TeleSUR journalist Jorge Gestoso hosts an interview with Seth Harp, U.S. investigative reporter and foreign correspondent, author of the critically acclaimed bestseller “The Fort Bragg Cartel”, which exposes the web of drug trafficking, plotting and impunity among the elite military soldiers of the eponymous special operations base. teleSUR
00:25In today's program, we're investigating narco-trafficking in the United States with another notable guest,
00:33Seth Harp, journalist of investigation directly from Austin, Texas.
00:40Seth Harp, a warm welcome to our program.
00:46Thank you for inviting me.
00:49Seth, you read in live that translated to Spanish.
00:55The title is The Fort Bragg Cartel, which is the military base, the greatest, the biggest military base in the United States.
01:06The title is The Fort Bragg Cartel, Narco-Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces.
01:16The first question would be, how are you analyzing the military deployment of the United States in the Caribbean near the Venezuelan coasts with officially the mission to battle narco-trafficking?
01:34Well, it's a little ironic because drug trafficking is bigger, a lot bigger in Afghanistan during the occupation of the U.S. forces there in that country for 20 years.
01:56And there was a lot more drug trafficking there than in Venezuela that is not really a country that produces a lot of drugs.
02:06So, at least the accusation that has been made of Venezuela, ironically, it is said that they have to calibre the GPS of these warships,
02:22because actually narco-trafficking must be sent to those ships to the Pacific through which the 87% of the drugs come from and that arrives to the United States.
02:36This is an error of calibre, calibrating the GPS, or is that something behind that you can have some suspicion?
02:47The United States government is always looking for new wars and launching new wars and deploying troops to fight in foreign countries,
03:03especially to generate money for the armed industry in the United States.
03:11And our politicians in the United States are willing to say, to tell any lie that they need to, to convince the United States people that these wars are necessary,
03:29that no one in this country really wants, so it's pure propaganda.
03:36And said, what's the situation of narco-trafficking inside the United States?
03:42Well, what my book exposes is that it is an activity that happens inside of the most elite formations of the United States,
03:56and there's elite soldiers, officials also, whose job is to drug traffic, especially inside of these military bases in the United States,
04:10in North Carolina. That name is Fort Bragg. And it's the biggest base in the United States but it's also the most important base,
04:22because there are many organizations there, secret organizations that are based in that base.
04:34Like for example, the Joint Special Operations Commune, Delta Force, and other groups, military groups,
04:41that do clandestine missions, and inside of that community that they have discovered as networks of drug trafficking.
04:59And that's what my book is about.
05:02And how did you make it to acquire that information?
05:08It was a work of many years. Firstly, and especially, it's based on interviews with ex-people from the community,
05:20and their wives and women like the mothers, the daughters of the soldiers, and even their sisters.
05:34Soldiers that have been assassinated there because there were a lot of homicides in the base,
05:42homicides linked with drug trafficking, and especially with interviews with them, and also with some of the men that were involved,
05:53and also with documents that I, that I procured, obtained through petitions, legal petitions. Yes.
06:07In the particular case, we are speaking about those murderers and disappearances, forced disappearances,
06:16is it by people that knew something about narco trafficking, that want to remain silent,
06:22or those were people who are addicts, drug addicts or traffickers inside the... Why those murders?
06:32The reasons can be all of those you mentioned before.
06:37For example, two of the soldiers that were killed inside of the Fort Bragg,
06:44Bellabine and Timothy Dumas, they were both... They had both written documents on the case of one of them,
06:54a book threatening to expose data, very hard data, on the conspiracy of drug trafficking between Afghanistan and the United States.
07:08The other one, Timothy Dumas had written a letter to a general, a very high ranking general, very powerful,
07:16also threatening him to expose the same data, and they were both found lifeless,
07:25and to this date, the guilty are still not known.
07:30The situation in Fort Bragg is equal, or worse, since the book you released, something has changed ever since it was published?
07:43The situation is the same, nothing has changed till this date, even in new cases of drug trafficking there have happened in the same military base.
07:56You published articles in news media, national and international ones, very respected and known.
08:09At some point, at some moment of this trajectory of yours, have you received pressures?
08:17It sometimes happens, but it doesn't change the fact that I write.
08:23And why do you do this?
08:26Because it's my job. I am an investigative journalist, and it wasn't my purpose to get myself involved,
08:36or get into this subject, that it's so dangerous, but it's what happened to me, and I'm going to continue doing my job.
08:46And telling the story, the true story.
08:51Do you believe that the people of the United States has a clear information of this that you're speaking about in your book?
09:02Well, now they do, because that's my book. And it's been a success. We have sold many copies of the book, but I can say that yes, because for the first time, even though in the past there have been cases, similar cases, for example, in the 80s,
09:28on the complicity of the CIA with drug trafficking from Central America to California, for example.
09:40It's not the first time that it has happened in the history of the United States.
09:47Also, in the particular case you speak about the agencies of the United States, it has been heard or been denounced in more than one occasion that the DEA, this agency of enforcement of drugs,
10:06not only is in charge of combating it, but also the denunciation is that it is a complicit or a direct involvement. What do you know?
10:20What I write in my book is that the DEA has done a cover-up to cover the sources of the heroin that was consumed in the United States for 20 years.
10:39The heroin really came from Afghanistan, but according to the DEA, it came from Mexico, which is not true. It's false. And I have one of the chapters of my book that is about that subject.
