The Tucker Carlson Show - Seth Harp Exposes the Murder & Drug Trafficking Taking Place Inside America’s Largest Military Base

00:00:00.000 An all-American and veteran-owned company, Freeze-Dry Wholesalers is offering Tucker listeners a lifetime discount of 15% off with code TUCKER at checkout.

00:00:09.980 Using proprietary freeze-dry technology, Freeze-Dry Wholesalers is the only company in the industry that can freeze-dry whole steaks, entire pork chops, and more.

00:00:19.640 With a diverse line of products lasting for the next 25 years, Freeze-Dry Wholesalers is the perfect option for hiking, camping, or stocking up your emergency supply.

00:00:29.440 Receive a lifetime discount every time you use code TUCKER at checkout.

00:00:34.100 Go to freeze-drywholesalers.com today and be prepared for tomorrow.

00:00:39.000 So you got out of the military in 2011.

00:00:42.020 This is how I understand the genesis of the book that comes out today, The Fort Bragg Cartel.

00:00:48.560 You get out in 2011.

00:00:50.680 You're a reporter.

00:00:51.440 At some point, you start to understand that there are a lot of deaths at Fort Bragg, which is America's biggest army base, some of the special forces.

00:01:03.000 And you start to investigate those deaths.

00:01:07.420 That's right.

00:01:07.780 I first read about a double homicide on Fort Bragg that took place at the tail end of 2020.

00:01:14.500 Just an ordinary article in the New York Times that said that these two veteran special operations soldiers, Billy Levine and Timothy Dumas, have been found murdered on a remote training range at Fort Bragg.

00:01:27.500 They've both been shot to death and their bodies have been dumped in the woods.

00:01:30.220 I also read that Billy Levine was a Delta Force operator.

00:01:56.180 And in all my time reporting on the military, working as a war reporter, and then before that serving in the army myself, I had never heard of a Delta Force operator being in the news for any reason, because it's the most secretive and elite unit in the entire military.

00:02:16.020 And the police were saying that this was believed to be a double homicide from a drug deal gone wrong.

00:02:21.900 And so I knew that there had to be more to the story, because you can imagine if, let's say, a CIA agent was found shot to death and dumped in a park in Maryland or something like that, and the police were saying it was a drug deal.

00:02:35.100 I mean, that's the level of secrecy, and that's how elite Delta Force is as a military unit.

00:02:41.600 What is Delta Force?

00:02:42.400 Delta Force is what's called a special mission unit.

00:02:47.300 It is an army unit.

00:02:50.160 It's part of what's called the Joint Special Operations Command.

00:02:53.840 It was created in the late 1970s to be an elite counterterrorism force for things like hostage rescue.

00:03:01.640 For many years, they were obsessed with the problem or the danger of loose nuclear weapons and drilled constantly for scenarios in which they would be called upon to secure a loose nuclear weapon.

00:03:14.000 This is all pre-9-11.

00:03:15.060 After 2001, after the war started in Iraq and Afghanistan, Delta Force grew quite a bit and came to have a much more prominent role in U.S. military operations.

00:03:28.100 And what they primarily specialize in are clandestine operations, covert operations, what we might call black operations. 0.82

00:03:35.340 That's Delta Force and it's headquartered at Fort Bragg.

00:03:38.220 They get no publicity?

00:03:40.360 None.

00:03:40.760 I actually looked into this when I was writing the book to see if they had ever been talked about in the 20 years that the U.S. had been at war since 2001.

00:03:49.960 And I found that, in fact, they were talked about in the context of the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal and had been implicated in the abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

00:04:00.480 Other than that, for 20 years, they kept their name completely out of the news.

00:04:04.540 So there are other units, famously, that have worked with Hollywood filmmakers a lot, whose members retire and go on talk shows, including this one.

00:04:16.700 And, you know, you sort of know quite a bit about the SEALs, for example, the various SEAL teams and their training, etc.

00:04:22.240 But has there ever been a Delta operator in public talking about the training or the missions or anything like that?

00:04:30.560 There are former Delta Force officers who I've seen occasionally talk on TV.

00:04:37.720 But as far as the regular enlisted guys go, their culture really is, you know, the saying that they have that I've heard repeated is that, you know, SEALs write books, Delta guys write history.

00:04:54.300 Something to that effect.

00:04:55.720 It's very much part of their culture not to come on TV shows, not to talk and not to write books.

00:05:03.080 Interesting.

00:05:04.420 Thereby increasing the mystique.

00:05:05.940 And I think the assumption that we all have is that they're, because they're the most secretive, they are the most impressive.

00:05:13.440 They're very impressive in certain ways.

00:05:16.320 You know, the level of physical fitness that you have to have to be selected to be an operator is very impressive.

00:05:24.400 Marksmanship, you know, other skills that they have.

00:05:26.840 Very tough, tough people for the most part.

00:05:29.860 But as I talk about extensively in the book, the unit has, I think, declined in recent years in terms of its culture.

00:05:42.680 So let's begin with the story of the Delta operator, Billy Levine, and the man with whom he was found dead.

00:05:49.940 Who killed them and why?

00:05:51.200 That's the question that animates this book from the beginning to the end.

00:05:55.520 I mean, although I talk a lot about military history, I talk a lot about foreign policy.

00:06:00.960 Really, it's a murder mystery.

00:06:02.580 This book is at its heart.

00:06:04.240 And the question is, who killed those two guys?

00:06:05.940 And the fact is that there are many, many possible suspects.

00:06:11.440 And that kind of is what made it such a rich topic for exploration.

00:06:15.800 It turns out that Billy Levine, 18 months before he himself was found murdered, had killed a guy at his house in Fayetteville.

00:06:25.200 In fact, he had shot and killed his best friend and fellow Green Beret, a guy named Mark Leshiker,

00:06:30.360 right in front of his, Mark Leshiker's daughter, who was about six years old at the time.

00:06:36.620 And the police, the local police, the sheriff's department, the district attorney of Cumberland County, North Carolina,

00:06:42.820 and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division completely covered up that murder.

00:06:49.680 And I use that word covered up advisedly.

00:06:52.380 I'm actually an attorney myself, so I don't use it lightly.

00:06:55.300 But I devote the first two chapters of the book to showing what the evidence was against Levine

00:07:01.980 and how that case was adjudicated and how he was not even placed under arrest.

00:07:07.360 He was just lightly questioned and let go that same night on the grounds that it had been supposedly a justifiable homicide.

00:07:16.200 When in fact, that theory, that defense was definitively contradicted by the physical evidence.

00:07:23.020 So Levine, having previously killed a guy, then goes on to commit three, or excuse me,

00:07:29.700 I think four or five felony offenses in Fayetteville over the next 18 months,

00:07:35.140 including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for shooting at a guy in the streets of Fayetteville,

00:07:41.460 manufacturing controlled substance for cooking crack in his house, lots of weapons charges.

00:07:46.260 He'd even been arrested for harboring an escapee, which is a new one to me.

00:07:50.780 And in every case, the DA had dropped the charges against him.

00:07:53.940 Who was Billy Levine?

00:07:55.660 He was a Delta Force soldier.

00:07:57.960 He had done more than 12 deployments, more than a dozen deployments in his career.

00:08:03.420 He wasn't a high-level officer in the Delta Force,

00:08:07.400 but he was a veteran operator who had deep experience in America's classified assassination programs

00:08:16.360 in Iraq and Syria and in Afghanistan.

00:08:21.280 So that was the reason why I think he was dealt with such leniency by the authorities.

00:08:29.000 Why did he shoot his best friend to death?

00:08:31.800 It's very mysterious why he did that.

00:08:34.380 And both of them had severe drug problems.

00:08:37.700 You know, this is one thing.

00:08:39.060 Levine was not a one-dimensional character by any means.

00:08:45.720 He's someone whose military career and whose downward trajectory I reconstruct in the book

00:08:50.780 because I think it's so illustrative of what's happened to our military over the past 20 years.

00:08:55.540 He was such a great example of what has happened.

00:09:00.440 He developed very severe PTSD, moral injury.

00:09:03.280 He came to believe that the wars in which he was participating were morally wrong.

00:09:07.720 He had severe substance abuse issues, very severe.

00:09:11.820 He was smoking crack every day and doing a lot of other drugs as well.

00:09:16.400 Wait, while he was a Delta operator who was smoking crack every day?

00:09:19.600 Yes.

00:09:21.060 And I learned that that's not that unusual, to my surprise.

00:09:23.840 But my understanding was in your description suggests that these guys are like basically Olympic athletes

00:09:28.660 whose physical condition is going to be monitored, I assume, by the unit doctor or somebody.

00:09:35.220 Well, you know, operators have a particular type of physical fitness that you really only find in the Army,

00:09:41.620 which is the kind of guy who can, you know, run a two-mile run in 12 minutes,

00:09:46.660 but also smoke a pack a day, you know, and get drunk five times a week.

00:09:51.840 Yeah.

00:09:52.260 I mean, they're very, very... 0.98

00:09:53.420 Just savages. 0.99

00:09:53.940 Just savages, yeah.

00:09:55.740 That's impressive.

00:09:56.620 So, but this guy was maintaining his, you know, his training schedule while smoking crack every day?

00:10:07.480 Yes.

00:10:08.620 And I was shocked to the degree to which, because not only, you know,

00:10:13.940 I served in the conventional part of the military, not in the special forces,

00:10:17.280 and I had also been out for more than 10 years.

00:10:19.960 So, I was very, very surprised when I started investigating Fort Bragg

00:10:25.240 and learning the extent to which cocaine use is normalized in the Green Berets,

00:10:29.380 not just in Delta Force, but in all the Army Special Forces,

00:10:31.680 which is a much larger organization.

00:10:34.480 And Delta Force is pretty small, but the Green Berets is thousands of troops

00:10:38.760 and people just, you know, people that live in this community,

00:10:41.460 live in Fayetteville, live in Moore County, you know,

00:10:44.480 to them, it's just understood that this is just part of the lifestyle.

00:10:47.360 Hate to brag, but we're pretty confident this show is the most vehemently pro-dog podcast

00:10:53.220 you're ever going to see.

00:10:55.260 We can take or leave some people, but dogs are non-negotiable.

00:10:58.700 They are the best.

00:11:00.260 They really are our best friends.

00:11:01.660 And so, for that reason, we're thrilled to have a new partner called Dutch Pet.

00:11:05.660 It's the fastest-growing pet telehealth service.

00:11:09.020 Dutch.com is on a mission to create what you need,

00:11:12.360 what you actually need, affordable, quality veterinary care,

00:11:15.120 anytime, no matter where you are.

00:11:16.460 They will get your dog or cat what you need immediately.

00:11:21.720 It's offering an exclusive discount, Dutch is, for our listeners.

00:11:24.640 You get $50 off your vet care per year.

00:11:27.640 Visit dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more.

00:11:30.580 Use the code Tucker for $50 off.

00:11:32.720 That is an unlimited vet visit.

00:11:35.920 $82 a year.

00:11:37.100 $82 a year.

00:11:38.840 We actually use this.

00:11:39.860 Dutch has vets who can handle any pet under any circumstance in a 10-minute call.

00:11:46.880 It's pretty amazing, actually.

00:11:47.940 You never have to leave your house.

00:11:49.220 You don't have to throw the dog in the truck.

00:11:51.620 No wasted time waiting for appointments.

00:11:53.320 No wasted money on clinics or visit fees.

00:11:55.460 Unlimited visits and follow-ups for no extra cost.

00:11:57.880 Plus free shipping on all products for up to five pets.

00:12:02.240 It sounds amazing like it couldn't be real, but it actually is real.

00:12:05.740 Visit dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more.

00:12:08.740 Use the code Tucker for $50 off your veterinary care per year.

00:12:12.280 Your dogs, your cats, and your wallet will thank you.

00:12:16.140 Hate to brag, but we're pretty confident this show is the most vehemently pro-dog podcast

00:12:21.380 you're ever going to see.

00:12:23.420 We can take or leave some people, but dogs are non-negotiable.

00:12:26.860 They are the best.

00:12:28.420 They really are our best friends.

00:12:29.820 And so for that reason, we're thrilled to have a new partner called Dutch Pet.

00:12:33.820 It's the fastest-growing pet telehealth service.

00:12:37.180 Dutch.com is on a mission to create what you need, what you actually need,

00:12:41.400 affordable, quality veterinary care anytime, no matter where you are.

00:12:45.160 They will get your dog or cat what you need immediately.

00:12:49.780 It's offering an exclusive discount, Dutch is, for our listeners.

00:12:52.800 You get $50 off your vet care per year.

00:12:55.780 Visit dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more.

00:12:58.740 Use the code Tucker for $50 off.

00:13:00.880 That is an unlimited vet visit.

00:13:04.080 $82 a year.

00:13:05.260 $82 a year.

00:13:07.280 We actually use this.

00:13:08.020 Dutch has vets who can handle any pet under any circumstance in a 10-minute call.

00:13:15.020 It's pretty amazing, actually.

00:13:16.100 You never have to leave your house.

00:13:17.380 You don't have to throw the dog in the truck.

00:13:19.780 No wasted time waiting for appointments.

00:13:21.480 No wasted money on clinics or visit fees.

00:13:23.640 Unlimited visits and follow-ups for no extra cost,

00:13:26.360 plus free shipping on all products for up to five pets.

00:13:30.180 It sounds amazing like it couldn't be real, but it actually is real.

00:13:33.440 Visit dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more.

00:13:36.900 Use the code Tucker for $50 off your veterinary care per year.

00:13:41.060 Your dogs, your cats, and your wallet will thank you.

00:13:44.500 You don't want to be passive and tired and dependent, do you?

00:13:48.280 Of course you don't.

00:13:49.900 You want to be strong and self-sufficient.

00:13:52.080 That's the goal, and our friends at Beam can help you.

00:13:54.500 They understand that real strength does not come from drugs.

00:13:57.740 It comes from inside you, internal motivation, internal strength, health.

00:14:03.660 That's the key.

00:14:05.460 Bigger.

00:14:06.640 So we partner with Beam because they have the same values that we have,

00:14:09.660 that Americans have hard work, accountability, free will, independence.

00:14:13.360 Be strong, don't be dependent.

00:14:15.960 Not until you're really old, anyway.

00:14:17.340 Beam can help you achieve that.

00:14:20.000 This great U.S. company is offering our listeners a new bundle,

00:14:23.040 the American Strength Bundle,

00:14:24.440 and it comes with top-selling creatine and protein powder

00:14:27.060 that delivers what your body needs to perform,

00:14:29.640 to recover, and to stay strong.

00:14:31.540 No junk at all.

00:14:32.860 All natural ingredients that actually taste good.

00:14:35.880 You will love it.

00:14:37.380 You can get 30% off this bundle at shopbeam.com slash Tucker.

00:14:41.300 This is not in stores.

00:14:42.500 Just on that page for people who listen to this podcast only.

00:14:47.260 They're encouraging you to be weak.

00:14:49.060 Don't let them.

00:14:49.800 Go to shopbeam.com slash Tucker for 30% off.

00:14:53.040 Who was the man he shot, his best friend?

00:14:56.500 Mark Leshiker.

00:14:57.500 He was a Green Beret in the 19th Special Forces Group.

00:15:00.560 But currently serving when he died, he was?

00:15:03.580 He was.

00:15:04.700 So the 19th Special Forces Group is actually a National Guard unit.

00:15:09.140 So he was a Green Beret. 0.51

00:15:11.740 He was still serving in the National Guard.

00:15:14.240 I don't believe he was on active duty the day he died.

00:15:18.120 I'm not sure if it makes much of a difference, but to be precise.

00:15:21.120 Was Levine ever punished for killing him?

00:15:23.460 No, he wasn't.

00:15:24.500 In any way?

00:15:25.220 Not in any way.

00:15:26.040 He remained an active duty operator on Delta Force after killing a guy in his house when

00:15:31.540 they were both completely out of their minds on drugs.

00:15:34.080 And Levine was not even given a toxicology test after he shot somebody.

00:15:37.900 That's completely crazy.

00:15:39.000 The reason for that is because once you have done 10 deployments in service of covert operations,

00:15:48.780 assassination operations, it is an unacceptable national security outcome from the perspective

00:15:55.600 of authorities for you to go to prison, for you to be in a courtroom for any reason.

00:16:00.380 Those guys, they are not supposed to exist.

00:16:04.520 And they just can't process them through the criminal justice system in ordinary ways.

