Bonus - Fort Bragg and U.S. Special Operations Post-9/11 w/ Seth Harp

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

News, History, Politics

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2026

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Subscribe now to skip the ads and get access to all of our bonus episodes. Danny and Derek are joined by journalist Seth Harp to discuss his book The Fort Bragg Cartel, which covers murder and drug trafficking around the North Carolina military installation. They talk about the rise and institutionalization of U.S. special operations after 9/11, how JSOC and related units expanded their role, permanent war reshaping military culture, special forces’ role in assassination campaigns, the end of the draft, reporting on drug trafficking networks, and the social effects of special operations culture on the families and communities connected to Fort Bragg. Read Seth’s piece in Harper’s, “Mission Impossible.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey folks, Derek here to wish a happy holidays to you and yours.
0:03.6	For a limited time, American Prestige is celebrating with a special discount on annual
0:07.7	subscriptions. Get one today for just $45 for your first year. That means you'll get all of our
0:13.2	content, including weekly bonus episodes, specials, and great series like our new Chinese
0:18.1	prestige for 10% off the regular price. Use the code Xmas 2025, that's XMAS,
0:24.7	20205 when you subscribe to unlock the deal. This offer expires on January 2nd, so please take
0:31.2	advantage while you can, and thanks for listening. That's kind of conversation to your soul.
1:00.2	Hello, Prestige Heads, and welcome to American Prestige. I'm Danny Bessner, here as always with my friend and comrade, Derek Davidson. And we're very excited to welcome back to the podcast
1:05.5	today in his first podcast interview ever. No, I'm kidding. He's been on basically every podcast.
1:12.3	That is Seth Harp. Seth is the author of the Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special
1:19.0	Forces. Well, Seth, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. It's great to be
1:23.6	with you guys. So, you know, there's a lot of pressure on us because you've done a bunch of
1:27.3	podcast interviews. We've got to make this the best one. So I just want everyone to really go into this eyes open and ready to make this the best podcast interview of our goddamn lives. So, Seth, let's start at the beginning and let's start with you. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to write this book, which I think
1:45.2	just reading your stuff and looking at your tweets involves some degree of personal danger,
1:51.7	not just typical academic research, but something that puts yourself at risk. So how did you
1:57.1	come to write this book? I came to write it just because I saw a murder reported in the paper,
2:02.3	a double murder in Fort Bragg reported in the paper and started investigating from there.
2:07.4	Before that, I had been a basically conflict reporter for several years.
2:13.0	I was kind of grounded during COVID, which is when the murder happened late in COVID.
2:17.4	Before that,
2:18.2	I had been working in Ukraine and Iraq and Syria and Mexico and other conflict zones. So, and also
2:24.7	reporting on the U.S. military in general, U.S. military operations in general. So I knew a fair amount
	...

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