HBO has acquired the rights to develop The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, an expose on lawlessness at the military base by Rolling Stone contributor Seth Harp, into a series after a heated bidding war. Over the course of five years, Harp investigated unsolved murders, fatal overdoses, drug trafficking, sexual violence, and a raft of misconduct at Fort Bragg in a series of stories for Rolling Stone, which he expanded into the book. His 2021 report on the overdose epidemic at the base prompted five senators to petition the Pentagon to launch its own investigation into the crisis.
Harp, who is also a military veteran, will work with former HBO Films president Len Amato to executive produce the television series. “Thanks to all the other film and TV studios that submitted bids,” Harp wrote on X. “HBO won out thanks to their track record of producing serious, ambitious, morally ambiguous television series, and their willingness to let me executive produce.”
The Fort Bragg Cartel series has not yet attached a writer or showrunner. Harp noted on social media that his primary interest in taking on the role of executive producer is to “maintain the artistic integrity of the work.” In another post, he wrote, “Len Amato and I intend for this TV series to be nothing less than the definitive cultural representation of the post-9/11 wars.”
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The Fort Bragg Cartel was published by Viking on Aug. 12. An exclusive excerpt published in Rolling Stone in July details the double homicide of Master Sgt. William “Billy” Lavigne II, an active-duty Delta Force operator, and Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas Sr., a logistics and supply soldier attached to the elite Joint Special Operations Command. The two men were found dead on a remote training range of Fort Bragg on Dec. 2, 2020. “Both were said to be writing tell-all books about their time in service and what they knew about organized crime in the Special Forces,” Harp noted.
The book contextualizes this expanse of violence and mystery with declassified documents, trial transcripts, police records, and hours of interviews with hundreds of figures. “Harp tells a scathing story of narco-trafficking in the Special Forces, drug conspiracies abetted by corrupt police, blatant military cover-ups, American complicity in the Afghan heroin trade, and the pernicious consequences of continuous war,” a synopsis of The Fort Bragg Cartel reads.