00:16:12.020 And to me, that's what made his death so intriguing because so many people alleged the sources

00:16:17.400 that I quote, I want to be responsible about this and not say that it's what I believe,

00:16:22.020 but the sort of conventional wisdom that when I first got into the case, people were saying

00:16:27.320 that the military itself had killed Billy Levine because he had turned into such a problem

00:16:31.560 and was messing up so badly.

00:16:35.300 I don't want to derail your story, but you've referred twice to assassination programs.

00:16:39.940 I wasn't aware that the United States admits it assassinates people.

00:16:44.820 When did that start?

00:16:45.700 When did that become a feature of modern war or statecraft or whatever it is?

00:16:52.560 What is that?

00:16:53.100 What are you talking about?

00:16:54.040 In 2001, President George W. Bush signed secret orders that essentially, and they're secret,

00:17:00.200 so I haven't read them, but based on the best reporting that I've seen, he signed secret

00:17:07.580 orders that essentially reversed the assassination ban that had been put in place decades earlier.

00:17:12.460 Actually, the groundwork for that legal move had been laid under President Reagan.

00:17:18.240 There were memos in place or certain authorities, executive orders in place that did allow for

00:17:24.320 assassination in the case when the target was deemed to be a terrorist.

00:17:30.180 Those authorities actually weren't used, to my understanding, for decades.

00:17:34.200 But when after the September 11th attacks, Bush reversed that.

00:17:40.160 And you're saying that you haven't heard too much about it, but that's because we often

00:17:44.580 hear about it by a certain euphemism, which is night raids.

00:17:50.240 So you may have heard, I'm sure you have heard, that under President Obama, all of the war

00:17:58.620 effort in Afghanistan became about drone strikes and night raids.

00:18:02.940 Well, night raids is just a euphemism for assassinations.

00:18:05.320 Yes, if somebody comes out waving a white flag, well, he'll probably get shot anyway. 0.83

00:18:11.080 But under certain circumstances, they will take people prisoner.

00:18:16.240 But for the most part, you know, when they hit a target, every military-aged man, as they

00:18:22.160 say, on that target dies.

00:18:25.600 Whether or not he's guilty of a crime or even suspected of a crime.

00:18:28.400 Well, guilty of a crime, I mean, there's no accountability over this because it all depends

00:18:33.020 upon the determinations of intelligence analysts in the Joint Special Operations Command and

00:18:37.740 in the CIA and what have you.

00:18:39.760 The people that generate targets.

00:18:41.420 You know, Delta Force just hits the targets.

00:18:43.260 They may not necessarily generate them, although they do have substantial intelligence assets

00:18:47.320 that develop targets.

00:18:49.740 But there's no way to check their work and say, you know, who these people really were.

00:18:54.600 But, you know, as I talk about extensively in the book and trying to get some clarity around

00:18:59.020 this, you know, the error rate is believed to be very high, you know, at least 50%.

00:19:03.800 Is this a longstanding feature of American military policy?

00:19:10.540 Have we been assassinating people for centuries?

00:19:13.280 Is this an American thing to do?

00:19:15.100 Absolutely not.

00:19:16.020 And in fact, before the modern era, before the 21st century, assassination was not considered

00:19:24.820 to be, you know, a valid or a, you know, credit worthy tool of war making.

00:19:31.760 It was considered to be something dirty, down low.

00:19:35.000 I mean, and there also wasn't perceived to be a tactical advantage necessarily in assassinating

00:19:40.720 enemy commanders in the enemy chain of command.

00:19:43.640 And there was more of a sense in fighting out things out honestly on the battlefield.

00:19:49.380 And it has, that has completely changed.

00:19:51.800 And, you know, I think one big influence on American policy.

00:19:55.100 Wait, so up until 9-11, you're saying, so when you say modern era, you don't mean like

00:19:59.220 the advent of electricity.

00:20:00.240 You mean like 25 years ago.

00:20:03.020 Um, so I'm not a military historian by any means, but my understanding is that, um, there

00:20:11.400 was extensive assassination operations also in Vietnam.

00:20:15.780 Uh, and we call that the, that's known as the Phoenix program where the CIA was using

00:20:20.420 assassinations to dismantle what was perceived as enemy command and control networks.

00:20:24.660 Was it pretty effective?

00:20:25.400 We won that war?

00:20:26.160 You know, actually, I think that a lot of people in the, um, sort of national security

00:20:32.700 set did, although it elicited a great deal of repugnance in the public, I think that

00:20:40.160 my sense is that it was perceived as, uh, an effective way of waging war.

00:20:45.240 Um, well then why didn't we win?

00:20:48.360 Well, we haven't won any wars since, uh, 1945, unless you count the Gulf War.

00:20:54.020 Right.

00:20:54.580 So, um, you know, I don't think we're doing anything right, basically, including assassinations.

00:21:01.860 Yeah.

00:21:02.240 I mean, that is, that is, uh, a stat that kind of hard to argue with that, um, you almost

00:21:07.460 never hear in and around Washington.

00:21:09.400 Like when was the last time you won a war?

00:21:11.760 Baffling. 0.91

00:21:12.320 You spend a trillion dollars a year and you can't win a freaking war. 0.99

00:21:14.920 You can't beat the Houthis. 0.99

00:21:16.040 Like maybe it's time for some reform or to rethink what we're doing.

00:21:20.620 It's not working.

00:21:22.000 It's even by their own measurements.

00:21:23.780 Sure.

00:21:24.420 I completely agree.

00:21:25.740 And, um, I think a lot of people, including people who are anti-war, um, and who would prefer

00:21:32.840 to see a more isolationist foreign policy complacently assume that because we spend ungodly amounts

00:21:39.840 of money on our military, a trillion dollars this year on the national defense budget, that

00:21:45.100 whatever else you think of our foreign policy, at least we have the world's most powerful

00:21:50.160 military.

00:21:51.060 That assumption goes largely unexamined.

00:21:54.100 And the reality is we don't.

00:21:56.700 I was just at Trump's military parade in Washington, DC, a magazine sent me to cover that.

00:22:02.260 And a lot of those troops were from Fort Bragg.

00:22:04.540 And you may have seen on TV, what a joke the parade turned out to be, how disorganized, um,

00:22:12.460 how unimpressive it was and the technology that was on display, you know, people expected

00:22:17.920 to be this fascistic spectacle, this authoritarian spectacle, like you might see in North Korea

00:22:22.880 or whatever.

00:22:23.460 But I was looking at the troops going by, not even marching in step, you know, the, the Bradley

00:22:29.740 fighting vehicles, which are 40 years old and, and, and, uh, perform very poorly, haven't been

00:22:35.140 replaced with anything newer.

00:22:37.060 Same goes for the Abrams tank.

00:22:38.520 It's been in service for more than 40 years.

00:22:41.200 The Blackhawk helicopter, just before the parade, a Blackhawk helicopter had crashed into a passenger

00:22:47.040 plane over the Potomac river, lest we forget, killed 68 people, worst aviation disaster

00:22:51.840 since 2001.

00:22:53.500 I'm looking at all of this and I'm thinking, man, our army is in sorry, sorry shape.

00:22:58.400 And that was the 250th anniversary of the U.S.

00:23:01.020 army because the army actually predates the constitution and predates the creation of our

00:23:05.700 nation.

00:23:06.740 And to me, it is very worrisome, um, to see the state of decline and disrepair in which

00:23:13.840 it, in which, uh, it's currently languishing.

00:23:16.420 And I think the stuff that's going on in Fort Bragg is highly symptomatic of just that.

00:23:20.320 Certainly is.

00:23:20.700 So, um, back to assassinations.

00:23:23.640 So, assassinations are, it sounds by your description, like a big part of our foreign

00:23:30.240 policy or our war making efforts.

00:23:32.520 A central part of it.

00:23:33.420 Sure.

00:23:33.620 And Delta is basically conducting a lot of these, some of these?

00:23:39.720 Absolutely.

00:23:40.380 Delta Force and then SEAL Team 6, which is Delta's, uh, naval counterpart.

00:23:44.060 Also part of the Joint Special Operations Command.

00:23:47.180 And you hear a lot more about them. 0.98

00:23:48.680 Can I ask a dumb question? 0.98

00:23:49.860 Why? 0.96

00:23:50.220 So if you're fighting a war or you're in some protracted struggle with violence, I don't

00:23:54.780 know if it's a war, but you're like fighting.

00:23:56.360 Why wouldn't, if you could, why wouldn't you capture key players from the other side in

00:24:03.780 order to extract intelligence from the, usable intelligence from them?

00:24:06.520 I thought that's what we used to do.

00:24:08.840 I don't want to paint them in a cartoonish light.

00:24:11.280 By them, I mean Delta and JSOC.

00:24:13.580 Well, they're not making these decisions.

00:24:14.700 I mean, these are made, as you said.

00:24:16.760 Sure.

00:24:17.200 By, by, by the command structure.

00:24:19.180 Often it's direct orders from the White House.

00:24:21.240 Right.

00:24:21.740 Um, and with, also with input from certain congressional leaders are involved in these targeting

00:24:26.920 decisions to a degree that I was not aware.

00:24:28.900 Congressional leaders?

00:24:29.760 Apparently.

00:24:30.320 I've heard anecdotes about, about operators sitting on target and waiting for the go ahead

00:24:34.160 from Congress.

00:24:34.960 I'm not sure what to make of that because all this is so classified, but that's what

00:24:39.240 I've heard.

00:24:40.220 In any event, there's no doubt.

00:24:41.480 Why would it be classified?

00:24:42.660 I'm sorry?

00:24:43.140 Why would it be classified?

00:24:44.960 Well, that's another big component of the evolution of the American way of making war, 0.88

00:24:50.260 waging war for the past 20 years is the increasing secrecy around all of this, which I think also

00:24:55.040 has had an extremely deleterious effect.

00:24:57.540 You're not able to complete a sentence without me interrupting you.

00:25:00.100 I'm so sorry.

00:25:00.980 No, it's great.

00:25:01.640 No, you're just saying so many things that are evocative and interesting.

00:25:03.640 I just, I'm trying to track them all down.

00:25:05.120 Okay.

00:25:05.600 I will stop interrupting you.

00:25:06.940 So you said, I don't want to paint a clownish picture of the Delta operators, but...

00:25:12.640 Yeah, they do, they do capture people.

00:25:14.960 They will abduct people.

00:25:16.100 They will take them to like a ship that's in international waters and do God knows what

00:25:20.160 to them to get information.

00:25:22.460 But in most cases, they're just killing the person that they're, that they're targeting.

00:25:27.200 Boy, there's a lot of lying.

00:25:28.440 And some of the worst deception surrounds your health.

00:25:31.580 How come Washington never talks about the poison in your food supply?

00:25:35.840 What about what's in your drugs?

00:25:37.660 You have a right to know what goes into your mouth.

00:25:40.400 And the more you know, the more distressing it is.

00:25:42.580 That's why it's critical to seek out alternatives you can trust.

00:25:45.800 Now, as an alternative to the garbage that you can pick up at any store, we strongly recommend

00:25:49.680 RE Fountain from Peak.

00:25:52.040 It's a clean electrolyte designed for rest.

00:25:55.620 It's got triple biomax magnesium and no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no artificial flavors.

00:26:00.060 Everything in it is real.

00:26:01.660 And it's good because staying up all night wrecks your ability to function.

00:26:04.980 RE Fountain can help.

00:26:06.440 It's not a sleep aid.

00:26:07.540 It's not a narcotic, a sedative.

00:26:09.760 It's what your body actually needs to recover and thrive.

00:26:13.580 People here rave about it.

00:26:15.120 We wake up feeling sharp and clear.

00:26:17.300 Peak has really made a big difference.

00:26:20.460 So if you care about actual health, then peak is the way to go.

00:26:23.600 P-I-Q-U-E. 1.00

00:26:25.500 And right now, you can get up to 20% off for life when you start your first month with Peak.

00:26:32.600 Go to peaklife.com slash Tucker.

00:26:34.800 That's P-I-Q-U-E life.com slash Tucker.

00:26:38.320 You'll feel it the very first morning.

00:26:39.980 It is great.

00:26:41.060 You may have noticed this is a great country with bad food.

00:26:45.100 Our food supply is rotten.

00:26:47.300 It didn't used to be this way.

00:26:48.860 Take chips, for example.

00:26:50.220 You may recall a time when crushing a bag of chips didn't make you feel hungover, like

00:26:56.600 you couldn't get out of bed the next day.

00:26:58.400 And the change, of course, is chemicals. 0.88

00:27:01.160 There's all kinds of crap they're putting in this food that should not be in your body.

00:27:04.900 Seed oils, for example. 0.99

00:27:06.620 Now, even one serving of your standard American chip brand can make you feel bloated, fat,

00:27:14.180 totally passive, and out of it.

00:27:16.860 But there is a better way.

00:27:17.940 It's called masa chips.

00:27:18.920 They're delicious.

00:27:20.480 Got a whole garage full of them.

00:27:22.220 They're healthy.

00:27:23.100 They taste great.

00:27:24.260 And they have three simple ingredients.

00:27:26.320 Corn, salt, and 100% grass-fed beef tallow.

00:27:31.000 No garbage, no seed oils.

00:27:33.340 What a relief.

00:27:34.240 And you feel the difference when you eat them, as we often do.

00:27:37.400 Snacking on masa chips is not like eating the garbage that you buy at convenience stores.

00:27:42.220 You feel satisfied, light, energetic, not sluggish.

00:27:46.080 Tens of thousands of happy people eat masa chips.

00:27:50.760 It's endorsed by people who understand health.

00:27:52.880 It's well worth a try.

00:27:54.400 Go to masa, M-A-S-A, chips.com slash Tucker.

00:27:57.280 Use the code Tucker for 25% off your first order.

00:28:00.020 That's masa chips.com.

00:28:03.180 Tucker.

00:28:03.960 Code Tucker for 25% off your first order.

00:28:07.260 Highly recommended.

00:28:07.960 It's pretty obvious now that this country is getting weaker than ever, meaning the population is unhealthier.

00:28:14.920 That's what Maha is about, trying to counteract this long-term trend that's culminated in a disaster.

00:28:20.480 Americans are so unhealthy, we can't staff the military. 1.00

00:28:22.720 And it's really, really sad. 0.90

00:28:24.440 Why is this happening?

00:28:25.260 Maybe because sick people are easier to control.

00:28:28.100 Whatever the reason, there are answers to it.

00:28:31.040 One of them is Joy and Blokes.

00:28:32.440 They are revolutionizing supplements with smart supplements that are personalized for you.

00:28:37.540 They're based entirely on your genetics, your biomarker data.

00:28:41.320 They're not guessing.

00:28:42.900 So they use labs, advanced labs, that measure up to 110 key biomarkers.

00:28:48.860 Then their clinicians design a precision supplement plan that's updated as your body changes.

00:28:54.340 So it's not just off-the-shelf vitamins.

00:28:56.680 It's much more precise and therefore much more effective.

00:28:58.980 So there are about 3 billion possible combinations.

00:29:03.380 And the effect is you get exactly what you need and you get nothing that you don't need.

00:29:07.860 You also get 60 to 30-minute consultation depending on how much time you need.

00:29:13.760 You get access to expert-guided hormone care, including testosterone optimization for both men and women, longevity medicine, cutting-edge peptide therapy.

00:29:22.180 And you get it all from home.

00:29:24.020 Right now, new customers get 50% off all diagnostic labs plus 20% off all products and therapies.

00:29:31.300 You also get a free 15-minute health coach consult.

00:29:34.180 And the effect is the desired effect.

00:29:36.180 Stronger, sharper, more energy.

00:29:38.800 You get it right away.

00:29:40.060 Go to joyandblokes, J-O-Y, and blokes.com slash Tucker, root cause medicine.

00:29:45.940 It's the way healthcare ought to be.

00:29:47.980 And what kind of people are these?

00:29:49.040 Like villagers in faraway Middle Eastern countries or others?

00:29:52.560 It all depends on the theater.

00:29:53.760 It depends upon the time.

00:29:54.960 I can tell you what they're doing right now because Trump made an interesting comment in one of his speeches earlier this year where he talked about, he said something to the effect of, since my inauguration, it had been a few months since he was inaugurated.

00:30:09.160 He said, since my inauguration, we have eliminated 68 terrorists in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia.

00:30:15.640 This is all going to come home.

00:30:16.980 We're going to have this kind of violence here.

00:30:18.480 You can't commit violence without facing the effects of violence.

00:30:22.140 It's just a principle of the universe.

00:30:25.020 Live by the sword, die by the sword.

00:30:26.620 That never changes. 0.76

00:30:28.040 And if we're running around assassinating people, we will have Americans assassinated. 0.97

00:30:32.040 Fact.

