,000% increase. Of anything, you know, that's like a big number.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm trying to get a scale that big.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, maybe the Pentagon's budget. True. Yeah. So, like, there weren't planes coming back to Bragg filled with heroin. Maybe there probably was some soldiers that smuggled some back on their bodies as they did stolen cash. But the bigger thing that was being sent into traffic into the United States through Fort Bragg from Afghanistan was the soldiers themselves who had been going on these deployments, taking part in night after night after night of shooting people in their beds, developing drug addictions overseas, coming home, getting ready to do it all again and. And bringing back that kind of. That sadism, that total freedom to do whatever you want, to have a total impunity. You know, you write about how the units, these special operations units had literally had protocols for when someone commits a crime, a sexual assault, a drug crime, there's a protocol in the unit to make sure it doesn't get out to the press and to cover it up before it becomes a thing. And so you have this freedom overseas, and then you have this freedom once you get home. And so by this time, by the time that the Afghanistan war, before Trump comes in, like as Obama's going out, we have this kind of JSOC is. Is. Is a new thing. People have been through a lot of different things. It's developed a new kind of culture. You did, you mentioned a funny thing that I'd forgotten about, but when Obama announced the end of the Afghanistan war in 2014, which turned out to not be the end, turns out he did it while he was on vacation in Hawaii, maybe looking for his. His future home. But that's just an interesting parallel to all of the. That comes along with it. So you have kind of this, you know, this. You have the Iraq. You have the Iraq surge and the kind of new J socket it created during that and all the social problems that came with it back at Bragg, then you have this new phase of the Afghanistan war where then that gets unleashed on Afghanistan in a major way, which mixes in with drugs quite a bit more. And then you have Trump come in and in a way does usher in, it can. An even more brutal era of jsoc, possibly where you have the first Trump administration lifting all restrictions or approval methods for calling an airstrike, which is one of the things that these special operators are doing. You have this idea that there's no such thing as war crimes anymore. You can do whatever you want. You will get pardoned if you do something that's clearly illegal. So it created even more freedom than what already these, these operators thought that they had. You had some really unrestrained things. Like you write about how there is. They tried to bomb the Tabka Dam, which is the largest dam in Syria, where you had, where the only reason it didn't happen is because the munition turned out to be a dud. But had that happened, who knows how many people that would have killed? That was just a little bit nuts. You have this notorious JSOC raid in Yemen, which maybe you can say something about that, like, has connections to Trump's doctor. And so you have these kind of. Somehow you think that there has been a bottom or like the things couldn't get any crazier. But in this first Trump term, you do have these incidents. The Yemen raiders want you to talk about this potential dam bombing where things are kind of getting crazier with these guys. And then another thing that you mentioned that I wanted you to talk about if you have something to say about is, is JSOC in a lot of ways. Like the Delta, the Delta archetype has kind of spread to the rest of these units where you have a guy who says, normally you'd be able to tell who's Delta and who's not, but now everyone looks like they're Delta. And even like people in this, like, civil affairs brigade, which I remember Civil affairs guys when I was deployed, they looked like I did. Now you have these civil affairs units that, that look like Delta Force guys. And so talk about this new era and then its connection to kind of what, what you're seeing at Bragg simultaneously as you're seeing these, these things escalate abroad.

[B]

Well, every U.S. president has basically done the same thing when they've come into office, which is loosen the rules of engagement, increase the power autonomy around, around JSOC and use them more than they have been using before. So I criticize harshly Bush and Obama and Biden, but I can't help but reserve the heart. The heaviest criticism for Trump because he's just such a disgrace and his influence is so negative. I mean, all the things that you said about pardoning war criminals. And the thing is, to understand about Trump, I think in this regard is that in a lot of ways, Trump is out in of front front of these guys in the sense that he's actually worse than they are. Because if you look at the case of Eddie Gallagher, for example, Eddie Gallagher was turned in by his own teammates. So these guys are not bleeding heart liberals or whatever in any, any Way. So. But. But Gallagher was such a psycho and such a murderer that his own teammates, who live by a code of silence, decided to break that in his case and turn him in. The seals.