10:58Seth, Seth, I invite you to make a brief pause. We are speaking with Seth Hart, journalist of investigation of Austin, Texas, and the author of the book under the title translated like
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11:45We continue speaking to Seth Harp, right from Austin, Texas.
11:51Seth Harp is a journalist of investigation, author of the book The Force Bragg Cartel,
12:01The Force Bragg Cartel, The Most Important Military Base of the United States.
12:07The name of the book is The Force Bragg Cartel, Narco-Trafficking and Murdering the Special Forces.
12:15And inside of what you have been detecting and investigating, so Seth, how does it work the distribution of the drugs?
12:26How does it work the money laundering inside of the United States?
12:31How does it circulate?
12:34And how is there such a consumption in which 30% of the cocaine of the world is consumed inside of the United States?
12:43And that continues.
12:46What have you known?
12:48It's very difficult to say because all of those facts are very dark or covered up.
12:58But we can say that drug trafficking is a market.
13:05It's not a collection of organizations.
13:08And the consume of drugs in the United States is on the base of the world market of drugs.
13:16Without the demand of drugs, of buying drugs, there wouldn't be a supply of drugs in the world.
13:33It's also, as you suggested, the banks in the United States, they are involved with money laundering.
13:45And most of the money in the world that is earned through drug trafficking ends in the United States Bank or in New York or in London.
13:57Even today, regarding this new deployment of U.S. forces in the Caribbean in front of the coasts of Venezuela,
14:12this topic has aroused, the combat to narco trafficking, the version, for example, of the Department of State,
14:21which is these drugs or these cartels of dark cartels come to poison our people, our sons and daughters.
14:33What do you think, from a personal perspective, that inside the United States there is not even a massive campaign to denunciate the danger
14:46and the consequences of the consumption of drugs?
14:51And all that is being done is to denunciate and put the responsibility on those traffickers of drugs,
15:02but not the issue of the consumption consumers in the United States.
15:08Why are they exempt?
15:11They are being saved from being seriously denunciated and attacked.
15:17Well, there exist these warnings in the United States, these campaigns to educate the people on the dangers of drugs.
15:30They do exist, but they are also the United States government, the State Department, and the Defense Department.
15:42They are motivated to create new wars and use any excuse that they can to have new operations
15:55and have more operations and more troop deployments.
16:00And this is the base of their aggression towards Venezuela.
16:05It's hard to say exactly, but we know that it can't be drugs because if they were really worried for the drugs,
16:18they would attack Colombia or Ecuador, where they have their allies that are countries that are really exporting a lot of drugs
16:35or producing a lot of drugs, not Venezuela.
16:38But Venezuela does have a lot of petroleum, and that could be the reason for the aggression against Venezuela.
16:51I don't know, so maybe it is based on wanting the access to that petroleum.
16:57The topic of fentanyl, the consumption and the production of fentanyl, what comments do you have?
17:05Well, it's a very dangerous drug, more dangerous than all of the others, and we don't really know where it comes from.
17:16It's harder to trace the tracks from where it comes from in the world
17:27because it is a chemical, and it's not done through a plant.
17:35It doesn't have a base, an agricultural base.
17:40But it's harder, it's more dangerous for consumers than even heroin.
17:46Also, there is an element that is at least suspicious, that is, that to produce cocaine, here we start off the coca leaf,
17:59in which it is added, a whole procedure through, they call the precursors, chemical products,
18:08and in general, those products, they are imported from the United States.
18:17Those enterprises that export of these chemical products that contribute to the creation of the cocaine generate enormous quantities of sales,
18:36and the money that enters from this business is huge, and that permits us to have suspicions that they are contributing in the issue of narco-trafficking.
18:49However, there are no measures taken, in that sense, there's another proof, that at least some of those actors inside of the United States
19:02are participating in the issue of narco-trafficking with their production.
19:07Well, I can't say much about the fentanyl, because my book is about the 20 years between 2001 and 2021.
19:19And during that time, the drug, the main drug, was the heroin.
19:27And what I can say is that during those years, the government of the United States lied about the sources of the drug,
19:40blaming Mexico, saying that all of the drugs were coming from Mexico,
19:47when in reality, it was coming from Afghanistan.
19:53So, it's possible that now, today, during these times, they are also lying, they're lying again about the sources of fentanyl.
20:05So, I don't know, it's a subject, a very complex one, and I don't want to talk about it without having the data, the real data.
20:15You are working, are you working another book, or are you some sort of investigation related to what you did in your first book?
20:24Well, not yet, because I just published my book a month ago, and I haven't started with a new project.
20:36I don't know if it's possible to buy it outside of the United States, but I do know that if one has access to an Amazon account or Kindle,
21:00they can buy the electronic book, then it's possible to get it through that way, and also, of course, they can buy it in the United States.
21:12I would like to translate the book into Spanish and have a Spanish edition, but we haven't done that project yet.
21:23And, is it available at any library, where, in paper, in, as a book, in libraries throughout the United States, great chains, like?
21:37Yes, sir, in all of them.
21:39How, how is, how is the, the, the people reacting?
21:45Yes, it's been a bestseller.
21:47I'm, yeah, one of the most sold, sold books.
21:54Yes.
21:54Yes, that, that is.
21:56It's been one of the bestsellers in the United States, and it's going to be a TV show as well,
22:03because HBO, that it's a TV channel in the United States, has bought the rights to make, to adapt it into a TV show.
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