00:30:32.380 Well, some of that blowback, I fully agree.

00:30:36.040 Some of that blowback can be seen in cases like Billy Levine, where he's someone who has, since he was a very young man, has been raised in this system of violence, who comes back and is unable to control it.

00:30:49.000 And, you know, when he perceives small threats, like with his buddy Mark Leshker at his house, barging in his front door because they're both out of their head on drugs.

00:30:57.120 You know, he just, you know, he just, as a reflexive mechanism, pulls out his gun and shoots the other guy.

00:31:03.480 So, I think one of the first signs of it is, and I'm tracking about 24 murders involving Fort Bragg soldiers.

00:31:09.420 24?

00:31:09.720 In the book, since 2020, yeah.

00:31:11.280 In which it was either a Fort Bragg soldier who was murdered, accused of murder, or convicted of murder.

00:31:15.780 24?

00:31:16.700 24.

00:31:17.220 That's my best count.

00:31:18.400 It might be off by one or two on the margins.

00:31:21.760 Well, that's wild.

00:31:23.580 Yeah.

00:31:23.900 Military base?

00:31:25.260 Yes.

00:31:25.840 I would imagine the murder rate at a military base would be zero.

00:31:30.680 I think it should be.

00:31:32.100 If you're an employee of the government, if you're an active duty soldier, you're supposed to be.

00:31:35.980 One of the most disciplined people in the world, right?

00:31:37.800 It's supposed to be.

00:31:38.560 I don't know if you can see that anymore.

00:31:39.760 So, Billy Levine, by the way, is he from a service family?

00:31:48.100 How did he wind up in all this?

00:31:49.260 No, he wasn't.

00:31:50.040 He was a middle-class guy, working-class guy from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, who joined the Army when he was 17 years old, before 9-11 happened.

00:32:01.380 And 9-11 took place while he was still in training.

00:32:05.020 And he soon got taken up the pipeline of the first Special Forces group.

00:32:12.120 And then from there, by 2009, he was a relatively young man, 26, I think, at the time that he was selected for Delta Force.

00:32:20.400 So, he was an extraordinary person in that he was clearly suited to the job.

00:32:25.080 Well.

00:32:25.520 Very physically fit, very outdoorsy, very tough, you know, a guy who had the self-confidence that is necessary for this type of work, you know, an adrenaline junkie for sure.

00:32:39.080 A lot of these guys are big-time adrenaline junkies, jumping out of planes, you know, parachuting is a big part of what they do.

00:32:44.880 So, he was like those guys in all these respects.

00:32:48.560 But at its core, Billy Levine was somebody who also had a sense of ethics and right and wrong that his time in the service really degraded to a tragic, tragic effect.

00:33:01.540 So, he murders his best friend in front of the daughter, gets away with it, no penalty whatsoever.

00:33:09.600 That is absolutely wild.

00:33:11.900 And then some months later, he himself is found dead with another man on a remote training range at Bragg.

00:33:17.480 Right, about 18 months later.

00:33:18.800 18 months later.

00:33:20.120 What, were they shot to death?

00:33:21.780 Yes.

00:33:22.080 And it appears, that double murder appears to have been the work of people who knew what they were doing.

00:33:33.900 There were no...

00:33:35.200 Well, you've got about 50,000 potential suspects on the scene because it's a military base, right?

00:33:39.980 Right.

00:33:40.480 And the other guy either was, his name was Timothy Dumas.

00:33:45.280 Not to reduce them to their respective races, but to keep it clear.

00:33:49.200 One was a white guy, one was a black guy.

00:33:51.200 Levine's a white guy.

00:33:52.160 Dumas is a black guy. 0.98

00:33:53.780 He also was not someone who would have been easy to kill. 0.99

00:33:57.400 He wasn't an operator.

00:33:59.200 He was a supply officer who was attached to JSOC.

00:34:03.760 He served in the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade and had done many deployments to Afghanistan in service of the JSOC-led task force in Afghanistan.

00:34:15.340 So, he's a guy who gets the operators all the stuff that they need in the field, including cash, weapons, ammunition, food, all the basics, gas.

00:34:24.320 And he was deeply...

00:34:26.960 He was deeply...

00:34:27.860 And he's a whole separate story that we could go into.

00:34:29.640 But to come back to what we were saying about the murder itself.

00:34:33.240 You know, both of them were very, very tough guys who never went anywhere unarmed, who kept their heads on a swivel, and who had been to war repeatedly.

00:34:42.240 So, the fact that both of them were cleanly taken out and then dumped in this remote area and that the scene was free of any kind of...

00:34:51.880 You know, I interviewed several Army CID agents who worked the scene of the murder.

00:34:58.560 And by all accounts, they found no drugs, no guns, no money, and maybe a couple of shell casings.

00:35:06.080 But, you know, there weren't even, like, footprints on the ground.

00:35:08.640 Were they shot with a rifle?

00:35:10.140 No.

00:35:11.280 I was never able to obtain ballistic evidence.

00:35:14.680 I believe that Dumas, the black guy, was shot in the head with a small caliber pistol.

00:35:19.660 And I don't know what a type of weapon caused Levine's injuries, but he was shot multiple times in the torso and in the leg.

00:35:28.740 Maybe five times.

00:35:29.680 I'm not quite sure.

00:35:31.560 Any idea where they were killed?

00:35:33.980 Dumas was killed on sight, it seems.

00:35:36.160 He was killed execution style on sight.

00:35:38.780 Levine's body had been wrapped up in a sort of tarp or blanket and placed in the back of his own truck.

00:35:45.320 And then someone had driven out there and abandoned the truck in the woods with his body in the back.

00:35:52.920 And so, there's lots of theories of this murder, but the CID theory was that somebody, the third man, because there had to have been a third person there, these guys couldn't have shot each other because there were no guns.

00:36:06.980 So, someone left with the guns at a minimum.

00:36:10.580 And so, Army CID presumes that Dumas, who was a really bad guy, to be honest, he was a drug trafficker and, by some accounts, a hitman.

00:36:26.100 A hitman?

00:36:27.340 Yeah.

00:36:27.700 You said he was an Army officer.

00:36:29.300 He was a warrant officer.

00:36:31.020 Warrant officer, okay.

00:36:31.740 Yeah, but yeah, I talked to a woman, a police officer, in fact, who Dumas had offered to kill her husband for money. 0.97

00:36:41.600 And so, CID presumed-

00:36:42.760 He was active duty?

00:36:43.960 He was not active duty at the time of his death.

00:36:45.880 He had just been expelled from the military for his criminal behavior.

00:36:50.200 And that is actually a key fact that we can get into because the fact that he had been kicked out when he was a few months shy of his 19th year in service.

00:37:02.720 So, or a few months shy of his 20th year, in which case he would have been eligible for a lifetime pension.

00:37:10.120 You know, if you serve 20 years in the military, you get a pension.

00:37:11.920 So, the fact that he had been kicked out and deprived of his pension really is an operative fact in all of this because the story, it goes on from here.

00:37:22.320 But what was I saying about the murder itself?

00:37:26.160 So, he was killed, Dumas was killed on site.

00:37:29.340 Right.

00:37:29.620 So, I was trying to recapitulate CID's theory of the case very briefly, which is that they think that Dumas was hired to kill Levine and did kill Levine with the cooperation of another person or persons.

00:37:45.060 They then put Levine's body in the back of the truck, drive him out in the woods with the intention of throwing his body in a lake that's near there.

00:37:52.520 But the truck got stuck in the woods, or it got stuck in the mud because it wasn't on a road.

00:37:59.160 It was on a firebreak trail.

00:38:01.500 And at that point, according to CID's theory of the case, the other guy decided to just abandon the situation and decided to kill Dumas in order to get rid of any witnesses.

00:38:12.540 We thought this through when we started this podcast a year ago and we decided we're never advertising anything that we or people on our staff don't use.

00:38:19.960 Period.

00:38:20.320 We're only partnering with companies that we agree with and endorse, actually, in our personal lives.

00:38:27.540 So, we want to announce a new partnership with a survival company we trust most.

00:38:31.680 Last Country Supply is the name of our collaboration.

00:38:34.860 Last Country Supply.

00:38:36.280 I have a big surplus of survival food from that great company.

00:38:40.540 If you get a bucket of food with a 25-year shelf life, 2,000 calories a day, potatoes, rice, bread, drinks, you feel a lot better.

00:38:49.320 Let's say there's an EMP attack or civil disturbance and you don't know what could happen in the future.

00:38:55.960 You are prepared and you are protecting your family with Last Country Supply products.

00:39:02.320 So, head to LastCountrySupply.com to shop for our new collection, Bulk Up Now.

00:39:07.020 There is no scenario where you will regret being prepared.

00:39:11.080 What's the theory as to why DeMoss would have been hired to kill Levine?

00:39:16.140 Why he would have been hired?

00:39:17.280 Yes.

00:39:17.480 So, there's a lot of competing possibilities.

00:39:21.400 And as I said, I think that's what makes this murder mystery, for me at least as a writer, it was a productive narrative vehicle because there's lots of things to explore.

00:39:31.260 One is that Mark Leszeker, the Green Beret who he killed, you know, his teammates by some accounts wanted revenge.

00:39:39.460 The fact that that murder went completely unpunished, as you might imagine, leads to resentment in the community, leads to a lot of whispers.

00:39:46.700 And, you know, you can't just kill somebody, maybe get off legally, but there's going to be repercussions.

00:39:52.680 Yeah, a lot of dangerous people around.

00:39:54.140 Sure, yeah.

00:39:54.800 So, that's one.

00:39:56.180 Okay, so that's a more human, I'm not saying justifiable, I'm not as bothered by Leszeker's buddies getting together and killing the guy who killed him.

00:40:07.160 That seems understandable.

00:40:09.200 I will say I found no evidence for that.

00:40:11.600 I also learned that DeMoss and Levine were trafficking cocaine together at a high level.

00:40:17.780 And that...

00:40:18.580 They were trafficking cocaine?

00:40:20.100 Mm-hmm.

00:40:20.320 Not dealing cocaine, you know, in little baggies to their friends.

00:40:25.020 I'm talking about trafficking kilos of cocaine from Mexico up into the United States and distributing it in a large multi-state area.

00:40:32.440 And Levine is a, just once again, an active duty...

00:40:35.700 That's correct.

00:40:36.160 ...member of Delta Force.

00:40:37.180 That's correct, yes.

00:40:39.720 So, they had enemies in the drug world, dangerous enemies, people that will kill you if you don't pay for your product.

00:40:47.600 Um, and finally, Levine, as I said before, was known to be going around telling people that he didn't believe in the mission anymore, that what the United States was doing was wrong, and was in the process of writing a book.

00:41:05.920 And we touched on this in the beginning of our conversation about how much the unit frowns on people writing books.

00:41:12.240 But, you know...

00:41:12.880 Possibly really frowns on it.

00:41:15.140 Levine's ex-wife told me that he was writing a book.

00:41:20.060 She showed me the text messages where he texted her and said, I'm writing a book.

00:41:22.860 And he also said that someone already wanted to turn it into a movie.

00:41:27.220 Now, Dumas said that, so put a pin in that.

00:41:30.100 Dumas, because he had been kicked out of the army, just shy of his pension eligibility date, he also was writing something.

00:41:38.760 And it variously described to me as a book or a letter, um, in which it wasn't a memoir, he was, it was actually deliberately intended as a blackmail document.

00:41:47.920 He told people that he knew about a drug trafficking ring in the special forces involving special forces soldiers who had gone over to the dark side in Afghanistan, where there was a great deal of drug trafficking going on, by the way.

00:42:01.320 By active duty U.S. military?

00:42:03.560 By the Afghan client state that the U.S. supported for 20 years.

00:42:07.200 Oh, of course.

00:42:07.520 Yeah.

00:42:07.740 Um, so all these guys having served many times in Afghanistan would have been very close and, um, in close proximity to working with warlords, police chiefs, militia commanders, and so on, Afghans, who were some of the biggest drug traffickers in the world, period.

00:42:25.180 Um, so, uh, that context I think is important, but in any event, Dumas had written this letter purporting to name all these individual members of this drug trafficking ring and the special forces.

00:42:37.160 Um, and was going around telling people that because of this leverage that he had over the special forces command, he was going to get them to reinstate his pension.

00:42:45.820 So, the fact that both of these guys are writing tell-all documents and then both turn up murdered on Fort Bragg is yet another potential, um, you know, theory for explaining their deaths.

00:42:58.980 You must have spoken to people they knew, their friends.

00:43:02.320 Mm-hmm.

00:43:03.440 What is the prevailing theory among people who were there?

00:43:09.020 I can't say that anybody purports to know for sure, but I would say the most common reflexive answer that you get from folks is that they think that they were murdered by elements of Delta Force, either rogue elements of the unit or the command itself.

00:43:27.280 Now, I want to be very careful.

00:43:29.040 Come on.

00:43:29.700 I want to be very careful and say that I don't have any evidence of that and I don't pretend to.

00:43:33.780 Is that the opinion of any Delta operators, do you know?

00:43:37.360 Funnily enough, yeah.

00:43:38.640 Um, one of the guys I talked to, a former Delta operator, seemed to find that, excuse me, a former Delta officer, seemed to find that perfectly plausible, which was disturbing to me.

00:43:52.000 Um, but, again, it's not, folks who read the book, they will, they will see, um, the direction in which I lean ultimately.

00:44:01.760 And I don't want to spoil, you know, the ending, um, but.

00:44:06.000 Bottom line, no arrests have been made.

00:44:07.660 That's not true.

00:44:08.900 Uh, and so, and, so, and a further complication comes in with regard to just that.

00:44:14.820 So, in, uh, recently, I don't want to spoil the last chapter of the book, but, um, recently the Department of Justice accused someone of committing these murders.

00:44:25.880 And, um, let me just say that it is not at all who you would think.

00:44:31.800 And, um, virtually all, or I can just say all of the sources that I talked to about this, um, either dismiss it out of hand and say there's no way, or they just have a really hard time believing it.

00:44:44.900 And the person they've accused has pleaded not guilty, and he is scheduled to go on trial in, um, January, 2026.

00:44:52.800 Have you spoken to him?

00:44:53.180 I have not spoken to his father, but not him.

00:44:56.900 Is he a Delta operator?

00:44:58.060 He's not.

00:44:59.080 He's not.

00:44:59.780 Yeah.

00:45:00.540 He's someone who people struggle to understand how he could have, how anyone could imagine that this person would travel from where, from where he lived, which was not in the area, go into Fort Bragg and murder these two guys who are, you know, one of them is like a real life Jason Bourne.

00:45:20.900 Um, and the other one, you know, also a very dangerous man, how he could have done that and gotten away with it.

00:45:28.700 And also the indictment is very strange that, um, you know, the victims are identified only by their initials.

00:45:36.080 A lot of the cases under seal, the whole thing is very suspicious.

00:45:39.860 I don't want to dance around it.

00:45:41.460 Um, a lot of people that I've talked to say the government is framing this kid.

00:45:45.380 Um, maybe because he was 20 years old at the time, 20 and Levine's 37, Dumas is 44.

00:45:53.020 You know, these are mature, um, men who, um, the idea that a 20 year old stick up kid could have killed them defies credulity in a lot of people's opinion.

00:46:03.080 Now, personally, I have to think that the department of justice doesn't indict people for murder lightly.

00:46:10.580 I hope not.

00:46:11.980 I, I just, uh, I have trouble getting that far mentally.

00:46:16.640 So it seems like he must've had some involvement.

00:46:21.360 I want to credit my government for being at least that minimum level of responsibility that they're not simply framing this kid.

00:46:28.080 But they haven't made any of their evidence public.

00:46:32.540 And, um, as I said, he's pleaded not guilty.

00:46:34.980 So we'll just have to see how that, how that trial goes.

00:46:37.220 Have they, but they made the indictment public, but none of the evidence.

00:46:40.540 The indictment is public, but, you know, like I said, it identified, I only knew about it because I think someone sent it to me.

00:46:45.840 They, it's only identifies the victims by their initials, WL and TD.

00:46:51.820 Um, I've never seen that before.

00:46:53.600 A murder, a murder indictment where the, where the victims are identified by their initials.

00:46:58.660 I don't even.

00:46:59.100 Especially since their murder was public.

00:47:00.840 I mean, it was reported on at the time, right?

00:47:03.080 It is a very, very strange case.

00:47:05.880 Here's what we know.

00:47:07.060 We know that Levine murdered a guy, got away with it.

00:47:10.380 Obviously his superior officers knew that, command knew that.

