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Radio War Nerd EP #541 — American Death Squads, feat. Seth Harp (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-12 13:56:33
Imported:
2025-08
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Guest: Seth Harp, journalistRecorded: August 10, 2025

Seth Harp returns to RWN to discuss his new book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, on the gory underbelly of America Empire, death squads, drug-running, addiction & bringing it all back to the Motherland.

Buy Seth's book Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special ForcesFollow Seth on TwitterFurther listening with Seth:-EP #328: Ukraine War Reporting & the Ghost "International Legion"-EP #370: Iraq War 20th Anniversary, pt. 1: Abandoned Soldiers

Total time: 1:43:51Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

Rob

I wonder what US troops get up in bases abroad. We have some in the UK where I live

Muirneach

Yes I thought it would happen

JDF

Just finished the book so fucking excellent!!! We need a thousand more Seth Harps in this sick old world of ours!

NYCM&AHole

Surprising Ahnuld impression from John.

Watermane

mostly sexual assaults

Mac

Probably mostly rape/murder of local women, and killing each other when their scams and theft get found out

Rick from the sandhills

Fayetteville native here, was excited for the book, doubly excited to see the author on!

.

He’s one of the best journalists in America. No exaggeration.

JDF

Absolutely true. Fastidious, intrepid, fearless (at least it seems so!) and very very sharp. Shows are probably sold out now but worth checking to see if there are any tickets available for the TruAnon live show/ book launch in nyc

ploob

DIA did 911

GoyBulletStopper

My Copy of the book is supposed to arrive to tonight, very excited

CR

Quick reminder that the TV listening to you is no joke. Every smart tv has a microphone and is constantly collecting data on you and your habits. You’re never going to stop it. You can just turn off the WiFi or direct internet connection. But there’s always a bypass. You can use only a device like a Roku or just a damn antenna and you’re still stuck. Luckily, outside of one in a million it’s just to sell advertising data.

NYCM&AHole

Now I have to watch predator. Long tall sally by Lionel Richie.

CR

JSOC has been operating domestically in the name of counter terrorism and also counter intelligence since the Iraq war protests. Against them and others. Also a good reason to use female intelligence and full-blown operators when your enemy is Code Pink, etc. Just like all their domestic enemies have been for decades. The lack of female assets is no longer an acceptable excuse tolerated by the security state.

Blorst of times

Buying this book today! Incredible interview!

Alex

Amazing interview - thank you all. Going to buy the book - and also revisit the Vegas Tesla/ DJT bombing - believe he was somehow related - but all makes sense.

Alex

Samsung TVs (and others) take multiple snapshots per minute as well. Best to just unplug. Online devices can also ping each other for open ports so there's so many ways to monitor you... They can profile your voice as well... Check out Michael Bazzell and Rob Braxmann

Chubby Justin

this stuff makes me appreciate the show REACHER even more (as impossible as that may seem).

nahobeeho

So couldn't we just cover that hidden camera up with a tiny patch, given the specs? The audio recording is trickier.

nahobeeho

Just started this, but I have to ask; didn't they get A Frw Good Men backwards? Didn't seem like an endorsement of "you need me on that wall etc.", even if reactionaries take it that way.

CR

Sorkin is a uniform-humper to his bones. Everything else about that movie is a paean to the military. They just went a little too far, but it’s just some bad apples. The rest are going to legally defend you out of honor and all that horseshit.

CR

Speaking of SIGINT freaks, Xfinity has been touting * as a feature * that it can use your - excuse me, their - router’s WiFi signals for “home security” as a motion detector. And there have been articles recently about being able to ID the signatures of people based on their reflection pattern. And so as much as we already know and suspect, it’s probably not that long before it’s a given until proven otherwise that any space reachable by WiFi can be mapped and eventually micced the same way laser microphones work. Good times!

