Read: The Fort Bragg Cartel

It was homecoming weekend, 1989. My friends and I had a wonderful idea. Let’s sneak a few bottles of tequila into the dorm, fire up the blender, then get blindingly, commode-hugging drunk for no reason at all. This was a small school in East Texas, known for not being known for anything. To top off this master plan, we decided to watch Bruce Lee movies while we rapidly consumed our toxic mix. Before the first movie was over, we were primed for action. One friend was slumped in the corner of the room and looked to have lost control of his bladder, and another drooled while trying to play guitar. “I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s go to the game.”

We staggered from the dorm and made our way to the football field, which was packed with fans screaming with bloodlust.

In a stroke of pure luck, we ended up on the sidelines of the visiting team, but had no idea that’s where we were. The team and their fans were of a different racial makeup, which meant we stood out, and not in a good way. As we began cheering for our team, not realizing we were in enemy territory, we began to attract all kinds of attention.

My friend Jim, a strange man with a pet ferret and a yellow Porsche 914, started doing martial arts moves. Jim had no formal training. I realized Jim was playing out a scene from the Bruce Lee movie, playing all the characters by himself. We stood as a group watching in awe. I remember wondering, “Does Jim have tourettes?” Just as the novelty wore off, Jim spun and unleashed a spinning crescent kick toward my friend Doug’s head, just missing his target but connecting with a huge, random stranger who immediately became incensed and said he was going to kill us. Doug, too drunk to know the details, watched Jim’s foot wizz by and thought, “My turn,” unleashing his own spinning crescent kick aimed at Jim’s head. But Doug missed, too. What he did do was manage to connect with the same random stranger, who now became enraged and started swinging. Within seconds, we were in the middle of a full-on melee.

“Melee” refers to a chaotic, close-quarters fight or struggle, often involving multiple people in hand-to-hand combat. It can also describe a confused and tumultuous situation.

To our credit, we held our own until fans began spilling out of the stands and the numbers became unsustainable. Just like Bruce Lee on Han’s Island, discovered on a secret recon mission, up against dozens of guards and the random cobra, we did what we could to summon the power of the dragon, but there comes a time in every cockfight where one needs to take stock and assess the potential of survival or destruction. “Run,” I said. It was every man for himself. I made for the perimeter fence with a posse hot on my tail. Something whizzed by my head. The last I saw of Jim, he was headed for the woods. Doug was on the field, running what looked like a fly pattern, disrupting the game and infuriating the entire stadium.

My followers were bent on my short, sweet, violent death. I was a runner, so I planned to outlast the bastards. I hurdled the fence and made my way into the labyrinth of the campus, a place I knew well. Over the next few terrifying minutes, I began to thin the herd until there was only one. Whoever he was, he should have run track because I could not shake him. He was a few meters behind me, close enough for me to hear him tell me all the things he was going to do to me once he had me in his grasp. None sounded appealing.

PAL: Definition, informal, noun 1. A friend.

Friends don’t need to bring anything when they come over. Friends don’t need to apologize. A friend will eat a lightbulb to help you out. As I began to ponder turning around to face my enemy face-to-face in a mano-a-mano game of death, I rounded a corner to see my friend Carl coming in the opposite direction like a Hellfire missile. Normally, Carl was a math and science geek who loved Jello, but on this particular occasion, lubricated with Jose Cuervo and stage four fear, Carl became possessed. I realized Carl wasn’t running away; he was running toward.

Seconds later, hurricane Carl made impact with my pursuer-parallel to the ground, shoulder to sternum. I slowed, then stopped, then turned around as a strange sound emerged from the man on the ground. Carl stood wild-eyed and slightly bewildered as if he wasn’t sure it was he who landed the final blow. The sound of Gun’s & Roses’, Welcome to the Jungle drifted across campus, and someone threw a bottle of Tabasco sauce from a dorm window, shattering the windshield of a Volkswagen Scirocco. We helped my pursuer up, helped him catch his breath. Carl and I returned to the dorm, where we found the rest of the crew battered and bruised. We did what we knew was right. We made more margaritas and watched more Bruce Lee movies.