00:47:15.120 Was it widely known that he was a drug trafficker?

00:47:17.040 It was widely known that he was a drug user.

00:47:21.380 Um, and yes, it was known that he was the guy that, um, dealt drugs to his fellow operators.

00:47:27.720 I mean, I talked to, uh, Mark Leshiker's family.

00:47:32.040 So Mark and Billy, they were best friends.

00:47:34.120 And so, uh, Mark's wife, um, and his mom, even they, they all knew Billy Levine.

00:47:39.880 They had all spent time at his house.

00:47:41.540 And, uh, they, and many other witnesses, you know, I interviewed lots of family members and friends of both of these men.

00:47:48.780 And they said, um, that, you know, you would go into Billy's house and there was just cocaine everywhere.

00:47:53.560 And all his fellow operators from Dole DeForest were at his house too.

00:47:57.040 There's a bunch of coke on the table.

00:47:58.420 They're doing MDMA.

00:48:00.260 Um, they're even smoking heroin, you know, I, and it's considered to be totally normal in this community.

00:48:06.160 That's what, to me, was the most shocking to hear again and again.

00:48:08.800 And like, not only to be told that all these people, these guys are using drugs, but that people just seem to think that that's kind of what they do, which I didn't know that.

00:48:18.480 There's so many threats.

00:48:19.280 I mean, the most obvious is the human effect of 12 combat deployments.

00:48:25.240 So that's, that's too much, obviously.

00:48:27.520 And that will destroy you.

00:48:28.780 It sounds like it destroyed Billy Levine.

00:48:30.980 The second is like, where's the Pentagon in this?

00:48:33.940 This is the premier unit in the United States military and people are openly using cocaine and smoking crack and shooting their friends and no one's doing anything about it.

00:48:42.900 Like, what is that?

00:48:44.240 It's baffling to me.

00:48:45.420 I would have never imagined.

00:48:46.500 I mean, I remember when I was in the army, one guy, a sergeant in my company tested positive for cocaine in a piss test.

00:48:53.540 And he was just gone after that.

00:48:55.660 I mean, he was just removed from the unit.

00:48:58.240 Well, that's a question that I should have asked you a half an hour ago.

00:49:01.260 What about drug testing?

00:49:02.620 So all members of the military are subject to random drug testing, but apparently they considered a joke.

00:49:07.840 I mean, there's a lot of reporting on this around the Navy SEALs.

00:49:10.340 A lot of Navy SEALs have gone on the record to say that, you know, they were using constantly during their time in service and that the drug testing regimen was a complete joke because there's ways to defeat it.

00:49:21.020 In particular, you can get a tip off because it's supposed to be random.

00:49:25.280 It's not something they do regularly.

00:49:27.360 And maybe that's what they need to be doing.

00:49:29.580 But as the randomized testing, you know, you can be told by someone in time, hey, your name is on the list.

00:49:36.040 And that gives you time to like suck down a bunch of water and stop doing drugs and pass the test.

00:49:42.320 Or buy urine, buy clean urine.

00:49:44.460 But you would imagine maybe that's something that's going on as well.

00:49:47.740 Hadn't heard that in particular, but I know that people can do that.

00:49:50.660 They certainly can.

00:49:51.400 You got to remember, these guys are intelligent, highly trained.

00:49:55.740 And they're spies just as much as they are assassins.

00:50:00.420 Many of them are.

00:50:01.640 There's various levels within Delta Force.

00:50:03.560 There's compartmented elements.

00:50:05.260 There's the line squadrons, etc.

00:50:07.120 So it depends on the person.

00:50:08.400 But, you know, these are people who are, their job is to do covert action.

00:50:13.880 So they're very good at getting away with things.

00:50:18.760 When your job is to penetrate a foreign country that's guarded by paranoid counterintelligence officials, to go into that country and, I don't know, bug an embassy or kidnap a guy off the street.

00:50:30.400 A drug test isn't going to be something that you're too worried about, I think.

00:50:36.020 And you alluded to this earlier.

00:50:39.220 There comes a point where, you know, the government is afraid of you because you know too much.

00:50:44.640 You've done too much.

00:50:45.760 You're also performing what they think is a valuable service.

00:50:49.220 No one else can provide that service.

00:50:51.100 Like, you're too valuable to expel over a failed piss test.

00:50:55.220 That's a great point.

00:50:56.460 That's absolutely part of it.

00:50:58.460 Which is that, yeah, after they've spent millions of dollars training you, they don't really care.

00:51:04.400 I think they would put it as like, if they were to come out and say it, it's like big boy rules, I think is how they look at it.

00:51:10.840 If you're going to do drugs, then do it.

00:51:13.640 Just don't get caught.

00:51:15.180 Right.

00:51:15.400 Just don't get caught is the rule.

00:51:18.080 Well, it sounds like their work life is that, has the same rule.

00:51:21.860 Absolutely.

00:51:22.760 Yeah.

00:51:23.020 So you said Billy Levine had decided that the missions he'd been sent on 12 times were not morally justifiable.

00:51:32.360 The whole war on terror was a bad idea.

00:51:35.080 Is that a common view, do you think?

00:51:38.860 You know, it is the fact that combat veterans are one of the most reliable anti-war demographics in our country.

00:51:48.640 I've noticed.

00:51:49.900 They don't know that in cable news.

00:51:51.700 They're always like, oh, combat veterans support whatever mission this is.

00:51:56.020 That's the opposite of what I've noticed.

00:51:57.760 The opposite is true.

00:51:58.840 There's data on this.

00:52:00.040 There's polling.

00:52:00.560 Super majorities of combat veterans say that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting.

00:52:04.260 I've noticed.

00:52:05.060 And I'm one of them.

00:52:05.980 And so to me, to learn that Billy Levine held those views is not surprising at all.

00:52:10.480 When did that come to you, by the way?

00:52:11.740 What's your, can you tell us, take five minutes and tell us your story if that's all right.

00:52:16.180 Sure.

00:52:16.660 Uh, sure.

00:52:17.960 Um, you know, I'm not, my story is really not part of the book, but the relevant, uh, background would be that, uh, I actually deployed to Iraq at the same time as Levine's first tour in Iraq.

00:52:28.480 And, um, you know, I, uh, before that deployment was over, I had come to the firm point of view that the war was not just a mistake, but a crime to, to carry out this invasion on the grounds that there were supposedly weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there weren't.

00:52:50.220 Um, and what was your role?

00:52:52.640 You were in the army.

00:52:53.500 Yeah.

00:52:53.880 You know, I was in, I was in college.

00:52:55.380 I was a college student who joined the army reserves.

00:52:57.720 I was a student at the university of Texas in order to pay for college.

00:53:01.440 Oh, wow.

00:53:02.380 Um, I fell for the recruiter's pitch, which is, you know, one weekend a month, two weeks a year.

00:53:10.720 I was 19 years old.

00:53:12.560 And, uh, that was in 2004, um, 2003, excuse me.

00:53:17.900 That used to be real.

00:53:19.240 Well, that was the year we invaded Iraq.

00:53:21.580 Yeah.

00:53:21.880 That used to be real.

00:53:22.980 I mean, the reserves served, you know, one weekend a month, two weeks a year for a long, long time.

00:53:28.140 And then the war on terror commenced and those guys were dragged into real war.

00:53:33.860 But I don't think that had happened before, had it?

00:53:36.040 Well, you would know you did it.

00:53:37.520 Um, no, it hadn't happened before.

00:53:40.100 Uh, and in fact, you know, I sometimes in retrospect struggle to explain to folks how it could have been that I, uh, opposed the Iraq war and had no interest in fighting.

00:53:49.240 And the Iraq war and yet still joined the army reserve at a time when it was clear that the Iraq war was going to happen.

00:53:54.920 Well, because the reserves were not used in that way.

00:53:57.620 There's that.

00:53:58.220 And also, even people who opposed the war had no idea that it was going to last for years.

00:54:03.420 We forget about this completely.

00:54:05.100 But even people who opposed the war assumed that it would be over pretty quickly.

00:54:09.800 Um, and I can remember even asking my recruiter naively, are you sure I'm not going to get sent to this war in Iraq that everyone's talking about?

00:54:17.440 Don't worry about that.

00:54:18.880 But, um, yeah, of course my deployment orders were cut even before I left basic training.

00:54:23.080 They were sent to me, um, while I was standing in formation in basic training.

00:54:27.300 It's said to deploy to Iraq for 528 days.

00:54:30.340 Oh, come on. 0.87

00:54:32.040 And you're a UT student?

00:54:33.680 Yeah.

00:54:34.460 Sorry to laugh.

00:54:35.420 It's okay.

00:54:36.100 It's hilarious.

00:54:37.320 It was, it was two years before I went back to college after the day I signed that contract.

00:54:43.320 What did your girlfriend or parents or buddies say?

00:54:47.260 I'm sorry.

00:54:48.060 I'm sorry to laugh.

00:54:49.580 It's like, do you see the humor kind of?

00:54:51.500 I do, of course.

00:54:52.300 Yeah.

00:54:52.480 My parents were pretty resigned to it.

00:54:54.440 Um, bless their hearts.

00:54:56.300 They had to put up with a lot.

00:54:57.540 But, you know, before I even deployed back to the United States, I was writing editorials for the Daily Text Sinks I wrote for my student newspaper.

00:55:06.320 Um, you know, talking about the Iraq war and using my perspective as a veteran to try to convince people that this was a mistake and that this whole post 9-11 permanent war paradigm should re-examined.

00:55:17.000 Um, so that's kind of like my sort of origin story and how I came to it.

00:55:21.060 Wait, so how long did you spend in Iraq?

00:55:24.320 528 days.

00:55:25.120 Oh, you actually did.

00:55:26.240 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:55:27.120 Every single one of those days.

00:55:28.540 What was that like?

00:55:30.420 Um, you know, I think a lot of people had certainly had rougher deployments than I did.

00:55:37.440 Um, I've read books about some of the units that had the toughest, that had the most casualties.

00:55:45.220 Um, I don't want to, you know, exaggerate what my experience was like, but at the same time, it was, it was pretty rough.

00:55:54.140 It was pretty rough.

00:55:54.940 I mean, there were guys in my unit who were killed.

00:55:57.260 Uh, we were attacked on a fairly regular basis.

00:56:00.620 Um, nothing crazy, but, you know, getting shot at and getting mortared was a continuous thing.

00:56:05.060 We were often outside the wire because we were, although we were non-combat troops, we, we built bridges and roads.

00:56:11.040 This was our job.

00:56:12.060 We did a lot of construction work and dirt work, uh, in war zones or in, um, you know, areas where they've been fighting, especially to repair roads that have been damaged by IEDs.

00:56:22.000 Um, so, uh, several of our convoys were ambushed.

00:56:26.760 Um, uh, a lot of, I think maybe five or six guys were shot and survived.

00:56:32.180 Uh, and then also there were other bad things that went on.

00:56:36.120 Um, you know, I, uh, in one circumstance, there was a soldier who, um, shot up a car in front of me and another group of soldiers and killed the occupants of that car who were just a woman and her kid.

00:56:51.120 Uh, and, you know, he said that he thought that, uh, you know, they were approaching too fast.

00:56:56.480 I don't want to get into all the details of it, but the ugliness of it and the savagery and how unnecessary it all was made a deep, deep impression on me at that age.

00:57:07.080 Um, and I have dedicated all my work as a journalist and reporter ever since then to opposing, you know, the continuation of these wars.

00:57:16.300 Well, bless you for that.

00:57:17.580 What was it like coming back after 528 days?

00:57:22.600 Did you rejoin your fraternity or what?

00:57:24.920 I mean, it must've been, um, bewildering.

00:57:27.640 It was great coming back.

00:57:29.120 It was good.

00:57:30.400 Um, you know, I didn't have like the sort of stereotypical hurt locker type of experience where, you know, I wasn't like, uh, what's that movie?

00:57:42.460 Um, apocalypse now where I'm laying under the ceiling fans, skinning rats.

00:57:47.640 It wasn't like that.

00:57:49.120 I mean, I def, I do remember having, it's been a long time now, but I do remember having nightmares for years.

00:57:55.240 Not necessarily of violence, but I would have this dream where I had lost my weapon and was unarmed.

00:58:02.620 I was in Iraq, uh, on the street or whatever and didn't have a weapon.

00:58:06.080 Um, so yeah, there was some lingering effects, but you know, I don't complain about my personal experience in this.

00:58:14.820 The U.S. killed a million people in Iraq, maybe, maybe the estimates vary, but hundreds of thousands, possibly a million people.

00:58:22.140 They're the ones who are the victims of this, not U.S. soldiers like me who have hurt feelings when we come back.

00:58:28.320 Uh, you know, I want to be clear about that.

00:58:31.360 But it sounds like your experience there affected your view of the broader mission.

00:58:39.140 For sure.

00:58:40.040 Yes.

00:58:40.440 Profoundly, I would say.

00:58:41.420 What about the guys you served with?

00:58:42.740 Um, my, my reaction was typical.

00:58:45.720 Like I was saying before, um, most, uh, there was a divide in the unit.

00:58:51.800 I can remember debating the 2004 election with the guys who were for Kerry and the guys who were for Bush.

00:58:57.220 You know, the military is very reflective of our society.

00:58:59.720 Maybe not the special forces, but the regular army is.

00:59:03.560 Um, and so the same divisions we see in society at large are reflected in the ranks.

00:59:08.460 So it was no different.

00:59:09.540 What do you think the prevailing view, let me ask you again, among the special operators is, of the mission itself?

00:59:18.980 Like, why are we doing this?

00:59:20.040 Is that a question they discuss?

00:59:21.220 I don't hear them talk about that sort of thing very much.

00:59:27.580 Yeah. 0.96

00:59:28.180 They just say, bad guys, we kill bad guys. 1.00

00:59:31.320 We kill terrorists.

00:59:32.120 Um, I have to assume that in units like Delta Force, the majority of the guys are able to compartmentalize the ethics of it and say, or the wisdom of it and say that that's simply not their job to think about and that they just follow orders.

00:59:52.260 Um, but as you can see, in the case of a guy like Billy Levine, that only lasts for so long, eventually it starts to dawn on you that this is not okay.

01:00:02.940 And if you listen to operator type podcasts, you'll hear a lot of that.

01:00:06.620 I mean, yeah, it's, they're not the, the most jingoistic and pro-war people, like you said before, her cable news, cable news anchors.

01:00:14.740 Um, not, you know, soldiers, the soldiers, I think have a more nuanced perspective, almost as a rule.

01:00:21.160 Did you ever run in to, um, any cable news anchors when you were over there?

01:00:27.040 No, no.

01:00:28.760 So Mark Levin was not in your unit.

01:00:30.580 I didn't see him.

01:00:31.460 No.

01:00:31.800 I did see Joe Millionaire once.

01:00:34.500 Joe Millionaire, whatever happened to him?

01:00:37.020 Uh, I don't know.

01:00:38.020 I saw him in Iraq.

01:00:39.060 I also saw 50 Cent gave a concert in Iraq.

01:00:41.860 How was it?

01:00:42.720 It was cool.

01:00:43.280 Yeah.

01:00:43.800 Uh, it was a high point of the deployment.

01:00:47.400 So this is the coolest Christmas present.

01:00:49.220 I'll get this here.

01:00:49.880 This is a leather Alp pouch logo right there.

01:00:53.380 Gets on your belt made in the United States out of actual leather.

01:00:57.860 If you carry, you can put the firearm on one side and a loaded tin of Alp on the other.

01:01:02.420 It will never be far from you.

01:01:03.660 And it is legit cool.

01:01:06.520 I'm going to be wearing it.

01:01:07.580 Recommend you do the same.

01:01:09.340 AlpPouch.com is where you can find this.

01:01:11.680 The leather Alp pouch.

01:01:12.840 Alp pouch.com

01:01:13.960 When you want to bet on sports.

01:01:16.920 Played on a field or ice or course.

01:01:19.320 Bet Rivers is the place.

01:01:22.960 Over, under, money lines.

01:01:25.080 Same game, parlayed, it's all fine.

01:01:26.940 You'll put a smile on your face.

01:01:29.220 Bet on the sports you love with Bet Rivers Sportsbook.

01:01:31.900 Take a chance!

01:01:33.000 Must be 19 plus.

01:01:34.120 Available in Ontario only.

01:01:35.280 Please play responsibly.

01:01:36.240 If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

01:01:44.120 I want to go back to the connection between Levine and his friends, his colleagues, the Delta operators, but also the other special forces community members at Fort Bragg and drug use and drug trafficking.