Alex

The camera alone can be covered, but the issue is really that they are monitoring everything, so not having the data from the camera isn't really a dealbreaker. They can monitor texts (at&t, WhatsApp) and get a sense of your network (contact lists, call logs, text analysis, chat history, search history, gmail history, LinkedIn connections, frequency of contact, tone/sentiment analysis with AI, GPS location + proximity of other SIMS/Phones nearby... Frequency of GPS location, etc) to suppress any dissent or collaboration before it even gains steam. They can quietly blacklist you from jobs, and you won't even know... And they can also automate all this with AI so there isn't a labor bottleneck on the govmnt's end. Bazzell is a former police officer and SoundCloud randomly said they are not able to host his content after the last election... Which seems... interesting. The amount of power these guys have to reconstruct reality is something we have never seen in human history

CR

No. It takes screenshots of what you are watching because it’s a better tracker of your activity than self-reporting. And it’s also Samsung’s data, so they can track their own metrics on patterns in skipping ads, muting ads, rewatching scenes, etc. separate from the TV app, and separate from Apple or Roku or Amazon marketing if you use their devices, and separate from your ISP/cable provider. And I’m sure they also run “anomalies” past humans or other algorithms. But speaking of cameras, you’re just not going to find those. Just like you’ll never find all the cameras and sensors aimed at you inside your car. Which also goes back to JSOC and how they are guilty until proven innocent of killing Michael Hastings with his own car. And that was over a decade ago.

Alex

Also a big change was Microsoft's "AI" rollout which is not really AI, but will take multiple snapshots of your desktop (bypassing Googles concentration of data collection) - so everything... Texts, passwords, videos, mouse movements, camera videos, microphones/audio, can be analyzed at scale... On a totally unrelated note, Linux market share has increased from 2.5% to ~5% this year.... Plus if Starlink owns US internet access - things will be censored before we even see them. We need to 1- stop using this stuff carelessly and 2- pushback against our reps and 3 - watch everything with extreme scepticism (ai videos are going to get harder and harder to separate from the real thing. Whitney Webb seems to have some interesting takes here too - the business reform channel on YouTube also seems to be helpful - we have to reject fantasy/the metaverse or... I don't know where this is heading...

CR

Officially, women have been attached to SOCOM and JSOC in noncombat roles for years. At least for uniformed personnel. During GWOT they started using women on Cultural Support Teams because of the sexual politics of the war zones. Since the Intelligence Support Activity is an ISR unit, women have been attached to it all along. And then we get back to our old Bush-era supervillain war criminals like John Negroponte. One of the programs that was conceived but “not activated” like Total Information Awareness was its successor program after TIA became too hot, called Proactive Preventive Operations Group, a super-Activity that would also be used domestically in the name of counter terrorism and counter intelligence. And you know exactly what “proactive” prevention means. The worst part is just how many fucking people work for all of these units. SOCOM had, last I checked, 75,000 uniformed personnel and a massive number of civilian personnel from DOD and their liaisons with every other security agency. This is also why there are so many goddamn ex-SEALs filling up the media sphere because this militaristic shithole loves tough guys. I’m old enough to remember when the government refused to admit Delta existed. And like any rapidly expanding enterprise, standards went down for units that already were notorious for being havens for antisocial pieces of shit.

ExtraJudicial Pod

Anyone else remember the journalist who wrote the rolling stone piece died under mysterious circumstances?

Kendall

Michael Hastings. I think about him all the time.

.

All I’ll say about fearlessness irg to Seth is I would personally be extremely paranoid with what he writes about if I did. Not to be too parapolitical but there has been a lot of weird deaths and not trying to scare Seth if he reads comments but it’s just a fact for people who write on these kinds of topics. Even Seth acknowledged this on Twitter awhile ago and took steps so this book would get published if something happened to him. If you write against power then you are a target. We’ve all seen it in Gaza at its most extreme form. He seems to be fully aware from what I’ve read.

ploob

DARPA

Jo

I can corroborate Seth’s point at the end about heavy U.S. military presence being associated with increased drug production. I was in Honduras in 2021 and in the eastern Atlantic coast of the country it was an open secret among locals that the region of Ahuas was simultaneously the most DEA surveilled but also most heavily cocaine trafficked area of Honduras. Just look up the Hernández brothers if you want to learn more.

Robert Geroux

Seth, the opening passage broke my heart. I'm sorry you had to witness that, and I'm so grateful it radicalized you. This is a brave book.