Why am I telling you this? Because boys do stupid shit, and when you put clusters of them together, they do stupid shit together. It’s just how it is, so when I read about stupid, illegal, dangerous things happening in the military, Congress, and the administration, it doesn’t surprise me. Some of the worst offenders are the “alpha-male” types who tend to be blunt instruments. If they have succeeded in athletics, it also means they have been pampered, treated differently, and told the rules don’t apply to them. Again, put us together and give us time, and we will come up with something truly idiotic, illegal, dangerous, or all the above. (I have a story about a Denver bachelor party, and another from Vegas.)

I want to be clear. I’m not bagging on the military. I never served, and when faced with the possibility, I was searching for remote cabins in Saskatchewan. But if ten percent of this book is true, someone has a real problem on their hands. Historically, corruption at the highest levels runs parallel to drug cartel activity. This stretches from presidents to border patrol workers manning bridges or waterways between countries. Money talks, and cartels have as much cash as anyone on Earth. The regions we’ve been at war over the past few decades are among the top heroin producing regions in the world. Difficult to access, which means those who can have a distinct advantage.

Seth Harp’s “The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces” is quite the read. After finishing the book, I ventured to YouTube to see what the “Special Forces influencers” had to say. Yes, this is a real thing. What I found was shocking, not shocking. There was little to no denial. There were comments like, “Everyone knows this has been going on forever,” meaning drug trafficking, murder, and a wide range of other crimes repeatedly committed by members of the military. Not denying it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. That was my takeaway.

You also had the “This author is going to get sued,” which is someone’s way of hoping the story isn’t true. As of this post, I could not find any lawsuits against the author. Harp is an army vet and has written about this same subject in Rolling Stone. The influencers also made points about parts of the story being true, but also being slightly off from the full detail. Like how the Zetas were trained by our military, but not in any systematic way. Soldiers from the cartel join the US military to get training, then leave to return to Mexico and teach the cartel members those same military tactics.

The most disturbing part of the book, outside of the more than 100 bodies found in and around Fort Bragg, is the number of crimes committed in and around the base itself. Massive amounts of drug trafficking, sexual assault, murder, and a bevy of other crimes are systematically covered up by military officials, CID, local police, and the local judicial system. In short, everyone is in on it. Some of these folks are nothing but a pure menace, but they keep being released without punishment. Again, shocked, not shocked.

Earlier today, I had a chance encounter with an ex-military, ex-law enforcement officer who, without prompting, went off on the current state of affairs, blasting the military and administration for having “all the wrong people in all the wrong places.” He blasted Trump for lying and dodging the draft, and for calling veterans “suckers and losers,” and Pete Hegseth for being a “bold-faced liar with a racism problem.” Again, easy for me to sit here and cherry-pick parts of the story, but the fact remains, this stuff is happening, and it sure doesn’t seem like much is being done to even curb the issues, let alone put a stop to them.

A part I found fascinating is how much of this activity is tied to members of Delta Force, the elite of the elite unit of the Special Operations community. I also found out there are other units, perhaps even more secretive. I go back to my time drinking margaritas and fighting crowds at football games. Am I proud of those moments? No, but I also can’t deny they happened. We knew it was wrong when we did it, and we did it anyway. It feels like the people responsible for these illegal actions are hiding behind military protection and status, and without serious penalties, will continue. When soldiers come home from war, trafficking heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, with their bodies strapped with stacks of looted cash, someone has a major problem on their hands.

One more thing. To the influencer types in this space. When you have good production, good speaking ability, and good sources based on personal history, you have something going. You really do, but when you then drop some homophobic nonsense, or some overtly ignorant political take, or you tell someone to “stay in their lane” because you don’t like their findings, it erases your credibility. You can’t have it both ways. Hearing any of these statements means no subscription, no comments, and no promotion of any kind. You, of all people, should be better.