01:02:03.300 That's shocking, but it doesn't seem to have shocked their superiors.

01:02:10.180 To what extent is drug trafficking tolerated in the military?

01:02:15.780 I can't believe I'm asking this question, but it sounds like it is.

01:02:18.940 It's hard to imagine that you would have to ask that question.

01:02:22.540 And yet, from what I was able to learn, it's not an isolated case.

01:02:26.840 Levine and Dumas.

01:02:27.760 In fact, it seems that after 2020, the drug trafficking rings that permeate Fort Bragg only increased, and you even had public statements from Fort Bragg officials acknowledging, for example, that they had 100% increase in drug crime on base from 2020 to 2021.

01:02:49.720 How could you have drug crime on a military base?

01:02:52.120 It was very surprising to me as well, but you even have cases of military police officers dealing drugs out of their police cars on Fort Bragg.

01:03:01.100 Folks want to look that up, look up the case of Jacob Dickerson, who was an MP on Fort Bragg who was busted for drug trafficking.

01:03:08.080 In fact, I obtained the investigative files in that case and learned that there was actually four or five of these MPs on base that were trafficking drugs.

01:03:17.380 And they dropped charges against all but one of the guys because he had exacerbated the trouble he was in by getting into a drunk driving accident.

01:03:28.180 And even he was just given a slap on the wrist.

01:03:30.740 I think he got, you know, a month or two in the stockade and a dishonorable discharge.

01:03:34.380 But there is a, I would say, pervasive practice of, or there's drug availability on Fort Bragg that's comparable to any, you know, dense urban city in the United States.

01:03:51.120 The military is an authoritarian structure.

01:03:53.240 I don't need to tell you that since you served in it.

01:03:55.420 Um, so it seems like you could prevent that if you really wanted to, you could fix that problem.

01:04:02.760 You would think so.

01:04:04.680 You would think so.

01:04:06.520 And I'm at a loss to explain why, um, so little has been done.

01:04:13.420 I've talked to people who, uh, you know, CID sources who told me.

01:04:17.120 CID is what?

01:04:18.160 The Army's Criminal Investigations Division.

01:04:20.460 Yes.

01:04:20.680 It's, uh, it's a quasi-military, quasi-civilian, um, police agency that has jurisdiction to investigate crimes involving American soldiers.

01:04:30.040 So you have MPs who are the uniformed officers, and then above them you have CID.

01:04:35.580 So they're the ones who investigate, you know, major crimes on bases.

01:04:38.100 Um, and they told me about closed-door meetings in which the Fort Bragg brass mostly seem concerned with, you know, um, massaging the statistics that they kept just to make it seem like drug crime was under control when, in fact, it's not.

01:04:55.020 Who runs Fort Bragg?

01:04:57.040 Well, Fort Bragg is, um, under the, the largest umbrella formation there would be the 18th Airborne Corps.

01:05:04.340 So the commander of the 18th Airborne Corps is going to be the highest-ranking army officer in Fort Bragg.

01:05:10.100 Um, but you also have the Joint Special Operations Command there, which is a very elite, um, formation in the military, the most elite.

01:05:19.280 And so the commander of, of JSOC is also, um, a very important and powerful person who's a, who's a, uh, three-star general, if I'm not mistaken, who's on, on the base as well.

01:05:30.980 So you have a collection of, of, you know, what people call the brass.

01:05:34.980 And then, of course, they're subservient to the Pentagon and the Secretary of the Army, uh, and the Secretary of Defense.

01:05:42.980 One, um, connection that I've almost never heard anybody make, but I've thought about, uh, so the war in Vietnam really starts in 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin incident and extends all the way really to the, to the final end in April of 1975.

01:05:59.340 That coincided almost exactly with the rise of a real drug epidemic in the United States.

01:06:06.200 Vietnam is in a drug, is a poppy-growing region, you know, the Golden Triangle.

01:06:11.200 And for a bunch of different reasons, that war seemed to have had a material effect on drug use in the United States.

01:06:19.120 Like, and a lot of people died from drugs during the period of the Vietnam War.

01:06:23.380 And I think there must be a connection.

01:06:25.500 You see the exact same phenomenon around the war in Afghanistan starts in 2001, ends three years ago.

01:06:34.680 And it coincides precisely with this explosion in opioid drug use and the inevitable death toll from that.

01:06:43.340 Is there a direct connection between those two things?

01:06:45.780 Yes, there is.

01:06:46.740 And the U.S. media's failure to connect those things is probably the biggest dereliction of duty on, on part of the press corps that, that I've seen in my life.

01:06:56.120 Um, the-

01:06:57.400 Those are big things.

01:06:58.640 Big things, yeah.

01:06:59.420 The death toll from drugs during the Vietnam period, and particularly during the Afghanistan period, dwarfs the death toll in the war itself.

01:07:06.620 Mm-hmm, yeah.

01:07:07.600 The number one cause of death for Americans age 18 to 45 is fentanyl overdose.

01:07:12.500 And where does that, that comes, that comes directly out of the heroin crisis that afflicted this country from, let's say, the mid-2000s up until 2015, 16, 17, 18.

01:07:25.160 And so it's very important to ask, what were the causes of the heroin crisis?

01:07:30.440 And it-

01:07:30.860 I don't think I've ever heard anyone ask that question.

01:07:33.300 Well, the conventional explanation, which is not wrong, is that the roots of it lie in the, um, over-prescription of opioid painkillers in the 1990s.

01:07:43.020 Yes.

01:07:43.360 That's very true. That happened.

01:07:44.700 The Sackler family in Purdue, Florida.

01:07:46.020 Yeah.

01:07:46.480 That created widespread, um, dependence on opiates among a large, a number of people.

01:07:52.360 Um, you also saw at the same time to feed, um, this demand increased heroin production in Mexico.

01:07:58.540 However, more than 90% of all the world's heroin was produced in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021.

01:08:09.080 More than 9%?

01:08:10.720 In fact, uh, Afghanistan under U.S. occupation produced more heroin than the world, the whole world could absorb.

01:08:16.380 So supply, they're outstripped global demand.

01:08:19.020 And so for that reason, you, there are now believed to be large stockpiles of African heroin, uh, in places like Pakistan and Tashikistan.

01:08:27.240 How could, should, wait, do you think heroin production went up under U.S. occupation?

01:08:31.440 I mean, it went up exponentially.

01:08:32.540 So, and as a direct result of the U.S. invasion, and we should talk about the Taliban in this context, because I'll try to keep it, uh, to brief to the essentials, because it actually goes back to the 1980s.

01:08:44.320 So, in the 1980s, um, the CIA, uh, armed and funded Afghan resistance fighters known as Mujahideen to fight the Russians who had invaded Afghanistan and were occupying Afghanistan to prop up a communist government there.

01:09:00.260 So, and they won that war.

01:09:01.920 That's what we call Charlie Wilson's War, the movie, of course.

01:09:04.540 But after the CIA withdrew, those warlords that they had previously set up took over Afghanistan and ruled it in the 1990s.

01:09:12.820 And they were all major drug traffickers.

01:09:15.400 They're the ones who were responsible for turning Afghanistan into the narco state that it became. 1.00

01:09:21.960 Um, you know, Gulbadin Hekmatyar, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, was the main recipient of CIA cash.

01:09:28.280 And he turned into the big, by far the biggest drug lord in Afghanistan.

01:09:32.360 There's also the clan of Nassim Akunzada in the Helmand province, who was another major recipient of CIA aid, and who turned the Helmand into the world's most prolific, um, opium poppy, heroin, morphine producing area in the world.

01:09:48.160 The Taliban, we hear so much about the Taliban's oppression of women and making music illegal, and they do those things. 0.95

01:09:55.040 The Taliban is an arch-conservative, uh, movement whose, um, ethics and morality I absolutely do not share.

01:10:03.380 However— 0.99

01:10:03.940 I never understood why I was supposed to give a shit about that. 0.97

01:10:06.720 I mean, I want everyone to be free, just as a matter of principle, but that didn't—but moving, you know, metric tons of heroin into my country, that seems like a real story. 0.96

01:10:16.440 Whether people can, you know, girls can get PhDs in feminist studies or whatever is of less concern to me, right?

01:10:23.820 Right. Right. Well, the, uh, Afghan people didn't like it either, all the drug trafficking that was going on in their country. 1.00

01:10:30.980 And what made the Taliban popular originally was their suppression of the drug industry in, in Afghanistan.

01:10:37.540 Um, they, uh, eliminated—they took over and eliminated all of the drug production that was taking place there.

01:10:43.540 Because it's—you can see how it's ideologically consistent with their Sharia law.

01:10:48.360 Uh-huh.

01:10:48.540 Uh, you know, they don't tolerate drugs.

01:10:50.260 They don't tolerate alcohol either.

01:10:52.040 So they get rid of all of it.

01:10:53.240 But Sharia law is bad, Seth. 1.00

01:10:55.100 I don't know if you've heard that.

01:10:56.080 It's bad.

01:10:56.620 It's worse than what's happening in New York and Detroit.

01:10:58.760 It's just bad.

01:10:59.400 I don't know why.

01:11:02.560 It's just like, years of brainwashing.

01:11:04.700 I just like, I'm not Muslim.

01:11:06.360 I'm not for Sharia law. 0.90

01:11:07.260 On the other hand, compared to what?

01:11:08.700 Compared to Baltimore?

01:11:10.460 You know? 1.00

01:11:11.080 Shut up. 1.00

01:11:12.080 Sharia law. 1.00

01:11:12.800 Well, in—

01:11:15.120 Sorry, Sharia law! 1.00

01:11:18.380 In Afghanistan, the effect of implementing Sharia law was the total suppression of the heroin industry and the decimation of the world's supply of heroin.

01:11:26.480 And a massive reduction in the rape of boys.

01:11:29.220 They didn't like that.

01:11:30.520 That's another subject that's absolutely part of this.

01:11:33.720 And I almost hesitate to go there, because it's a—it is a—everything I'm saying about drugs could also be talked about—I can't believe I'm even saying this, but child sex trafficking was something that took place.

01:11:44.560 It was something that the U.S.-backed client state was deeply implicated in child sex trafficking.

01:11:50.100 Another thing that's falsely laid at the feet of the Taliban and said, this is just part of Afghan culture when that is not true.

01:11:55.620 Um, but to return to the heroin thing, the—it was actually in the summer of 2001.

01:12:03.380 Do you feel like your mind explodes with, like, when you start to understand what the truth is?

01:12:09.380 In this case, yes.

01:12:10.540 Just the layers of propaganda that attach, like, barnacles to your brain when they come off?

01:12:14.500 You're like, I don't even recognize this world.

01:12:16.700 Do you feel that ever?

01:12:17.580 In this case, yes, because although I had served in the military and worked as a war reporter, I'd actually never been to Afghanistan.

01:12:22.280 So I had to educate myself on the Afghan war, um, starting from scratch.

01:12:28.020 Um, and what I learned was that, uh, it—the—the Taliban eliminated the drug industry just months before the U.S. invaded.

01:12:36.200 The DEA and the U.N. certified the—the eradication campaign that the Taliban had carried out.

01:12:41.260 And when the U.S. invaded in 2001, they teamed up with the exact same narco warlords, um, that had previously ruled Afghanistan, what we call the Northern Alliance.

01:12:51.000 Um, and those people took over, and Hamid Karzai was installed as a CIA puppet president of Afghanistan and immediately legalized poppy production in Afghanistan.

01:13:04.040 And within—within the span of, let's say, two years, maybe three years, heroin production increased something like 7,000 or 8,000 percent in Afghanistan.

01:13:14.540 And—

01:13:14.860 And, of course, a lot of it winds up in Europe and the United States, correct?

01:13:18.080 —Yes. You know, you have, um, like I said, more heroin than the world can even absorb.

01:13:24.160 —Why would the U.S. authorities, why would the CIA, why would the White House allow that?

01:13:29.720 —I—my view, there's a paranoid, um, point of view, conspiratorial point of view among people who believe that this is some kind of, um, this is some kind of societal program.

01:13:46.240 There's some nefarious program that the—that the U.S. government wants the whole world to be inundated with heroin.

01:13:52.120 —I personally am more inclined to the view that they just don't care and that these type of mercenary drug traffickers, um, make natural allies to a foreign power that's invading your country.

01:14:06.320 —Is there a difference between negligence and malice?

01:14:09.680 —Well—

01:14:09.900 —If I leave my toddler in the car with the windows closed on a hot day to go gamble at a casino and he suffocates, does it matter if I wanted to kill him or if I just didn't care enough?

01:14:21.120 —No, I don't think it matters.

01:14:22.840 —It doesn't matter.

01:14:23.640 —And I'm not making an excuse for that.

01:14:24.720 —No, no, I know you're not. I'm just like—the bottom line is that U.S. authorities, the Bush administration, and then the Obama administration, and then, you know, up until the end, up until the Biden administration, allowed the United States and its citizens to die of drug ODs because the country that they were running, Afghanistan, was producing all the heroin. 0.74

01:14:48.480 —Right? I mean—

01:14:50.000 —Yes. The, I mean, the amount of heroin that was being produced was very potent, high quality, and large amounts of it, so that obviously supply and demand depressed prices.

01:14:59.440 —And you have ample reporting. It's not just Europe and Australia and Asia that's being flooded by heroin. Also, the United States in this time saw a massive increase in supply.

01:15:11.300 —Now, here's where the cover-up comes in, because all of this was well-reported up until the late 2000s, let's say 2007 or so. That's when the DEA started putting out statements to the effect that, although there was rising heroin supplies in the United States, they claimed that none of it was coming from Afghanistan. Less than 1% is the official figure.

01:15:31.900 —And so, in the process of writing this book, I spent a lot of time in the weeds trying to figure out how exactly the DEA made this determination, because it's kind of like saying no oil from Saudi Arabia ever gets burned in the United States.

01:15:45.720 You ask, how is that possible that the world's largest consumer of drugs is not importing any drugs from the world's largest producer of drugs?

01:15:55.220 —Which, by the way, it controls.

01:15:56.340 —Which it controls, yeah. That seems to defy reason, yeah.

01:15:59.800 —Yes, it does. That's why you're a good reporter, Seth.

01:16:02.800 —If you read the book, you will see that I get deep in the nitty-gritty of it, down to the actual mathematics of it. But suffice it to say, I find that that statistic was totally bogus and invented as a way to cover up the fact this incredibly damaging effect of the war in Afghanistan had on U.S. society.

01:16:23.960 —So, I guess another way to say that would be, in fact, a lot of heroin from our client state of Afghanistan was winding up in American cities.

01:16:32.960 —Absolutely. Especially what's called China white heroin. It's called China because of its color, not because it actually comes from China.

01:16:40.240 —Yeah. Now, the picture is slightly confounded because there was also a lot of Mexican heroin coming to the United States during the same time. But Mexican heroin is black in color and low in quality. It's called black tar heroin.

01:16:55.240 —Yeah. It's usually smoked.

01:16:56.640 —Right. But it was the China white that really flooded the U.S. during this time period and caused the most damage, especially in the northeast and in Appalachia and in the Midwest, because that's where flights from Afghanistan come. It's all traffic through airports on the eastern seaboard, whereas Mexico kind of supplies the west of the United States in the south. 0.96

01:17:15.880 —Right. That's why Jerry Garcia was a black tar addict in Marin County, California, and all the junkies in Philadelphia are using China white. 0.96

01:17:27.080 —Right. Right. And the China white, because it's so much more potent, is what leads to all of the huge overdose crisis that we suffered during these years. 0.99

01:17:33.880 —Pretty hard to OD from smoking heroin. Possible, but hard.

01:17:36.860 —That's my understanding, yeah.

01:17:37.880 —Yeah.

01:17:39.640 —So, who profited from that?

01:17:42.780 —That's a very good question. Not the people of Afghanistan. 1.00

01:17:45.880 —The numbers that I've seen suggest that maybe a billion dollars a year was the profits that went to Afghans of one type or another. The majority of it went to drug supply chains outside of Afghanistan. And that's the most opaque aspect of all of this. And that's where I have the most unanswered questions. Who exactly was making all of this money?

01:18:13.720 —So, the occupation of Afghanistan was a military occupation, diplomatic as well, intel components. But basically, we had our troops in Afghanistan, therefore we controlled Afghanistan.

01:18:24.280 —So, if there's an exponential rise by thousands of percent rise in opium production, heroin manufacturing, and export of heroin, it's kind of hard to believe the U.S. military didn't know that.