Robert Geroux

Also Mark's question at the end is especially relevant, now that Hegseth apparently wants to post military in US cities

Laynie

My PhD was on the overdose crisis. It was repeated over and over again by every drug task force that Afghanistan heroin only went to Europe, not North America. Seems untrue based on stats and supply chains stretching between here and there. So many young people and families decimated. Connections between war and expansion of drug trafficking would be such a stretch for many to consider. As Mark would say… it’s grim

John Hieronymus

Idk if people here have read anything by Stan Goff but he’s written about his own experiences as a special forces staff Sargent and delta force medic and he was very vocal about the confluence between drug smuggling and US special forces in south and Central America where he was involved with training police and military that were obviously deeply involved in drug trafficking

Doug Cartel

Lmao don't remind me how fuckin stupid I was in 2003 Thank God I took too long to decide or I woulda done army

Michael Salmon

From personal knowledge RE spec-ops in Taiwan: idk if it’s green berets also. But seals are there

Michael Salmon

Not gonna say it’s impossible, but I’d say that half the battle is just making people believe that the state is omnipotent. The tech and data being there doesn’t necessarily mean they have the capability of utilizing it well

Doug Cartel

God damnit i bet these fucking weeaboos are naming their SMUs after memes n shit Fucking freaks

Doug Cartel

G squad? G unit. Grey fox? There's at least 2 metal gear refs you can make with that

Doug Cartel

This is really killing my love for the classic GWOT film Delta Farce starring Larry the Cable Guy

John Waaben

Jesus Christ in heaven! the parallels with imperial Japan / United States just don’t stop

Alex

I understand what you mean, but I used to do data analysis work for consulting/private equity firms trying to figure out how to "extract optimal value" from each client. We used to work with data all the time. With automation, and with a quick + lean team (aka DOGE) something like this would take a month or so to set up. The state isn't omnipotent, but if they consolidate all this data (as DOGE has been doing), and have a unique user ID (likely your Gmail, phone number, and social security account)... they will totally know who you are, your probability of defiance, and with this info (+ media capture) they can totally recreate reality or bombard you with media generated uniquely for you... and then can bombard you with so much garbage/demoralizing info so that you're overwhelmed and just give up. It seems like Youtube and FB are also very much onboard - you can see many not so subtle changes in the algorithms recently. (not the mention algo adjustments on X). A recent covert reddit "study" infiltrated a subreddit with bots that provided alternative "hot takes" (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddiit-researchers-ai-bots-rcna203597) How much these bots have already infiltrated the web is unclear, but it's going to make communication and reality-testing very difficult for most people. People will really be responding to the shadows now. They're definitely not omnipotent, not at all, but will people push back if it's just easier to watch a Mr. Beast video? I'm not really sure, unfortunately.

Sean Atkinson

I haven't listened to the whole show yet, but I'm surprised that they haven't mentioned how the drug trade is simply one of the US secret agencies chief management jobs. The United States runs the world drug market. Just like the crown dip 100 years ago.

hamburglar

They have been clapped

hamburglar

As if that is somehow fine that we were flooding Europe with cheap dope! Such a god awful country here in the US

hamburglar

They supposedly developed a way to acoustically listen to computers and reverse engineer the sound to reproduce whatever data was being processed. We are beyond cooked when it comes to privacy

Laynie

More like I think they use the focus on drugs from Mexico, fentanyl from China as a foreign policy weapon

Roland Thompson

I’m a good ways into the book already and this is actually discussed at some length

Ander Pierce

Looks to be a wild episode. I know what I'm listening to tomorrow

Skooma

An island 5 miles off the coast of China? Everybody's there.

Sean Atkinson

What is this false belief on american elections?

Ian H

¡Fuera JOH!

Antipaganda

Hey, do you guys happen to know if the book is going to be available in ebook form on Google Play any time soon, or as an epub without needing to own some other walled garden? There's a link which claims to be to Google, but it does not work. Searching it doesn't bring anything either. I try the other sites, and I can't actually buy the thing. I don't want to get this book from a pirate site, Seth Harp needs our support!

Antipaganda

If elections didn't matter, they wouldn't bother to rig them. That's my optimistic take on the incredibly grim gerrymandering news.

Terry Dunk

I would also start hitting the bottle, abusing drugs and killing people if my official portrait turned out like that

Lars

Buying the fuck out of this book. Thank you, Seth!

a clash of purple

The LSD fan who somehow ended up decapitated on a camping trip (in a book full of weird-ass anecdotes that one and the guy who fell out of a plane were especially bizarre) was a massive anime fan, to the point of spending all his money on figurines and sleeping with a body pillow of an anime girl. I mean, these guys might as well be characters from Hideo Kojima's games. Honestly, forget Warhammer 40,000; is Annibale familiar with the Metal Gear franchise? If not him, then Gunnar or Felix from Chapo Trap House needs to come on RWN and tell Ames and Dolan about Metal Gear.

a clash of purple

Also drugs. I mean, it's the same things that all soldiers do when stationed in foreign lands, not just Americans. It's just that American bases are fucking everywhere, so it's more of a widespread problem.

a clash of purple

See, as the child of a Navy family, to me A Few Good Men is a story about Navy guys being smart and cool while Marines are, while not necessarily evil like Jack Nicholson's character, loudmouthed stupid assholes with massive sticks up their asses. Tom Cruise's character, the Navy lawyer, completely bamboozles the arrogant shitstain Marine officer Jack Nicholson into implicating himself on the witness stand with his clever thinking and fast talking.