[C]

What did he do?

[B]

He murdered a bunch of people in Mosul. It just. He was trying to top Chris Kyle's, you know, American Sniper claim for the most kills in history. He was on a bunch of drugs. Gallagher was in a bunch of drugs. He was taking Tramadol. I talk about Tramadol in the book. It's a prescription opiate that a lot of special ops guys were on. So he's. He's rolling on trammies every day and going out and just setting up and shooting everyone he can. Even when the SEALs wanted to make an example of this guy, a scapegoat, you could say Trump actually said, your scapegoat. Your worst guy in your entire community. That's the one I want to elevate and make like part of my brand. And so the influence on the special operations community is just terrible for. As a result of Trump. I mean, he's such a toxic figure that. Because what happens is that, you know, there are people in the. In the special operations community who do live by their own internal code of ethics. It may not be the same one that you and I share, but they're not criminals in the sense that we're talking about. They're not drug addicts in the sense that we're talking about. Those people exist in large numbers, but there's fewer and fewer of them as the years go by, because they're disgusted by the things that they're seeing around them.

[A]

Yeah, well, get us to where, you know, kind of things are at now. Right. I mean, what. What is that situation on Bragg? Right. Because you have this. That. This end of this Trump era. You have this new era under Biden and now Trump, too, where you have the Ukraine war, you have the Gaza genocide. Of course, there's probably some JSOC involvement in both of those things. And so we have this kind of continually devolving US Foreign policy. And you have a devolving situation on Bragg, where I think the last big case you write about in your book is a soldier who fell out of the sky near Fort Bragg. And so it's not getting any less weird at Bragg as things have continue to devolve overseas.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And definitely talk about what they're doing, what they're doing in Ukraine and Israel right now. I'm curious if you have any insight

[B]

in Ukraine and Israel, they are so In Ukraine, we know that there's special operators on the ground. That was reported. I actually tweeted about that when I was arrived in Ukraine. When I first got there, I talked to a source on D background who knew what was happening. He told me, you know, after, within the first days of the invasion, he said that there was Delta and Team six were operating there. I actually tweeted that when I had first joined Twitter and it just totally blew up. And I was, to my shame, eternal shame, I was cowed into deleting that claim because it turned so controversial. I had so many people, NATO, these NAFO trolls swarming me. However, a few months went by and it was freaking reported by the New York Times and the Walsh and the Washington Post based on those discord docs, documents that leaked.

[C]

Never succumb to NAFO trolls.

[B]

I never will again. I never will again. Don't back down from anything. Like I said, I just joined.

[C]

Never give him an inch.

[B]

Yeah, never give them an inch. I won't again. Because, you know, my information was correct and it was timely information that people needed to know anyway. So now we know they're in, they're there in Ukraine. They're probably doing a lot more. I think the CIA probably has more of a lead role. Is my sense from reading what's going on over there is that the CIA is more active than, than jsoc and there's a lot of car bombs going off in Russia, inside Russia. There's a lot of generals being assassinated. There's a lot of buildings that are going up in smoke. Who's behind that? You think it's the Ukrainians doing it by themselves? Do you think they suddenly developed agency and are now able to just decide whether to attack inside this nuclear armed power and assassinate their military figures? I don't think so. I don't think that's the way the world works. In Israel there's, you know, we know that they're over there because, well, Delta Force has a base in Israel. They're there all the time. They're tight with the Israelis and you know, there was pictures with them and Biden, you know, in the background, some Biden photo. There was obviously guys who just, just clearly are Delta, if not some other closely related unit. And then there was a crash of a helicopter carrying 100, carrying five soldiers from the 160th soar, the JSOC aviation element that I was talking about earlier. So we know that they're there. What exactly are they doing? Well, we're not sure because they're more and more secretive than ever, and they're getting better at their secrecy, you know. But I will say that the larger paradigm of U. S. Warfare has evolved to more reliance on proxy forces. So I don't think there are, in those countries you mentioned in Ukraine or in, In Gaza. I don't think that there. I have not seen any evidence that there's operators in combat where they are active still is in Syria, Iraq and Somalia. And this never gets reported on unless some Pentagon official decides to pick up the phone and call Helene Cooper or Eric Schmidt or another stenographer at the New York Times to tell them, hey, we killed this guy. We want you to write a story. Unless that happens, there is no reporting around the extrajudicial executions that are taking place. But one thing Trump is good for is that he talks about this stuff. He runs his. Not like Biden never breathed a word about targeted killings in Syria during the time he was in office. But Trump gave a speech in Qatar not too long ago, I think a month or two months into his term, and he said, just since I've been inaugurated, so I can't remember if it was one, two, three months, but he said, you know, we've killed 68 terrorists in Iraq, Syria and Somalia. And we know that the, the Delta Force kill team, which I talk about in my book, the expeditionary targeting force, we know that's the unit that's there that's doing those things in Iraq and Syria. Somalia, I think, is. Is SEAL team six, I'm not mistaken.

[C]

So this is just still under the auspices of Al Shabaab and isis.

[B]

Then in isis, well, they're, they, they would say that it's ISIS in Iraq and Syria and in Somalia. Yeah, they would say that it's Al Shabaab, but I don't know who they're killing. Trump said, We've killed 68 people. I mean, I think they're could just very well be killing people that are linked to Iran, people that are linked to. I don't know. I mean, it's completely allowed to know.

[A]

That's the thing. We're just allowed to pay for it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, I just want to end by, you know, what is really quickly. What's the, what's the situation on Fort Bragg now? Is that thing cleaned up?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Or what's the. What's going on there?

[C]

It's all worked out.

[B]

I realized this is the scariest thing that I can say and kind of almost gives me a sense of vertigo to contemplate, which is that, you know, I realized in the course of reporting the story that I was only scratching the surface because of the way in which I dug up information. Every single little nugget morsel information was so hard won, it either came through a FOIA request or an interview where I was going around knocking on people's doors, looking up people's phone numbers and addresses. And I ended up piecing together a mosaic that feels like a relatively complete story. But having been the person who did that, I know that there is so much that I missed. And now I've seen how things like the death of Mark Lesher, which took place two years before I got into this story, I never heard about that. But as I've been working on this story, I have seen those cases transpire basically in front of my eyes and I now understand why we don't hear about them. The sort of protocols you were talking about. So I can give a couple of examples. There was a Delta Force soldier named Lee Vampola who was driving drunk really way over the speed limit and plowed into a couple of teenagers and sent two teenage boys to the hospital, really serious injuries and then fled from the police and had to be like tackled in the woods. Just a complete psychopath who's psychopathic behavior or just, I don't want to say psychopathic, but criminal and dangerous. And so that was reported in the news, but it just says that it does. I'm not, I can't even remember if it said that he was in the US Army. It definitely didn't say he's Delta Force. So stuff like this gets reported but the connection to the unit is not drawn. That happened again and again. I saw it in another case when a lifelong Delta Force guy named David Jensen at the end of 2023 killed his wife at their house in Whispering Pines, which is in Moore county by for Bragg. And once again there was a report that you can read about this guy and this, this, so this, so this tragic murder suicide that took place. But there's nothing that connects him to Delta Force or jsoc. He would have no way of knowing that. It's only by I, by that time I had developed sources in the community who would send me stories and say hey, send me the link to this relatively pedestrian article about a murder suicide and say hey, this guy was Delta. Or the one about Lee Van Polo that I mentioned, they would send to me and say this guy is Delta. It's only after I developed these sources that I started getting this information percolate and I realized how messed up this unit, how common it is for these guys to act out in this way, and how it all kind of gets swept under the rug. It's not only through their own protocols, but also the sort of attitude on part of the mainstream media where it's really indelicate to talk about Delta for, so that we just don't talk about that. We kind of just look the other way and pretend that that unit doesn't exist.