01:18:37.920 —Oh, they certainly knew about it. And there's an agency called the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction that, although it's a U.S. government agency, has done the most important retrospective work on this, including lots of interviews with key people.

01:18:56.160 —And all of them acknowledged that they knew that it was going on. And SAIGAR is an agency, its acronym, discussed how the U.S. military didn't want anything to do with drug eradication because they saw it as detrimental to their mission because the people they were working with were drug traffickers.

01:19:16.760 —And the same story goes for the CIA, except SAIGAR explicitly says in its 2018 report on counter-narcotics, that the CIA, rather than cooperating with anti-drug eradication measures, prioritized its relationship with significant drug traffickers.

01:19:33.420 —That's the language of the U.S. government report. And it even names some of the major drug traffickers who worked with the CIA, who were on the CIA's payroll.

01:19:41.500 —And let's not forget that the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, were on the payroll of the CIA and led this drug trafficking organization, which, you know, recently our government accused Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela of being the head of a drug cartel on some very, very flimsy evidence.

01:20:01.100 —And they make these organization charts where they purport to show Maduro at the top and these other guys.

01:20:06.680 —If you had taken that same lens and trained it on Afghanistan, you could have very easily created an organization structure showing the world's biggest drug cartel with Hamid Karzai at the very top.

01:20:16.600 —And he's someone who, you know, is sitting down to dine with President Obama and all these other top U.S. officials.

01:20:21.980 —But if I'm a special operator in Afghanistan and I'm working with the local leaders who are also drug traffickers, I mean, it's not a huge step.

01:20:35.600 And I'm buying heroin for, you know, $1,000 a pound when I can resell it for many, many times that can be kind of tempting to bring some home, right?

01:20:46.380 —Timothy Dumas, who was found dead next to Billy Levine on Fort Bragg in 2020, had evidently written a letter in which he outlined exactly what you're talking about.

01:20:58.680 A drug trafficking organization involving special forces soldiers who were trafficking heroin from Afghanistan to the United States on military planes.

01:21:08.720 And he was killed before that letter was ever made public.

01:21:12.100 —Who'd he write it to?

01:21:13.260 —He wrote it. It was addressed to a top-ranking—I never read the letter, but I interviewed someone who did read the letter.

01:21:20.300 I interviewed three people who knew about the letter, including Dumas' son, and also his partner in crime,

01:21:25.980 a very corrupt former North Carolina state trooper named Freddie Wayne Huff, who was entrusted with a copy of the letter and read it.

01:21:35.160 And he said that it was addressed to a high-ranking general.

01:21:37.780 —As I said before, Dumas intended to use this blackmail letter to exert pressure on the special forces in order to get his pension reinstated.

01:21:46.680 But it doesn't seem to have been a very wise maneuver on his part.

01:21:49.640 —No, no. You can push too hard, then you wind up executed.

01:21:54.160 I'm coming around to your theory, by the way, that this may have been retaliatory.

01:22:00.980 —That's not my theory, although I get what you're saying, but just to be super clear about it, because these are not light allegations.

01:22:10.960 So I just want to be as responsible as possible as a reporter and say that this is what people have alleged, this is what the evidence is, but we don't know for sure.

01:22:19.280 And the reason we don't know is because our ignorance has been procured by the people, by the authorities who have the responsibility to investigate this stuff and are not doing it.

01:22:28.460 —Do you think—nicely put, and thank you for saying that—do you think the U.S.—people in the U.S. military, in the special forces community, did participate in drug trafficking?

01:22:40.460 —I find it hard to imagine that they weren't.

01:22:46.460 I will say that there's other ways of making money, other types of crime that I discuss in the book.

01:22:52.280 The book's not entirely about drug trafficking.

01:22:53.940 —There's also a lot of weapons trafficking, a lot of weapons theft from the military.

01:23:00.360 Fort Bragg, it would blow your mind if they ever disclosed how many weapons and how much in explosives that they lose annually.

01:23:09.340 It's really crazy.

01:23:10.800 —What kind of weapons? What kind of explosives?

01:23:12.140 —Military weapons and plastic explosives.

01:23:15.020 They lose an incredible amount of weapons every year.

01:23:17.560 And Timothy Dumas was a guy who was trafficking weapons, besides trafficking drugs.

01:23:21.780 —He was a quartermaster.

01:23:22.260 —He was a quartermaster, and so he was deeply involved in all of this.

01:23:25.600 —Yeah.

01:23:26.100 —I mean, I read his separation packet.

01:23:28.020 It's 128 pages.

01:23:29.900 And it makes crystal clear that his entire career was characterized by stuff going missing, documents going missing.

01:23:38.540 He was the—when he was in Afghanistan attached to JSOC, all of the records for two years, 2012 and 2013, if I'm not mistaken, went missing in their entirety.

01:23:49.660 All the paperwork on all of the JSOC supply chain for that battalion was just gone.

01:23:57.300 But—

01:23:57.700 —So, what do you do with military-grade weapons, even small arms, fully automatic rifles?

01:24:04.480 Like, what do you do with something?

01:24:05.420 You can't sell it in the United States.

01:24:06.680 —No, you sell it to Mexican cartels. 0.98

01:24:08.960 And then that's how they end up better armed than the Mexican government, in states like Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon and Coahuila.

01:24:15.200 —Yeah.

01:24:15.920 —Los Zetas.

01:24:16.880 —The Ukrainian military has been selling NATO weapons, American-supplied weapons, to the Mexican drug cartels.

01:24:22.180 Fact.

01:24:22.620 They hate it when you say that, but it's true. 1.00

01:24:23.960 —Well, I haven't seen that reporting, but I will tell you this about Ukraine.

01:24:28.040 That agency I mentioned earlier, Saigar, there are provisions in the laws providing aid to Ukraine that ensure that that type of accountability never takes place again.

01:24:38.160 Because Saigar turned into a real embarrassment for the war in Afghanistan because apparently they took their job seriously and did it correctly. 1.00

01:24:45.600 So, the aid to Ukraine can never be audited.

01:24:48.400 That's written in the law.

01:24:49.520 —What?

01:24:50.300 —Yeah.

01:24:50.600 —Oh, this is—

01:24:52.600 —Oh, this can't continue for too long.

01:24:55.380 It's too out of control.

01:24:58.420 —Um, you know, the Roman Empire declined for hundreds of years before it finally disintegrated, so—

01:25:04.920 —Well, and then it just moved east.

01:25:07.200 —Um, and it lasted another thousand years.

01:25:09.820 But, um, amazingly—

01:25:12.960 So, of course, you're right.

01:25:14.000 You're absolutely right.

01:25:15.160 But it is bewildering that this was, even just 20 years ago, if you had done a poll of people I knew anyway.

01:25:21.860 I lived in D.C.

01:25:22.980 I was around the government every day.

01:25:25.220 Is this country corrupt?

01:25:26.900 I would say, not really.

01:25:28.840 I mean, that was my view.

01:25:31.460 I think most people felt that way.

01:25:32.920 When you joined the Army, did you think the people who ran the Army were corrupt?

01:25:37.380 —No.

01:25:40.240 The simple answer is no.

01:25:41.780 But, you know, corruption takes many forms.

01:25:44.100 In the United States, if you get pulled over by a cop, you can't just bribe that cop to let you go.

01:25:50.980 That's not going to happen.

01:25:51.700 But the higher you go up in the power structures in this country, the more you find legal corruption.

01:25:59.680 I mean, is it corruption for a corporation to give unlimited amounts of money to a politician to get elected?

01:26:06.500 Because that's—our Supreme Court says that's totally legal under Citizens United.

01:26:10.040 But in another context, in another country, in another time, that would just be considered the rankest sort of bribery.

01:26:19.500 So it depends, one, how you define corruption.

01:26:21.600 —Well, of course, it is bribery.

01:26:22.980 —I agree, yeah.

01:26:24.000 —Yeah.

01:26:24.140 —Well, obviously.

01:26:25.900 —Yeah.

01:26:26.580 —It's a complex question because, like, do you have a right to tell people to what extent they can support a politician?

01:26:31.900 I don't know.

01:26:32.320 I mean, I think it is complicated.

01:26:33.540 But the effect as it stands right now is politicians are bribed by donors.

01:26:38.900 —Mm-hmm.

01:26:39.440 Yeah, absolutely.

01:26:40.480 —I mean, that's how we got Ted Cruz. 0.99

01:26:42.420 Totally corrupt human being. 0.70

01:26:45.240 —Yeah, he's—unfortunately, he's my senator. 0.80

01:26:47.300 I hope that he has a primary challenger soon.

01:26:50.700 —Yeah, well, I think he just won.

01:26:52.000 So probably not for a while. 0.91

01:26:54.440 But anyway, sorry not to get off on a Ted Cruz tangent, but I just want to say, again, Ted Cruz is corrupt. 0.79

01:27:00.700 His wife works for Goldman in Texas, and when she pitches clients, I happen to know for a dead certain fact, he goes to dinner with them. 0.93

01:27:11.140 So that's corruption.

01:27:12.180 —Well, I'm sure he's looking forward to coming back on your show again after the last time.

01:27:16.040 —Anyway, sorry.

01:27:17.160 Now I'm being mean, but it's true, and there's a lot of it.

01:27:19.700 But when it happens in the Senate, you're like, okay, of course, Ted Cruz is corrupt. 0.95

01:27:22.740 Look at him.

01:27:23.680 But when it happens among people most civilians revere, like, you know, the most elite units in the U.S. military, that's dispiriting among other things, right?

01:27:35.460 —I think it is, and I think my inclination is to think that it is a result of waging wars that nobody really believes in for years and years, because think about what that does to your psychology.

01:27:48.700 —When you're engaged in a righteous cause that has widespread societal buy-in, you're going to be constrained by your own sense of yourself as a virtuous actor.

01:28:00.320 —And you're going to know that when you're tempted to do things for money or for other motives, that that's not consistent with your self-image, and so you don't do it. 0.75

01:28:11.720 —But when you're fighting for years in wars like Afghanistan that the public just doesn't even pay attention to, and you know all your allies are drug traffickers, and they're raping little boys, and they're trafficking sex slaves.

01:28:23.120 —But you're just doing it because you like your work and you like being an elite soldier, then it's easier to take a mercenary attitude towards this and just think, it's not going to matter if I skim, you know, $100,000 off the top of the op fund that we have out here in the field, all this cash that we're given.

01:28:41.300 Or it's no big deal for me to grab a couple of bricks of this heroin and put it in my footlocker and then sell it for $50,000 when I get back to Fayetteville.

01:28:50.060 —I hope what you just said is clipped, because that's a perfect summation of what my instincts are, that the more morally corrupt the enterprise is, the more morally corrupt the people participating in the enterprise become.

01:29:04.060 —And that's why I spend so much time in the book talking about the wars in which all this, the context in which this takes place, because it doesn't take place in a vacuum.

01:29:13.500 —And, you know, the decisions of our leaders in this country trickle down to the lowest levels and have an influence on how people live their lives.

01:29:22.260 —That's right.

01:29:24.860 —Has anyone ever been held accountable?

01:29:28.920 I mean, I think you've confirmed my instinct, which is that there was a connection between the war in this drug-producing country and our occupation of this drug-producing country and the drug epidemic in the United States. 0.96

01:29:41.180 —I mean, there's clearly—I mean, you have to be an idiot not to see the connection. 0.97

01:29:44.480 —But has anyone ever been indicted, arrested, convicted for participating in that? 0.99

01:29:51.600 —No.

01:29:52.440 No, nobody.

01:29:53.660 —Nobody?

01:29:54.520 —Nobody, no.

01:29:55.960 For the drug trafficking that took place in Afghanistan?

01:29:58.680 —Yeah.

01:29:59.420 —No.

01:30:00.240 That's never happened.

01:30:01.940 And there's been—there was total impunity around the entire enterprise.

01:30:05.540 —Man, I think the United States government, I don't think I know, is doing things right now whose consequences cannot be foreseen, but they'll be profound.

01:30:17.540 —I agree.

01:30:18.680 —And I think the more rotten your behavior, you know, the bigger the consequences.

01:30:25.200 And you don't get away with it.

01:30:26.860 No one gets away with it.

01:30:27.900 —I agree.

01:30:29.280 —And, you know, you wonder what's going on now, because Afghanistan is fading rapidly into the past.

01:30:36.820 You know, the war ended in 2021.

01:30:39.760 And, you know, is there massive drug trafficking taking place under the auspices of U.S. military control right now?

01:30:46.800 Not that I know of.

01:30:48.100 But there's other things.

01:30:48.980 You know, Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe before the war there, before Russia invaded.

01:30:57.560 And we've dumped so much money and so much equipment into that country with no oversight at all.

01:31:05.180 And transferred it to a political class that we know is corrupt to the bone.

01:31:11.500 —So, that would be the place to look now, in my opinion, for the contemporary examples of corruption.

01:31:17.660 —You'd get assassinated if you tried to do that.

01:31:19.500 You'd be assassinated by the Ukrainians, perhaps, you know, with the help of U.S. intel agencies. 1.00

01:31:28.020 Period.

01:31:28.920 —I feel like it would be very unsafe to look into that subject.

01:31:30.960 —It would be very unsafe.

01:31:32.280 I can tell you firsthand, it would be very unsafe to do that.

01:31:35.180 In fact, you couldn't do it.

01:31:37.140 —Whereas—

01:31:37.780 —Which is pretty crazy, if you think about it.

01:31:40.160 —It is crazy.

01:31:40.820 There's a lot of things that are crazy these days.

01:31:44.360 I think that what made it possible to write what I wrote about Afghanistan was something that happened while I was writing the book, not too long ago, in fact.

01:31:54.960 Which was that, you know, the Taliban took over after the U.S. withdrew in 21.

01:32:00.000 And then proceeded to do exactly what they had done in the year 2000-2001, which was to completely eradicate all drugs from the country.

01:32:07.380 —And up until then, we had been told, to the extent that drug production in Afghanistan came up, we were always told that it was the Taliban and that the insurgency and the drug production were just two sides of the same coin. 0.61

01:32:21.140 —Such liars, yes.

01:32:21.940 —But the best lies are the ones that are 180-degree opposite of the truth.

01:32:25.540 —Exactly.

01:32:25.900 —Exactly.

01:32:26.760 —And what made it—what gave me the—I guess what gave me the confidence to really—to hit as hard as I could in this narrative was seeing the Taliban in 2023.

01:32:38.480 They completed another eradication campaign where they once again totally eliminated heroin production and drug production from Afghanistan.

01:32:45.380 So, at that point, you know, I had doubts as a reporter because I'm not omniscient and, you know, there's always this conflicting information.

01:32:54.300 So, I kind of doubt my own conclusions.

01:32:56.460 I'm thinking, well, they must have been involved to some degree.

01:32:59.160 We hear that said so often from the most prestigious institutions of media and government.

01:33:03.640 There must be some truth to it.

01:33:05.160 But seeing the Taliban totally eliminate drugs from their country, again, made me realize, okay, this was always a one-sided thing.

01:33:14.440 It wasn't that both sides were involved in it.

01:33:17.260 And like I said, that didn't happen until 2023.

01:33:19.740 And so—and that's what I think makes it possible to tell the true story of Afghanistan for the first time.

01:33:24.780 —You want to get really red-pilled?

01:33:26.560 You want to make it almost hard to live here?

01:33:29.080 Look up Taliban drug treatment. 0.98

01:33:31.260 And, you know, you're in your early 40s, I think.

01:33:34.180 So, you've lived in this country a long time.

01:33:35.960 And you must know people who've been ensnared in drugs or died from drugs.

01:33:39.880 I know—and you must.

01:33:40.800 You live here.

01:33:41.400 So, you know people who've become addicted to drugs and can't get off.

01:33:44.460 And, you know, a lot of them, most are dead.

01:33:47.560 Ask yourself a super simple question.

01:33:49.660 Is the Taliban drug treatment program—you can look this up, there are videos of it online.

01:33:55.660 Yeah, I've seen it.

01:33:56.500 Does it have—does it produce a higher or lower relapse rate than the American version in, say, Delray Beach, Florida?

01:34:06.120 Are the Taliban better at getting people off opioids than we are? 0.68

01:34:11.100 And the answer is not just yes, but hell yes.

01:34:14.760 Way better.

01:34:15.700 Because they don't wean them off with methadone. 0.99

01:34:17.980 This whole thing is a freaking lie.

01:34:19.760 By the way, a lot of people get rich off that. 0.98

01:34:22.140 You know who you are if you're listening.

01:34:23.460 Some of them are big political donors who get rich on drug treatment programs. 0.99

01:34:27.700 Disgusting. 0.98

01:34:28.480 And it doesn't work. 0.82

01:34:29.600 It works for some small percentage, but it doesn't work for most.