George P

Got the book and am already halfway through, outstanding so far. Waiting to listen until after I've finished the book.

hamburglar

Haha Felix did that on a recent ep of seeking derangements

Jo

Exactly. That was spray painted all over the place.

a clash of purple

There's no point giving in to paranoia. Let the drug-fuelled maniacs do that. Someone has to give voice to the victims who've been silenced permanently, and their families. If you don't let people like this scare you, then you take away the only real weapon they have to maintain power.

hugomac

I bought a Google version.

a clash of purple

Fun fact: the Green Berets were originally trained by Nazi commandos smuggled out of post-war Europe to avoid war crimes tribunals, including Otto Skorzeny. Also they have a TERRIBLE song. I totally understand seeing the apparent successes of the Israelis and the SAS and wanting to have something like that for yourself. I cannot understand why the U.S. military has always been so enamored of the Wehrmacht. They lost! They're losers! They were not good at anything except lying about their performance! "We might need to fight the Soviet Union one day... we'd better learn the tactics and strategies of the guys who were famously and utterly defeated by both ourselves and the Soviet Union."

CR

That is true. It’s mostly ad shit and only mentally and economically harmful. But when the panopticon is pointed at you, you’re smoked. Google found out the day after 9/11 that, back then, it had enough data to find most of the hijacker’s if they had names.

CR

As far as domestic military, legally, just repeal the posse comitatus act. Practically, it’s security theater. The only difference between D.C. now and the months after 9/11 is the guardsmen are on their phones all the time like cops. In 2001, all those black guys, since this is D.C. and most of the national guard is black, we’re just standing around or sitting in humvees bored as fuck.

a clash of purple

I'm not holding my breath for the totally automated sci-fi fascist dystopia state... The people running these systems are still the same dumbshits that they always were. And you can defeat them by just not using electronics, which anyone who's serious about fighting the empire should have done already (as Hezbollah found out). The idea that you can control people if you just build enough computers is a delusional fantasy from a ruling class who have lost legitimacy in the eyes of their people and are too stupid and stubborn to make any concessions in order to win them back. The techbros are scam artists who are just trying to get a slice of the Pentagon budget. I'm sure it's true that the government can spy on people and assassinate them, but so what? How is that new? It doesn't change the underlying material conditions that foment unrest. It won't help them cling to power, in the end. It's just another con, like all the mind control BS they wasted fortunes on to no avail. You can't control a populace with surveillance technology anymore than you can win a war with nothing but special ops assholes. The people who say otherwise are either kidding themselves or just conning the ruling class.

Jason Thompson

This is embarrassing to confess but as a starry eyed Democrat teenager I thought Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” was supposed to be super evil and unlikeable. I totally was the target audience for that liberal wish fulfillment movie. People really think his character is cool?

DRS

Went on a search around town for this book yesterday. Ended up ordering it from my local indie bookstore. In 5-7 days I’ll be devouring this thing.

Martin

Not to tell you your business guys but IMHO this needs to be unlocked. As many people as possible need to have the scales pulled off their eyes abt how US power projection actually works.

CR

People are stupid, so, yes. There are a lot of people who think he was right. They think Private Santiago was a pussy who just needed to be whipped into shape. These are the same morons who think Gunnery Sergeant Hartman rules and he was right to treat Private Pyle like he did without a hint of awareness as to why Pyle ended up killing Hartman and himself.

CR

I had to talk a friend down from enlisting on 9/11. It was a wild time.

Martin

Couriers, printed (flammable) materials, irl meetings, no phones is the op sec of movts that seriously understand how hostile a terrain technology is. Totally asymmetrical.

Crosley Querin

Rambo: Last Blood. A down on his luck veteran uses his skills and training to take out a small town's police force.

T

can someone reupload his audiobook, won't play on itunes

CR

Rambo predicted Chris Dorner