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

 

By Seth Harp, 2025 

Viking—Penguin Random House 

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

Recently the United States destroyed several boats in the Caribbean Sea and caused the deaths of over 200 people who were on board. President Donald Trump argued that the United States is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels. We might also consider that the Drug Enforcement Administration is funded to the tune of about $3.25 billion. As I’m writing this review, Secretary of War Peter Hegseth is planning to conduct military operations in several Latin American nations. The pretense for this military action is to battle against “designated terrorist organizations.” 

In Seth Harp’s best-selling book, The Fort Bragg Cartel—Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, he makes the following statement that questions the motives of the government in their supposed effort to battle drug trafficking. 

“Throughout its history, the CIA has worked to achieve American national security objectives in partnership with known drug traffickers, including the anti-communist Kuomintang, the founders of modern-day Taiwan; Frances’s Corsican mafia syndicates; Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro; Hmong irregulars in Laos as well as the Royal Lao Army; and the contra rebels in Nicaragua. But American foreign policy elites’ complicity in the international drug trade was never so substantial, sustained, witting, and consequential as in Afghanistan.”

To begin to see how military officers became involved in drug trafficking we need to look at the elite Delta Force. These are the soldiers who go through the most rigorous training. Military commanders are very particular about who is chosen.

President Jimmy Carter gave the orders for the Delta Force to attempt a rescue of U.S. personnel who had been held in Iran. The Iranians had just carried out a revolution where they deposed the hated dictator the Shah Riza Pahlavi. Carter gave refuge to Pahlavi, and this sparked the Iranian people to detain members of the United States embassy. 

Carter ordered Delta Force officers to attempt a rescue of U.S. personnel who had been detained. That effort failed.

When President Regan came into office, he modernized the Delta Force into the Fort Bragg based Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). JSOC officers also supported the contras who opposed the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The contras were known to partially fund their efforts by drug trafficking.

Seth Harp’s book reads like a novel, but the story he reported on was corroborated by facts uncovered by his research. Harp served in the United States Army Reserve and did a tour of duty in Iraq. So, rather than give a full outline of his book, I will look at three of the characters who, directly or indirectly, contributed to drug trafficking in Fort Bragg and the surrounding area of North Carolina.

General Stanley McChrystal

General Stanley McChrystal headed up the JSOC forces under the Administration of President Obama. He quadrupled the number of Delta Force combatants in Afghanistan. 

During his time directing forces in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai was the effective ruler of the country. Seth Harp reported that “Karzai’s government was primarily a military-industrial money-laundering machine for transatlantic security elites, a corrupt conduit through which a trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer dollars flowed, but secondarily and almost as important, it was a massive drug cartel that produced nearly all of the world’s illicit opiates.”

General McChrystal acknowledged that “Too often,” American proxies were “corrupt and despised warlords whom we paid handsomely.”

McCrystal organized teams of Delta Force soldiers, Navy Seals, and Army Rangers to carry out night raids where these forces murdered up to 100 Afghans and leveled entire villages.

In 2015 The New York Times did an expose titled, SEAL Team 6: A secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines. This article reported that the Seal team had been assassinating a dozen or more people every night for years on end.

However, the lead organization in those raids was Delta Force. Billy Lavigne was one of the Delta Force officers who did several tours of duty in Afghanistan under the command of General McChrystal. Lavigne is one of the central true-life characters in Seth Harp’s book.   

Freddie Wayne Huff

Freddie Wayne Huff was a police officer first recruited in Lexington, North Carolina. He was effective in stopping motorists and confiscating large amounts of cash. Because of Huff’s $9 million in confiscations the police department in his district was able to modernize.

Then Huff had a discussion with Karl Culberson, a drug enforcement officer who also had experience working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is the advice Culberson gave to Huff regarding his drug enforcement work.

“What you think you’re doing is noble.” “But they want it here. You’re a pawn. Everything you’re doing is in vain.”

Then Huff pulled over an inebriated insurance executive who had been a donor to the Governor. The executive warned Huff that he would have his job for writing the ticket. Within a month Huff was fired from the police department.

Needing to support a family, Huff got a job shipping appliances needing repair to Mexico. He learned that the owner of the company he worked with was also connected to the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel.

Because of his experience of apprehending motorists, Huff was effective evading searches by the police. This is how police officer Freddie Wayne Huff became the largest drug dealer in North Carolina.

Huff maintained a close friendship with Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas who was stationed at Fort Bragg. Dumas came under a cloud of suspicion for misappropriation of government funds, as well as using and selling illegal drugs. He resigned from the service and formed a partnership with Huff to expand drug dealing to Fort Bragg.

Huff also worked with Billy Lavigne who was a Delta Force officer. Lavigne also sold drugs at Fort Bragg and did several tours of duty in Afghanistan. Lavigne and Timothy Dumas were murdered and became two of 109 military officers who lost their lives at Fort Bragg in a two year period.

Gene Paul Thacker

Gene Paul Thacker was a first-generation Special Forces officer who served in Korea and Vietnam. After his time in the military Thacker purchased a municipal airport in the vicinity of Fort Bragg. Green Berets have used his airfield in their parachuting practices. 

Declassified FBI files and court records reported that Thacker maintained a small fleet of turboprop planes to smuggle huge amounts of cocaine into the North Carolina. Although Gene Thacker was never convicted of a crime, his son, took over the business. Tim Thacker would eventually plead guilty to drug trafficking and firearms charges. 

These drug traffickers who were former police or military officers were able to get away with their illegal activities for many years. Harp documented how the police as well as military commanders refused to prosecute officers for crimes such as possession or trafficking of illegal drugs, rape, and murder. 

There was a documentary film titled Invisible War that reported on many rapes in the military were there was no effort to prosecute the perpetrators. The producers of this film estimated that there are thousands of rapes in the military every year.

The U.S. military eventually left Afghanistan. The Taliban that had been in power before the U.S. occupation returned to power. Clearly the Taliban is a repressive regime. However, Seth Harp reported that the evidence shows that the Taliban eliminated the drug business from Afghanistan. Because that source of heroin was eliminated, a new market in fentanyl erupted. 

The information about U.S. government complicity with the international drug trade isn’t new. There was Alfred W. McCoy’s book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade published in 1972, 1991 and 2003. There was the film American Gangster starring Denzel Washington. Yet President Trump claims that the government is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels. Seth Harp’s book gives us more evidence that exposes the blatant dishonesty of routine government policy.