The book debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list at number two for print and ebook and number five for hardcover.[7]The New Yorker declared it one of the best nonfiction books of 2025, while Forbes named it one of the top true crime books of the year.[8]The Washington Post described it as "a propulsive and deeply troubling account of military involvement in the drug trade, both domestically and abroad."[9]
Publishers Weekly described the book as "[a] blistering exposé of criminality within the U.S. Army’s Special Forces," adding that "Harp’s investigative rigor and visceral storytelling make this a disturbing must-read."[10]
David Wallace-Wells, also writing for The New York Times, said that the book was "the most gripping, memorable, eye-opening book I’ve read in months," and that it "upends a set of broadly held assumptions about the recent history of the U.S. military."[11]
In The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jeff Calder described the book as an "explosive investigation into drug dealing, murder, and suicide within America’s special operations forces groups, notably superelite Delta Force," and wrote that it was "a book to be taken seriously by the country’s political class and military establishment.”[12]
Writing for The New Republic, Jasper Craven called the book "engrossing," and "truly shocking," writing that Harp "trace[s] a bloody trail that includes bullet-riddled bodies, sexual assault, a suspicious drowning, and a severed head. In July 2022, one man even fell from the sky.”[13]
Kirkus Reviews described the book as "a scathing exposé of drug trafficking, homicide, and suicide in the U.S. military.[14]
Times Literary Supplement noted that the book "has the slick sheen of the true-crime thriller, but really this is an interrogation of the American empire and the mouldering underbelly of the War on Terror," while also characterizing Harp's evidence as only providing "a hint, a clue, an allegation – but the true shape of the scandal always stays teasingly out of reach. Slivers of evidence live under a carapace of secrecy. Questions never get asked. And there are the bodies – lots of them."[15]
"The most affecting parts of The Fort Bragg Cartel are the vignettes Harp collects showing the devastation soldiers inflict on their families," wrote Grayson Scott in The Baffler, referring to the episodes recounted of special operations soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg who killed their wives after deploying multiple times to Afghanistan and struggling with substance abuse. "The characters in his book are middle-class American men, often fathers and usually white, massacring families while high on drugs they bought with money they stole while defending a regime of pedophile warlords."[16]
"What all the characters involved in this bizarre saga had in common," wrote Matthew Petti in Reason, "was a total lack of accountability."[17]
Will Menaker of the podcast Chapo Trap House called the book "astounding," and described it as "nonfiction that reads like a novel."[citation needed]
"There are important books, and there are popular books," wrote Branko Marcetic in Jacobin. "Sadly, the two don't often overlap. Seth Harp's The Fort Bragg Cartel... is a rare exception."[18]
"[Harp] knows the law and the military and brings a muckraker's sensibility to his subject," wrote David Luhrssen in The Shepherd Express. "His revelations keep coming, page after page."[19]
Dr. Anna Gielas, a historian at the Royal United Services Institute who specializes in research on special operations forces,[20] criticized the book, noting that "readers drawn to true crime will welcome The Fort Bragg Cartel as an entertaining diversion. But those looking for a credible, balanced account of drug use and trafficking inside Delta Force and the U.S. Special Forces will come up short—Harp’s book is unconvincing at best, and troubling at worst."[21]
A review for the Washington Independent Review of Books states that "while Harp can’t prove that members of U.S. Special Forces took advantage of their privileged status to import drugs and build a domestic cartel using the same thuggery employed during a typical day’s work in the endless War on Terror, well, think Occam's razor."[22]
Adaptation
HBO secured the rights to develop The Fort Bragg Cartel into a television series shortly after its release. Harp will serve as an executive producer alongside Len Amato, former head of HBO Films.[23][24]
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