01:34:31.800 That's for sure.

01:34:32.680 And a lot of them die, and they never lead productive, joyful lives.

01:34:36.660 And the Taliban have a faith-based—I know I'm going to probably get pulled off YouTube for saying this, but it's true. 1.00

01:34:42.540 I'm saying this as a Christian, not a Muslim. 1.00

01:34:44.140 They have a faith-based, no-nonsense, zero intoxicant policy in their rehab, and it works, and ours doesn't.

01:34:55.300 Well, it's a really good point because Afghanistan— 0.99

01:34:58.480 If you think drugs are a serious problem, and I do because I've lived it and seen it, yeah, it's a serious point.

01:35:04.280 It's a serious point that we should think about.

01:35:05.860 Yeah.

01:35:06.040 What is that?

01:35:06.600 Well, Afghanistan came to have the highest rates of drug use in the world, the highest addiction rate in the world, which is a tragedy.

01:35:13.080 And it's something that was foisted on them, and it's a source of profound misery and blight.

01:35:18.600 And the Taliban's way of dealing with it, once the U.S. left, was to simply round up addicts.

01:35:24.720 If they found them on the street, they would just put them onto buses, and it was involuntary.

01:35:29.760 Take them to these detox wards where they're not given any kind of methadone or any kind of medication.

01:35:34.740 They're just given food, water, and a place to stay, and then they just wait it out.

01:35:41.960 They're basically locked in there, and they suffer through withdrawals.

01:35:46.860 And then once they're sober, they're allowed to leave at that point.

01:35:51.180 And it was amazing to me to see the hostility in the Western reaction to the Taliban's drug detox program. 0.51

01:36:00.640 I mean, you can read all these think tank pieces, all these NGOs where they're talking about how inhumane this is. 0.98

01:36:06.780 Oh, shut up. 0.99

01:36:08.160 And I've been through withdrawal from alcohol, and it was so unpleasant, and I did it alone. 0.99

01:36:14.540 I have not done anything extraordinary, but the one extraordinary thing, I did go through that.

01:36:19.460 Man, I never drank it.

01:36:20.680 Can you go through that?

01:36:22.060 I mean, I know people relapse after going through withdrawals, for sure.

01:36:24.980 But I can just speak for myself and other people I know who have done it.

01:36:27.940 That's a pretty powerful incentive not to do it again.

01:36:30.340 It is.

01:36:31.180 And I do think there's a cost to sort of easing people out of something.

01:36:34.720 I mean, some withdrawal is life-threatening.

01:36:36.840 Of course, you don't want to kill people.

01:36:39.120 But opioid withdrawal is not life-threatening. 0.99

01:36:41.080 It's just you just shit yourself a lot and feel terrible. 0.99

01:36:44.220 I don't know. 0.99

01:36:45.020 There is, I speak from experience, there's value in that.

01:36:50.040 You'll never have another glass of vodka if you've gone through something like that.

01:36:53.060 That was my feeling.

01:36:54.500 So let me ask you, would you like to see, you know, police officers basically rounding people up?

01:37:01.480 If you're standing leaning against a trash can in the fentanyl haze,

01:37:05.420 if you're tweaking your brains out and picking open wounds on your face from meth,

01:37:10.300 that is it. 1.00

01:37:10.880 You are in hell. 1.00

01:37:11.720 You're dying. 1.00

01:37:12.260 You're a fellow American.

01:37:13.460 I have an obligation to help you.

01:37:15.720 You're beyond helping yourself in the way that a child, a toddler is beyond helping himself

01:37:19.240 in the way that a schizophrenic is beyond helping himself.

01:37:22.040 You don't have reason.

01:37:23.080 You don't have free will.

01:37:24.380 And it's incumbent on me to love you through action.

01:37:28.400 And we can argue about the details of treatment.

01:37:31.020 I personally think that when possible and not physically dangerous,

01:37:34.580 total withdrawal is the best way, you know, having done it.

01:37:39.880 But I also think bigger than that is you can't allow this and call yourself a decent society.

01:37:48.200 You cannot allow this.

01:37:49.200 This is hell.

01:37:50.200 And anyone who doesn't think it's hell doesn't know anything about it.

01:37:53.000 What if that was your daughter getting pimped out? 1.00

01:37:56.700 You know what I mean?

01:37:57.540 Like it's that ugly and you're from a city where it's just totally destroyed your downtown.

01:38:01.000 But most American cities can say that and no one does anything.

01:38:05.260 So yeah, tomorrow, tomorrow.

01:38:07.340 This is a country where we force people to take the COVID vax. 1.00

01:38:09.640 So don't lecture me about civil liberties, asshole. 1.00

01:38:12.720 Sorry. 1.00

01:38:13.120 Yeah, I do feel that way strongly.

01:38:15.060 And how many addicts do I know personally who got sober in jail?

01:38:18.360 Yeah.

01:38:18.780 Yeah.

01:38:18.980 And they're grateful for that.

01:38:20.100 And so when Nancy Pelosi starts talking about compassion,

01:38:23.440 the partial birth abortion lady is talking to me about compassion. 1.00

01:38:25.940 Fuck you, actually. 1.00

01:38:27.360 Compassion? 1.00

01:38:27.840 Look at your city.

01:38:28.780 There's no compassion there.

01:38:29.820 That's hate.

01:38:30.380 Hate for your fellow citizens allowing this stuff.

01:38:32.400 Mm-hmm.

01:38:33.320 Sorry.

01:38:34.280 Yeah.

01:38:34.500 Drugs are destroying America.

01:38:37.480 I, uh...

01:38:38.240 And I say it as a former user of drugs and like was very liberal on drugs, but I was wrong.

01:38:42.300 Mm-hmm.

01:38:43.320 You know, I should say I'm not a drug warrior.

01:38:47.360 I don't believe in the war on drugs.

01:38:49.180 I don't think drugs should be illegal.

01:38:51.300 I think that they should be regulated rather than controlled as...

01:38:56.880 Rather than being a controlled substance that's totally illegal.

01:38:59.160 Um, but I'm inclined to your point of view about the rehabilitation of large numbers of

01:39:05.100 drug people, of drug users.

01:39:07.700 Um, I think that drugs are one of the most salient features of American society.

01:39:13.300 Yes.

01:39:13.600 Or the worse.

01:39:15.040 Um, and that we have a, just, as a country, we have a big, big drug problem.

01:39:20.140 And you see that affecting the military, you know, more than ever.

01:39:23.880 Yeah, I guess I shouldn't be.

01:39:25.340 Well, of course, you're absolutely right.

01:39:26.700 But it's like the thing about getting older is it's like, it's so hard to readjust your

01:39:32.440 previous perceptions of things.

01:39:34.340 But you're right.

01:39:34.960 Of course, you shouldn't be.

01:39:36.000 I should not be shocked that there's a drug problem in the military.

01:39:38.080 There's a drug problem everywhere else.

01:39:39.060 There's a drug problem in suburbia.

01:39:40.800 There's a drug problem in the inner city.

01:39:42.000 There's a drug problem in rural America.

01:39:43.400 We just have drug problems in America, bottom line.

01:39:45.840 Let me say this in response to what you're saying about rounding people up and putting them

01:39:49.980 into detox wards.

01:39:52.440 I think that's better than arresting them and putting them in prison for using drugs.

01:39:56.500 Well, of course.

01:39:57.540 And probably cheaper, too.

01:39:59.880 It's not even like compared to what?

01:40:01.540 How much aid have we sent to Israel to kill people in Gaza?

01:40:04.160 Yeah. 0.54

01:40:04.300 I don't know.

01:40:05.020 Money's not an issue.

01:40:06.180 Well, I mean, on some level, it is an issue, but it's also it's an expression of your priorities.

01:40:11.580 What I spend money on in my family is an expression of what I care about.

01:40:16.220 Well, what I mean is if you care about your own people and the kids who are literally

01:40:20.640 standing there like this, like, how can you allow that?

01:40:23.900 Or people lying in their own feces on the sidewalk, like, that's so shameful.

01:40:28.900 It's a mark of shame against all of us.

01:40:30.780 Those are Americans.

01:40:32.540 And I don't think we should put them in jail.

01:40:35.820 I completely agree with you.

01:40:37.080 That's not a crime as much as it's a tragedy.

01:40:40.060 It's a crime against them.

01:40:41.060 They're committing a crime against themselves.

01:40:42.680 Yeah.

01:40:42.820 Don't allow that.

01:40:44.280 Would you allow your child, if you had a child who was addicted to fentanyl, like, standing 0.99

01:40:48.580 like this, you'd be like, I'm going to chain you to the freaking radiator until you get 0.99

01:40:52.540 better. 0.98

01:40:52.820 I love you that much.

01:40:54.360 Wouldn't you?

01:40:55.280 Yes.

01:40:55.980 Yes.

01:40:56.720 We should love our fellow citizens that much.

01:40:59.340 But we hate them.

01:41:01.000 And we call it compassion.

01:41:02.440 That's hate.

01:41:02.980 It's not compassion.

01:41:04.240 Sorry.

01:41:05.540 Oh, nothing bothers me more than that.

01:41:07.380 It is upsetting to see the degree of degradation in this country.

01:41:13.100 Yes, that's the word.

01:41:13.940 As a result of, you know, the drug industry.

01:41:17.400 They're human beings.

01:41:18.440 Yeah.

01:41:18.800 And they've been reduced to something less than human beings.

01:41:21.660 Yes.

01:41:23.040 And there's a lot of factors that go into that.

01:41:25.720 There's a lot of causes.

01:41:27.100 And one of them is something we're really not here to talk about today, but it's the

01:41:31.660 downward mobility that we see in our society and the lack of economic prospects that people

01:41:36.560 have.

01:41:37.060 I strongly agree.

01:41:38.040 Especially if they don't have an elite education.

01:41:40.540 Yep.

01:41:41.020 The cost of housing.

01:41:42.480 There's a lot of reasons why people end up like zombies.

01:41:46.080 But you could also, I mean, yes, I say that often.

01:41:49.900 I mean it sincerely.

01:41:52.800 And we're a tiny number of the worst people are taking all the money.

01:41:56.700 I totally agree with that.

01:41:58.640 Oh, you're a socialist.

01:41:59.540 No, I'm not.

01:42:00.040 I'm an American who remembers a middle-class country and I would like to have that again.

01:42:04.080 That's it.

01:42:05.140 Even though I'm not middle-class, but anyway, whatever.

01:42:07.840 Leaving that aside, you can say there are a lot of reasons your house is on fire, but

01:42:13.460 the first response is to put it out.

01:42:16.140 You know, we probably should upgrade the electrical after this or put a lightning rod on the roof

01:42:20.420 or whatever.

01:42:21.020 We can take steps to prevent it happening again.

01:42:22.820 But right now, you need hoses and water.

01:42:25.200 And if you see Americans dying of drugs on the street, you have to stop that immediately.

01:42:32.120 Those are human beings with souls.

01:42:33.800 They're your countrymen.

01:42:34.660 And I think that, you know, the government now under Trump, what they're trying to do

01:42:40.120 is declare war on Mexican drug cartels or on the Venezuelan government.

01:42:46.660 And this, I think, is totally misguided and will be ineffectual if they actually go through

01:42:52.000 with it because-

01:42:53.720 Well, certainly the Venezuela thing is a product of, yeah.

01:42:58.540 The thing is, we're talking about the complicity of the U.S. government and the international

01:43:03.500 drug trade.

01:43:04.540 And you think that's real?

01:43:06.400 Oh, I definitely think that's real.

01:43:08.500 And it's, again, it's not what I was saying before.

01:43:10.860 It's not, you know, a top-down conspiracy where that's actually the purpose.

01:43:14.360 It's a side effect of our imperialism and the permanent war paradigm.

01:43:20.980 And in Mexico, I've spent a lot of time in Mexico before I was working on this book as

01:43:25.080 a reporter, reporting on the drug wars there, the cartel wars there.

01:43:29.400 And it's one thing, you know, Trump can tell people, he can tell his voters, we're going

01:43:33.820 to declare war on Mexican drug cartels.

01:43:36.300 And people will buy into that because they see them, you know, as vicious criminals and 0.94

01:43:42.220 murderers who are pumping drugs into this country.

01:43:44.360 So it's easy to see why they would be for that.

01:43:47.820 Well, I feel that way.

01:43:48.860 I see them that way.

01:43:49.760 Well, the reality is that Mexican drug cartels don't really exist in the same way that we've

01:43:55.920 been taught to believe in them by Netflix and Hollywood.

01:44:00.460 In fact, there's a recent book, it's an academic book.

01:44:03.960 It's not the easiest to read, but I think it has an important thesis.

01:44:07.400 It's by a Mexican academic named Osvaldo Zavala.

01:44:10.120 And it's called Drug Cartels Do Not Exist.

01:44:14.220 What he means by that provocative thesis is that there are not the type of organizations

01:44:18.900 that we see represented in shows like Narcos.

01:44:22.080 Take El Chapo Guzman, for example, the famous drug lord who was captured, I guess, 2015,

01:44:28.140 16.

01:44:30.180 The U.S. government to date has seized no assets belonging to him, none.

01:44:37.880 Why is that?

01:44:38.640 I thought he was one of the world's richest men.

01:44:40.200 He's on Forbes list.

01:44:41.640 He's one of the world's richest men.

01:44:43.340 No assets?

01:44:44.400 None, zero.

01:44:46.320 You reserve that only for Russian oligarchs.

01:44:48.160 Well, I don't think they can find any.

01:44:50.320 They can't find any because the drug industry in Mexico is incredibly complex.

01:44:56.500 The first thing to understand is that it's not a collection of organizations, it's a market.

01:45:03.460 And the demand component of that market is in the United States.

01:45:07.200 So people in this country wanting drugs is the battery that's running this whole thing.

01:45:12.100 Because once there's that demand, suppliers inevitably arise to feed it.

01:45:18.920 And in Mexico, those suppliers, yes, there are low-level traffickers.

01:45:23.440 There are the people, the disposable people who are bringing the drugs across the border.

01:45:27.500 The disposable hitmen who are 14 years old and carrying out hits.

01:45:31.200 But the real power behind the drug industry in Mexico is the military and the police, politicians, lawyers, deep-pocketed investors.

01:45:41.300 They're the ones that are going in on drug trafficking ventures, essentially as joint ventures, as investments.

01:45:50.180 It's much more organic and spontaneous than we're led to believe.

01:45:55.720 The organization, to the extent that it exists, can be found in high-level army generals or high-level police officers

01:46:04.160 who are taking a cut from all the little fish who are swimming through certain drug trafficking routes.

01:46:09.740 So the sort of idea that we have of a cartel where it's just bad guys hiding out in their lair,

01:46:16.560 having meetings with the bosses, that just simply doesn't exist in Mexico.

01:46:21.640 So El Chapo, just to get back to the original example, was described as a billionaire.

01:46:27.140 We got a pretty, what seemed like a pretty detailed accounting of the revenue.

01:46:31.820 No, we didn't.

01:46:33.660 I mean, you're talking about the DEA and the DOJ.

01:46:36.960 I mean, they are capable of manufacturing narratives.

01:46:41.120 They're lawyers.

01:46:42.080 They are prosecutors.

01:46:43.860 You know, they can put this stuff together and make this case.

01:46:46.900 Look, I'm not saying that El Chapo wasn't a drug trafficker.

01:46:49.500 He was.

01:46:50.420 He was.

01:46:51.920 But he consistently claimed that he was a small fry.

01:46:56.100 And he had like four guys with him at the time that he was arrested.

01:46:58.640 I thought he had like a private zoo with white lions.

01:47:03.220 Where is that?

01:47:04.280 I haven't seen that.

01:47:05.140 I've seen his pictures of his mom's house in Sinaloa.

01:47:08.180 But there was that time that Sean Penn went to go visit him.

01:47:11.040 Yeah.

01:47:11.580 Did that look like the lair of a drug trafficker? 1.00

01:47:13.780 He looked like an ignorant campesino up there. 0.99

01:47:16.420 He had like chickens in cages and stuff. 0.99

01:47:18.180 And he was clearly a very naive person when Sean Penn interviewed him.

01:47:24.120 Like he wanted, he was entrapped into this by a desire to give flowers to Kate Del Castillo,

01:47:29.480 the Mexican actress who was with Sean Penn.

01:47:32.740 I digress to some degree.

01:47:34.880 The point is.

01:47:35.540 But the bottom line is they've, I just want you to say it again.

