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The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces Audiobook
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A New Yorker Best Book of 2025
A Forbes Best True Crime Book of 2025
“Probably the most gripping, memorable, eye-opening book I’ve read in months.” —David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times
“Propulsive.” —The Washington Post
“Engrossing. . . . Truly shocking.” —The New Republic
“The most mind-blowing piece of investigative journalism I’ve read since Chaos.” —Spike Carter, Air Mail
A groundbreaking investigation into a string of unsolved murders at America’s premier special operations base, and what the crimes reveal about drug trafficking and impunity among elite soldiers in today’s military
In December 2020, a deer hunter discovered two dead bodies that had been riddled with bullets and dumped in a forested corner of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the dead men, Master Sergeant William “Billy” Lavigne, was a member of Delta Force, the most secretive “black ops” unit in the military. A deeply traumatized veteran of America’s classified assassination program, Lavigne had done more than a dozen deployments in his lengthy career, was addicted to crack cocaine, dealt drugs on base, and had committed a series of violent crimes before he was mysteriously killed. The other victim, Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas, was a quartermaster attached to the Special Forces who used his proximity to clandestine missions to steal guns and traffic drugs into the United States from abroad, and had written a blackmail letter threatening to expose criminality in the special operations task force in Afghanistan.
As soon as Seth Harp, an Iraq war veteran and investigative reporter, begins looking into the double murder, he learns that there have been many more unexplained deaths at Fort Bragg recently, other murders connected to drug trafficking in elite units, and dozens of fatal overdoses. Drawing on declassified documents, trial transcripts, police records, and hundreds of interviews, Harp tells a scathing story of narco-trafficking in the Special Forces, drug conspiracies abetted by corrupt police, blatant military cover-ups, American complicity in the Afghan heroin trade, and the pernicious consequences of continuous war.
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“Dan John Miller’s no-nonsense delivery is fitting for this explosive exposé…Listeners who are familiar with Delta Force or Seal Team 6 are likely to find the reporting here alarming…Miller’s unflinching delivery encourages listeners to focus on these concerns, which are clearly in need of large-scale change.”
— AudioFile
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“Truly shocking.”
— New Republic -
“[An] explosive investigation…A book to be taken seriously by the country’s political class and military establishment.”
— Atlanta Journal Constitution -
“A blistering exposé…Harp’s investigative rigor and visceral storytelling make this a disturbing must-read for anyone seeking to understand the full cost of America’s overseas conflicts.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Harp, an Iraq War veteran and investigative reporter, also shows how colleagues seeking to protect their ‘brothers in arms’ only made matters worse.”
— Booklist -
“Reads like a nonfiction thriller and never lets up.”
— Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars
Awards
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A New York Times Bestseller
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An Amazon Bestseller
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A New York Times Bestseller in Audio
The Fort Bragg Cartel Listener Reviews
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Samuel Williams, 9/13/2025
About Seth Harp
Seth Harp is an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent. A contributing editor at Rolling Stone, he has reported from countries including Iraq, Syria, Mexico, and Ukraine for Harper’s Magazine, the New Yorker, New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, The Intercept, the Daily Beast, and the Texas Observer. His work has been supported by residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo, and he is a 2025 ASU Future Security Fellow at New America. Before becoming a journalist, he practiced law for five years and was an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas. During college and law school, he served in the United States Army Reserve and did one tour of duty in Iraq.
About Dan John Miller
Dan John Miller is an American actor and musician. In the Oscar-winning Walk the Line, he starred as Johnny Cash’s guitarist and best friend, Luther Perkins, and has also appeared in George Clooney’s Leatherheads and My One and Only, with Renée Zellweger. An award-winning audiobook narrator, he has garnered multiple Audie Award nominations, has twice been named a Best Voice by AudioFile magazine, and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards and a Listen-Up Award from Publishers Weekly.