[A]

Yeah. And your book focuses on the, the, the murder and drug aspect of it, but there's a lot of sex crimes too, that I know that you've been tweeting about and things like that that weren't exactly a big. You allude to them or have some coverage of them in the book. But that's probably a whole other angle. That is a whole other epidemic there as well.

[B]

That's a whole other angle. I said the worst thing I could say actually has something worse I can say about Fort Bragg. I couldn't get into the child sex stuff. That just wasn't, it just didn't fit with the main subject. But, yeah, I started to uncover that because I realized that's another big thing that's going on at Bragg. And so here's something to think about that might keep you up at night. In the past, let's say two, three years, I have not read about even a single case of a Fort Bragg soldier. I'm going to use strong language here. Just I, I hesitate to even breach the subject. It's so appalling, you know, trigger warning for people that have experienced sexual assault or trauma in that regard. But I had, in the past few years, I have not seen one case of one of these Special Forces or 82nd Airborne guys raping a woman. In that same time, I've seen like 15 cases of them raping children. Now, what is going on with that? I would like to know. And I really can't even figure it out. I, I maybe something to work on next. But I've linked it to tentatively, just like I did with the drug stuff. You know what else our, our client state in Afghanistan was doing besides trafficking heroin? Well, they were trafficking children. Another thing that we were told is just part of Afghan culture, something that they're all doing, but something the Taliban is doing too. It's the exact same story. When you look at the Taliban, you find out not only were they not doing that Bhatia Bazi is what they call it, boy play. They actually first emerged in the 1990s to suppress that despicable practice that was being done by warlords that were backed by, armed and funded by the CIA in the 1980s. Exactly the same parallel thing as with the heroin trafficking. And the whole time that the US was in Afghanistan, they were working with and protecting and funding and arming guys who were systematically raping little boys, stealing them from their houses, keeping them in chains on US basis. Chained children on US bases. They were raped on a nightly basis. What can we even say about this? What can we make about this? Like I. I just struggle to wrap my mind around not only the evil of it, but how little anyone ever said about it. The State Department, one month before the US withdrew from Afghanistan, finally issued a report very belatedly denouncing this practice and acknowledging that there was, I quote, a government pattern of sexual slavery on government compounds. So I don't. Those are very, very hard words to find in this technical document, State Department document. They're saying that on the government that we set up in Afghanistan there was child sexual slave slavery taking place. So I think about that and then I think about these guys who in Fayetteville are getting every. I just posted it just yesterday or two days ago. There was one who was convicted of doing horrible things towards who he believed was a 14 year old girl. Some of the cases are way worse than that. Look at the stuff I posted about it on Twitter. Like I haven't written about this, but I've been posting about it. Like it's just appalling. Where do these guys contract this sickness? Was it in Afghanistan? I can only ask that question because I really don't know.

[A]

Well Seth, really explosive stuff and you've done a great service by publishing this book. The Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. I encourage everyone to go out and pre order it. It's not out yet. We were lucky enough to get an advanced copy and thank you for that and appreciate being able to talk to you about it early on in your interview. Blitz. So can't thank you enough for being here and for this work you did.

[C]

Thank you so much. There's so much more to say. We're just gonna have to follow up episode with you because it's so dense and this book is so incredible. Thank you so much Seth for all of your work. We really appreciate it.

[B]

Thank you guys for having me on. I'm a huge fan of both of you and the great work that you do and really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book. It's out August 12th, so buy a copy if you can.

[A]

Hell yeah. We will link in the description to how you can buy that and how people can follow you on socials as well,

[B]

Sam.