01:47:37.600 The U.S. government, nor the Mexican government has never confiscated any of this wealth.

01:47:43.520 That's right.

01:47:44.100 That we were told he had.

01:47:45.300 That's right.

01:47:45.700 Because the real power behind the drug industry in Mexico is the political class that's like this

01:47:50.540 with the United States security state.

01:47:52.820 That is fun.

01:47:53.500 That gets all of their, you know, the Mexican army. 0.87

01:47:55.560 Things have changed in Mexico, by the way.

01:47:57.480 This is a moving target to discuss.

01:47:59.400 Because Mexico, starting in 2018, has gone through profound political changes.

01:48:03.880 For sure.

01:48:05.000 That would be the beginning of the AMLO period.

01:48:08.600 Yeah, AMLO and then his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum.

01:48:11.100 But at the bottom, especially in the northern states of Mexico, along the Texas border.

01:48:15.220 Yep.

01:48:15.700 I don't think so much has changed there.

01:48:18.260 And if you just take a state like Tamaulipas, which is just south of Texas, which has probably

01:48:23.720 the highest intensity of drug trafficking anywhere in the world, bringing it to the United States.

01:48:28.460 Who are the real powers there?

01:48:30.220 I mean, you could say it's the Gulf cartel, or you could say it's Los Cetas.

01:48:33.540 These are the organizations that we've been trained by the media to believe are the sort

01:48:38.580 of puppet masters that are making all this happen.

01:48:41.160 Yeah.

01:48:41.300 By the way, I bought that storyline totally.

01:48:45.300 Okay.

01:48:45.780 I mean, I have no other information.

01:48:46.980 I don't speak Spanish.

01:48:47.800 I don't know.

01:48:48.660 But I mean, I just sort of assumed that was true.

01:48:50.760 The real drug traffickers there, the real power.

01:48:53.740 The idea that we often also hear that the Mexican state is outgunned by drug traffickers.

01:48:58.740 Yes, I've bought that too.

01:48:59.940 In fact, I made a comment about that earlier about the high power weapons that they have.

01:49:03.420 There's some element of truth to that.

01:49:05.360 But the reality is that the cartels are not a threat to the Mexican state.

01:49:09.960 In fact, they're an appendage of the Mexican state in a certain way. 0.74

01:49:13.100 And the elite class in Mexico, the kind of a shadow paramilitary structure of, let's say,

01:49:19.260 a state government, like the state government of Tamaulipas, and the police forces there,

01:49:23.260 and the military divisions that are stationed there.

01:49:26.200 And we're not going to go to war with those people because there are allies.

01:49:30.760 I mean, people may not realize this, but there's close security cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico.

01:49:35.040 Yes.

01:49:35.060 I mean, the Mexican army, we arm them.

01:49:37.820 We give them their Black Hawk helicopters and their armored vehicles,

01:49:40.980 and also the state police forces in the north of Mexico.

01:49:44.340 We arm all of them, and they get training from the State Department

01:49:47.180 and from American police officers and so on.

01:49:50.000 And they're the real cartel to the extent a cartel exists.

01:49:54.700 And you can see that in other places in the world, notably in Colombia,

01:49:58.500 where, again, it's changing there because they also have a new president.

01:50:02.920 And Latin America is changing rapidly in recent years.

01:50:06.700 But in the past, for many years in Colombia, the Colombian federal government

01:50:11.560 and the Colombian military have been the biggest drug,

01:50:15.460 most responsible for moving the most weight in drugs, I would say.

01:50:18.680 And once again, they're closely backed by the U.S. government.

01:50:21.220 So to bring it home and wrap up this point,

01:50:24.720 you can say we're going to target drug cartels in Mexico.

01:50:27.860 But the fact is, one, they have no idea who these people are,

01:50:31.420 the people that they're setting up as drug traffickers,

01:50:34.000 they may have developed some targets.

01:50:35.780 To fight a war, you need not only political will, you need targets.

01:50:40.440 That was a problem, incidentally, parenthetically, in Afghanistan.

01:50:43.380 It was hard for them to develop targets there

01:50:44.840 because it's such a big, remote country.

01:50:46.960 Anyway, in Mexico, they're not going to be able to find those targets.

01:50:51.720 And to the extent that they are,

01:50:53.560 they're going to be people that are protected by the State Department and the CIA.

01:50:57.140 And so it's just not going to happen.

01:50:59.440 This is, this drug war, this war on Mexican drug cartels,

01:51:02.620 I don't see it happening.

01:51:03.500 And if it does, it'll be in the nature of very isolated strikes.

01:51:08.220 So what is the answer?

01:51:11.040 You have to address the demand.

01:51:13.580 The demand is what's causing all this.

01:51:15.120 So long as the demand-

01:51:15.560 Why can't anyone just, why, here's what I don't understand.

01:51:19.080 Sobriety is good, okay?

01:51:20.960 Sobriety is the key to joy and productivity and, like, having a useful life,

01:51:26.020 making it worth being here.

01:51:27.760 I agree.

01:51:28.200 In the short period that we are.

01:51:29.620 I believe that through much experience.

01:51:32.800 I've never heard any leader in our country say that.

01:51:36.880 But what I'm saying about Mexico?

01:51:38.120 No, about sobriety.

01:51:39.440 About sobriety.

01:51:40.260 The goal ought to be clear thinking, you know, whatever,

01:51:44.820 within the bounds of human nature, but, like, virtuous life.

01:51:47.860 I don't know, try to be clear-eyed, hardworking, decent, and sober.

01:51:53.780 Like, I don't, I don't, no one, like, there's no kind of goal set by our leaders.

01:51:58.560 Like, maybe you shouldn't be wasted all the time. 0.99

01:52:00.460 Maybe you should go off your freaking SSRIs, which make you impotent, by the way. 0.98

01:52:04.500 You know, or your benzodiazepines, or your beer, or your weed. 0.99

01:52:08.020 Like, no one even says that.

01:52:10.560 I mean, I think they're all on drugs.

01:52:12.840 Everyone's on drugs.

01:52:13.620 I think the whole U.S. government's on drugs.

01:52:15.240 I totally agree.

01:52:15.960 I mean, look at the people at the highest level.

01:52:18.440 I mean, don't want to cast just reckless aspersions.

01:52:21.360 But here's something that's concrete.

01:52:24.860 Rolling Stone, a magazine I've written for for many years,

01:52:28.000 reported on drug use in Trump's first White House.

01:52:31.380 And, in fact, Trump's personal doctor, Ronnie the Candyman Jackson, they called him,

01:52:36.740 he was an admiral, if I'm not mistaken, in the Navy, a physician,

01:52:39.860 who was demoted by the Navy for running an unlicensed pharmacy in the White House,

01:52:45.500 because he was giving Trump's people prescription drugs without a prescription and for free.

01:52:52.240 And even if you're the president's personal physician, that's illegal.

01:52:55.980 So, there's evidence that all of those people were.

01:52:59.200 And you see it in their behavior as well.

01:53:00.960 And I'm not just picking on the Republicans here, because look at Kamala Harris, for example. 0.98

01:53:06.160 I don't know her personally, and I can't say for sure.

01:53:09.200 But did she seem like someone who was, you know, taking a lot of prescription pills?

01:53:13.860 Well, I worked for someone like that in television.

01:53:17.980 It was the head of a network who, I mean, we used to joke, this person's on benzos.

01:53:23.160 Like, just dead-eyed.

01:53:25.200 I mean, you see that so much.

01:53:26.580 Talking nonsensically, like weird, you know, laughing.

01:53:30.060 Weird reactions.

01:53:30.480 Weird reactions.

01:53:31.560 People who just are not quite there in a certain way.

01:53:33.720 Yes.

01:53:33.920 And they seem kind of zonked out in a certain way.

01:53:35.780 Yes.

01:53:36.280 That's the whole country.

01:53:37.500 That seems like a lot of our top leaders.

01:53:39.560 So, my question is, why does no one ever mention that?

01:53:44.180 And just say, like, here's what the goal, you know, we all fall short of the goal.

01:53:49.120 It's not even judging.

01:53:50.120 I'm not judging anybody.

01:53:51.420 I'm not qualified to judge anybody.

01:53:54.160 But, like, I do think it's important to articulate the goal.

01:53:57.000 And why shouldn't someone say the goal is sobriety?

01:54:01.740 You know, again, I'm not here to be a drug warrior or paternalistic

01:54:06.820 or to lecture people who struggle with substance abuse.

01:54:10.600 But I certainly agree with you that we should.

01:54:15.180 That that should be a value of our society.

01:54:16.260 But you should know, Seth, that the real danger is Sharia law. 1.00

01:54:20.200 Sharia law.

01:54:20.920 And you can tell when you go to a place like Abu Dhabi or Riyadh.

01:54:24.660 Like, oh, man, I hope we don't ever wind up with a society like this

01:54:27.340 with a rape rate of zero where you leave your keys in your Lamborghini 0.99

01:54:31.600 and don't ever worry about it being stolen.

01:54:33.600 And, you know, if people want to get wasted, they do it at home.

01:54:37.000 You know what I mean?

01:54:38.160 Yeah.

01:54:38.760 Oh, boy, I hope we don't wind up with that.

01:54:41.840 Yeah, I think, I mean, Sharia law is obviously just a punchline. 0.97

01:54:45.140 I don't know that too many people actually believe in the reality of that.

01:54:49.080 And, I mean, like I said, you know, I'm a lawyer.

01:54:53.040 I actually studied legal philosophy.

01:54:55.600 Sharia is not that different from other legal codes.

01:55:02.100 A lot of our own legal code, the Anglo-Saxon common law, Anglo-American common law,

01:55:07.280 derives ultimately from religious authorities.

01:55:10.560 Hope so.

01:55:11.000 There's a lot of universal values in the religions of the world.

01:55:15.460 Hammurabi's code is recognizable.

01:55:16.800 I wouldn't want to live under it.

01:55:17.780 It's kind of punitive.

01:55:18.920 But it's not like from another planet.

01:55:22.280 The oldest legal code that we have, Hammurabi's code, it's like, it's not, like, you sort of know what he's talking about, right?

01:55:29.240 Look, they, I agree, yeah.

01:55:31.000 And look, they put up Ten Commandments in front of the, I live in Austin, Texas, and they put up the Ten Commandments in front of the state capitol.

01:55:37.300 And that's controversial among, you know, religious libertarians.

01:55:41.260 But I'm of the view that they, I'm happy to see them put the Ten Commandments up there if they would just follow them.

01:55:46.720 Right.

01:55:46.980 You know?

01:55:47.640 I agree.

01:55:49.620 Starting with thou shalt not kill.

01:55:51.340 I couldn't agree more.

01:55:53.320 So, let me just put a bow on this really super interesting conversation.

01:55:58.360 Thank you.

01:56:00.400 With the question, like, how were your interactions during the two and a half years you were writing this, or more, with the, with, like, DOD, for example, with the Pentagon?

01:56:12.500 Like, you must have called over there to the PIOs and said, you know, I have the list of following questions.

01:56:17.940 How did they respond to you?

01:56:19.620 In general, they just didn't respond.

01:56:21.900 And I was in touch with them just yesterday because Politico is publishing an excerpt of the book.

01:56:27.960 And so, we had to go back to them again for comment.

01:56:30.820 And the fact that it involves Delta Force, the fact that it involves a special mission unit, you know, they said that explicitly in the response that I got from USASOC yesterday.

01:56:39.820 They said, because your question implicates a special mission unit, you know, our policy is to not comment.

01:56:45.320 So, for the most part, they didn't give me anything.

01:56:48.720 I was on my own.

01:56:50.480 So, here you have a documented case of one of their guys murdering someone in his house.

01:56:56.880 Obviously, there was drug trafficking. 0.76

01:56:58.500 There was indisputably drug use, narcotic use by federal employees.

01:57:02.220 And they don't have to answer any of your questions because the missions are shrouded in secrecy.

01:57:09.380 Yes, that's right.

01:57:10.520 In general, that's right.

01:57:11.660 I will say, you know, I try not to be, I try to be fair when possible or to give credit where credit is due.

01:57:18.920 There was a case where the Senate Armed Services Committee questioned the commander of SOCOM, which is an umbrella formation above JSOC and above all these units, questioned him in a committee, a Senate committee, about my reporting for Rolling Stone.

01:57:37.560 And asked him to address, you know, the cases of drug trafficking and unsolved murders.

01:57:43.640 And General Brian Fenton, who at the time was the commander of SOCOM, said that he was concerned about it and said that it was unacceptable, said that they were laser focused on eradicating it.

01:57:54.020 But whether those sentiments that they expressed to members of Congress was actually backed up with real action, I don't know.

01:58:00.920 I don't know.

01:58:02.900 Hmm.

01:58:04.240 Do you see the possibility of reform?

01:58:07.560 You know, I don't think that, I'm very critical in this book of every single presidential administration since 2001.

01:58:15.860 Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.

01:58:18.580 None of them, I give a pass to any of them.

01:58:20.320 But I do see Trump's influence here to be uniquely negative because of the way that he surrounds himself with some of the craziest people in the special operations community,

01:58:32.960 elevates these people who, among their own colleagues, are considered loose cannons, not credible.

01:58:40.200 You know, there's the case of Eddie Gallagher, where Trump made it such a big part of his brand to defend this disgrace to the Navy SEALs, who was turned in by his own teammates for killing a bunch of people for no reason.

01:58:50.980 I mean, you're talking about guys who are not bleeding heart liberals by any stretch of the imagination.

01:58:56.380 They're there with Chief Gallagher next to him, seeing what he's doing, and they're not okay with it.

01:59:01.080 They turn him in.

01:59:02.140 The command wants nothing to do with Gallagher. 0.98

01:59:03.600 They also think that he's an embarrassment and a disgrace and a murderer.

01:59:07.460 But Trump intervenes to prevent him from losing his trident, and Trump touts him, and he becomes this big influencer and so forth. 0.95

01:59:17.580 So that type of incredible irresponsibility and malignancy on Trump's part, his uniquely malignant influence as commander-in-chief,

01:59:27.400 I think augurs very poorly for the possibility of reform, at least in the next three years.

01:59:33.600 Well, you want an honest, competent, decent military because, you know, it's the purest expression of power that a government has, the power to kill people.

01:59:46.660 And you have to think that they're operating on a different and elevated moral plane.

01:59:51.200 They can't just be like an outlaw state.

01:59:54.200 You know what I mean?

01:59:55.660 Yes, that's what I was saying before about the founding of the U.S. Army 250 years ago.

01:59:59.900 It is a core institution for our country, for our nation.

02:00:06.320 So to see the degree of decline, it's everywhere, you know, possible to observe.

02:00:14.260 It's very concerning.

02:00:15.480 And I really don't think people are aware of the degree to which the military is incapable of fulfilling its functions.

02:00:24.740 I don't know that you can say that the U.S. has the most powerful military in the world anymore.

02:00:29.260 Or I think that a strong case could be made that China has a more competent military, even though they have never been in combat.

02:00:36.340 They have totally untested.

02:00:38.500 So there's a big caveat there.

02:00:41.080 But just looking on the surface, like I don't think Chinese soldiers are trafficking drugs and killing each other.

02:00:47.200 I don't think Chinese soldiers are dropping dead from fentanyl overdoses right and left.

02:00:51.520 And also, China has a much bigger army than us, while our army is shrinking to a degree that's really shocking.

02:00:58.120 I mean, they're really running out of people.

02:01:00.780 This year, recruiting was a little bit better.

02:01:03.240 But you're still talking about, you know, a long, long deficit in recruiting.

02:01:07.120 The army's never been smaller than it is right now.

02:01:09.780 They can't get qualified helicopter pilots, let's say, as we saw so, you know, tragically demonstrated over the Potomac River in January.

02:01:18.420 So, I think that, you know, beyond just the drugs, there's a lot of reasons to be concerned, you know, about the health and viability of the U.S. military in general.

02:01:30.780 Boy, that's a sad story.

02:01:32.320 Seth Harp, thank you very much for that.

02:01:34.380 Thanks for having me.

02:01:35.040 Appreciate it.

02:01:39.680 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day.

02:01:43.620 We know the people who run it, good people.

02:01:45.140 While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode.

02:01:51.620 We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter, telling the truth always.

02:01:55.960 You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell.

02:01:59.740 We appreciate it.

02:02:00.300 Thanks for watching.

02:02:00.840 We'll see you next time.

The Tucker Carlson Show - August 15, 2025

Seth Harp Exposes the Murder & Drug Trafficking Taking Place Inside America’s Largest Military Base

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript