Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-08-14 Thursday

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Democracy Now! Thursday, August 14, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now, as President Trump signs a secret directive approving the Pentagon's use of military force on foreign soil, like Mexico, to target to target Latin American drug corruption. cartels, we'll look closer to home. We'll speak with Rolling Stone investigative journalist Seth Hart about his new book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. From 2020 to 2021, there were 109 soldier deaths at Fort Bragg, and only five of those took place overseas, whereas all the rest took place stateside. Since then, soldiers have continue to die at Fort Bragg at an average rate of about one a week. This is especially concerning because of Fort Bragg's centrality to the U.S. military. It's the home of the 82nd Airborne Division, the headquarters of the Green Berets, and the Joint Special Operations Command.

Most of the deaths are from deaths of despair, suicides, and overdoses, but there have also been quite a few unsolved murders, many of them related to drug trafficking in the Special Forces and the Airborne Corps. And as President Trump threatens to bring out the military across the United States, we'll look at the most populous military base. Fort Brat, where Delta Force is based, the most secret of black ops unit in the military, and where it operates around the world. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war. Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The Israeli military has destroyed more than 300 homes in Gaza City

and killed over 100 more Palestinians over the past day as Israel moves to fully seize the largest city in the Gaza Strip and forcibly remove its entire population. This comes as the Associated Press reports Israel's held discussions with South Sudan about possibly resettling Palestinians, from Gaza to the war-torn nation in East Africa. Health officials in Gaza say 12 more Palestinians have starved to death over the past two days, bringing the total to 239, including 106 children. On Wednesday, a group of UN experts accused Israel of carrying out medicide by destroying Gaza's health care system while targeting health workers. This comes as Al Jazeera reports at least 37 people seeking food and aid were killed on Wednesday, including 16 at an aid point north

of Rafa. Across the border in Rafa, Egypt, truck drivers say Israel's continuing to block most deliveries from entering Gaza. We came here to bring this aid to enter Palestine for our oppressed brothers inside. Unfortunately, this is the third time we have entered and we could not pass. Thousands of trucks, as you can see, hundreds and thousands of trucks, enter the Israeli side here from the Egyptian side. The crossing here in Egypt is open 24 hours.

As you can see, it does not close, but the obstruction is from the Israeli side. Protests were held in multiple cities across the globe Wednesday to condemn Israel's targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza after Israel killed six journalists, five of them from Al Jazeera, in a targeted strike on their media tent outside Al-Sheifa Hospital and Gaza City. Among those who were killed, the most prominent was Al-Jazeera correspondent, Anas al-Sharif. This is Mariam Al-Saya of the National Union of Journalists at a vigil in London. Anastairif would always have a slogan that the coverage will continue.

And this is questionable now after the killing of journalists is getting more and more. We now are losing a whole generation of journalists. Journalists are killed are age 23. Whereas the journalists are age 40. They are all killed. In Israel, Israeli journalists protested. In New Zealand, a lawmaker with the Green Party has been ejected twice from New Zealand's parliament in recent days for criticizing other lawmakers for not supporting sanctions against Israel.

This is part of Chloe Swarbrick's speech that led to her being ejected. We can and we must uphold the genocide convention, which means doing everything that we can to prevent a genocide before it occurs. So, Mr. Speaker, I will reiterate my call for the government to pick up our unlawful occupation of Palestine sanctions bill and to sanction Israel for its war crimes. If we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history. In Spain, in Barcelona, hundreds turned out to protest Israel's killing of the journalists. Israel's far-right finance minister Bezal-Smotrick has announced plans to approve the building of more than 3,000 settlement homes in a move that would effectively cut off the West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem. Smotrick praised the E1 Settlement project saying, quote, the plan will bury the idea of a Palestinian state, unquote. Smotrick went on to say, quote, this is Zionism at its best, building, settling, and strengthening our sovereignty in the land of Israel, unquote.

Palestinian officials condemn the plan as a, quote, extension of the crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation, unquote. This comes as several Arab countries have denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for saying he's very attached to the vision of a, quote, greater Israel, a term used to express support for Israel seizing more land in the occupied territories, Syria's Golan Heights, as well as parts of Jordan and Egypt. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guttedish has warned Israel may be listed in an upcoming report about sexual abuse. committed by its armed forces. In a letter to Israeli officials, Guterres criticized Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners. He wrote, quote, cases documented by the United Nations indicate patterns of sexual violence, such as genital violence, prolonged force nudity, and repeated strip searches conducted in an abusive and degrading manner, unquote. President Trump warned Wednesday, Russia would face very serious consequences if President

Vladimir Putin doesn't agree to a ceasefire deal at a bilateral summit with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday. Trump's warning came after he held a virtual meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders. Zelensky's rejected proposals for Ukraine to give areas in the Dombas region as part of a ceasefire. Spoke in Berlin on Wednesday. We talked about the meeting in Alaska. We hope that the central topic of the meeting will be a ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire. The U.S. President has repeatedly said this. He suggested to me that after the meeting in Alaska, we will have contact, and we will discuss

all the results if there are any, and we will determine the next mutual steps. As the National Guard expands its presence in Washington, D.C., President Trump says he'll seek a long-term federal takeover of the D.C. police force. We're going to need a crime bill that we're going to be putting in, and it's going to pertain initially to D.C. It's almost, we're going to use it as a very positive example, and we're going to be asking for extensions on that, long-term extensions, because you can't have 30 days. 30 days is that's by the time you do it. We're going to have this in good shape. Earlier this week, Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. and federalized the police force,

even though violent crime in the nation's capital, is at a 30-year low. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has denounced Trump's police takeover as an authoritarian push. Meanwhile, a 37-year-old man in Washington, D.C., has been charged with assaulting a federal officer after he threw a sandwich from a subway shop at a Customs and Border Protection Officer. Videos gone viral of the man who can be heard screaming fascists and shame at the federal officers. A new analysis by the New Yorker magazine estimates the Trump family has raked in at least $3.4 billion through various schemes to profit from the presidency dating back to 2017. Two-thirds of that fortune comes from the Trump's various cryptocurrency ventures. New Yorker reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote, quote, I was struck by the

frantic, almost desperate pace of the Trump family's efforts as though they're afraid to miss any opportunity, unquote. The United Nations Security Council has repudiated a Sudanese paramilitary Group's declaration of an independent state and parts of Sudan that it controls. On Wednesday, council members rejected the rival government proposed by the rapid support forces as a threat to Sudan's territorial integrity as well as regional stability. The council also called on the RSF to lift its siege of El Fasher, capital of Sudan's North Darfur state, where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by fighting amidst a growing hunger crisis and the spread of diseases, including cholera.

Peru's right-wing president, Dina Boloarte, has signed a law granting blanket amnesty for all military and police officers accused of human rights crimes permitted during Peru's internal conflict from 1980 to 2000. Human rights groups condemn the move, saying it undermines decades of efforts to ensure accountability for atrocities committed by the government and its allies. This is Peruvian human rights activist Izelo Ortiz, Peru's former culture minister. We are truly outraged by what we are experiencing in our country, deeply ashamed to acknowledge that we are facing an authoritarian regime that has no respect for human rights, that does not value not only the lives of its citizens, but also the rights that we have. So we are here in a way reacting to this decision to really. police human rights violators and the murderers of our relatives. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced the U.S. is revoking the visas of a group of Brazilian, African, and Caribbean officials over their connection to a Cuban program to send

doctors overseas to provide health care in the global south. Cuba's criticized Rubio's targeting of the program. Cuba's deputy director of U.S. affairs, Johanna Tablada, wrote on X, quote, his priorities speak volumes, financing Israel genocide on Palestine, torturing Cuba, going after health care services for those who need them most, unquote. Italy's Coast Guard says at least 27 people have drowned and dozens remain missing after a pair of ships carrying asylum seekers from Libya capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa Wednesday. About 60 survivors were rescued from the sea. According to the Missing Migrants Project,

more than 32,000 people have died since 2014 attempting to cross the Mediterranean to seek asylum in Europe with over 700 deaths or disappearances so far this year alone. Spain's government has formally asked its European neighbors to help fight dozens of raging wildfires that have burned homes, farms, and factories forcing thousands to evacuate. The request for firefighting resources

comes amidstay searing summer heat wave that's led to extreme or very extreme fire danger forecasts across much of southern Europe. In Arizona, public health officials warn extreme heat in Maricopa County has led to the suspected deaths of over 400 people so far this summer. August is on track to be Phoenix's hottest on record, with temperatures reaching at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit every day this month except one. In Alaska, a lake of rainwater and melted snow burst a glacial dam north of Juneau on Wednesday, causing the Mendenhall River to swell to a record height flooding homes and streets in Alaska's capital city. Mountain glaciers worldwide are shrinking at a record pace as global temperatures continue to rise due to greenhouse gas emissions. In Illinois, Cook County Prosecure, said Wednesday they will not bring criminal charges against five Chicago police officers who

fatally shot 26-year-old African-American Dexter Reed last year and a hail of bullets. Body cam video of the killing shows officers from a CPB tactical unit and plain clothes firing 96 shots at Reed in just 41 seconds following a traffic stop. Officers initially said Reed was pulled over for a seatbelt violation, but he was driving in a car with tinted windows. In April, Chicago City Councilors voted down a proposed $1.25 million wrongful death settlement agreement with Reed's families. And in Geneva, efforts to secure an international treaty to curb plastic pollution are in doubt on the final day of negotiations. Nearly 100 of the 184 countries gathered at the UN talks rejected the latest draft agreement

as unambitious and inadequate. The proposed text puts no limits on plastic production and makes no mention of the chemicals used in plastic products. The plastics industry has been lobbying heavily in opposition to production limits, as have several powerful oil and gas-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia, on the United States. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report.

When we come back, as President Trump signs a secret directive approving the Pentagon's use of military force on foreign soil like Mexico to target drug cartels. We'll look closer to home. We'll speak with Rolling Stone investigative journalist Seth Harp about his new book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. Stay with us. Balaciered a A man Myo

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La Jura, the oath by Chocano Batman performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. As the National Guard expands its presence in Washington, D.C., President Trump says he'll seek long-term federal takeover of the D.C. force. We're going to need a crime bill that we're going to be putting in, and it's going to pertain initially to D.C. It's almost, we're going to use it as a very positive example, and we're going to be asking for extensions on that, long-term extensions, because you can't have

30 days. 30 days is that's by the time you do it. We're going to have this in good shape. Earlier this week, Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C., even though violent crime in the city is it a 30-year low. Washington, D.C., mayor, Muriel Bowser, has denounced Trump's takeover of the police forces as an authoritarian push. At least 800 National Guard troops are being deployed in D.C. alongside 500 federal law enforcement agents. The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that Trump administration is also planning a so-called domestic civil disturbance quick reaction force composed of hundreds of National Guard troops set to rapidly deploy to other U.S. cities targeted by Trump, including Democratic strongholds of Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Oakland.

The force would be comprised of two groups of 300 soldiers permanently assigned to the force station at military bases in Alabama and Arizona. This comes after Trump earlier deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles during protests against immigration raids and arrests by masked unidentified agents who also targeted U.S. citizens, when they were making their arrests. Rolling Stone reports, quote, one of Trump's biggest regrets from his first term in the Oval Office, according to former and current senior Trump advisors, is that he didn't use military forces and other federal assets to crack down harder than he ultimately did

in the summer of 2020 on racial justice protests. Trump's secretary of defense at the time did not agree with the president's idea to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters near the White House. House. Meanwhile, earlier this week, Trump secretly signed a directive approving the Pentagon's use of military force on foreign soil to target drug cartels, especially in countries like Mexico. All of this comes as Trump is due to meet Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine where the U.S. has also sent troops. Today we take a rare look at U.S. special forces deployed around the world, whether we're

talking about Mexico, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, or here at home. They're stationed at the most populist military base in the country, which was renamed Fort Liberty in 2023, until Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth directed the army to change the name back to Fort Bragg, saying Bragg is back. Fort Bragg is home to Delta Force, the most secretive black ops unit in the military, which carries out classified assassinations and other clandestine missions and is also heavily involved in drug trafficking, as our next guest reveals in his new book. Rolling Stone investigative reporter Seth Harp is a foreign correspondent who's reported from Iraq, Mexico, Syria, and Ukraine, also in Iraq War veteran. His new book,

out this week is titled the Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. I don't think people usually expect to see when talking about a cartel, the largest U.S. military base, Fort Bragg. So if you can talk about drug trafficking and murder in the special forces, begin with what Fort Bragg is, who the special forces, who the special forces are, especially Delta forces, and who these dead bodies are that are turning up all over Fort Bragg and the surrounding area. Well, Trump says he wants to deploy military forces to countries like Mexico to crack down on drug cartels there, but I think he should look closer to home because there's at least 14 cases that I'm tracking of Fort Bragg trained soldiers who have been either arrested, apprehended, or killed in the course of trafficking

drugs in the last five years or so, often in conjunction with those very same Mexican drug cartels. This is especially concerning because of what Fort Bragg is. It's not only the largest U.S. military base, but it's central to U.S. operations and special operations. It's the home of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is the United States main contingency force. It's also the headquarters of the Green Berets, the special forces, as well as the Joint Special Operations Command, which includes Delta Force, which is the most... That's J-Soc. That's the most secretive and elite component of the U.S. military.

And as you said, there have been some members of Delta Force who have been involved in trafficking drugs recently. So you begin this book with the discovery of two bodies. Tell us when they were discovered and who those men were. In December of 2020, two dead bodies were found. in a remote training range of Fort Bragg. One of them was a member of Delta Force. They had both been shot to death.

And the limited information from police at that time was that it was believed to be a double homicide from a drug deal gone wrong. The other person who was killed at that time was Timothy Dumas, who was a support officer, a logistics officer for J-Soc. The other one, the Delta Force operator,

his name was Billy Levine. And my book mostly is, or at the core of it, It's an investigation into who committed these murders. So Billy Levine, Delta Force, talk about the Delta Force operations. And you just mentioned that people are being killed in Fort Bragg. And part of the killing responsibility is the Mexican drug cartels. But those cartels, you talk about being trained at Fort Bragg. Well, it's unclear who committed the murders of.

Billy Levine and Timothy Dumas, I've got to say, certainly we might suspect that it could have been some of their associates in the drug trafficking industry. I did learn in the course of researching the book and reporting it that Levine and Duma's were buying cocaine through the Los Zetas cartel in Mexico, which, in fact, was trained in the United States. It began as a project, a joint project between the U.S. Special Forces and the Mexican government to create an elite paratrooper unit of the Mexican army and later went rogue and became one of the most feared cartels in Mexico.

So you're talking about a kind of Mexico Delta Force? You could say that. You could say that. Or Mexican Green Berets. The numbers that you're talking about of soldiers who have died at Fort Bragg in a couple years over 100? 109 from 2020 to 2021. And only four of those deaths took place in foreign combat zones in Afghanistan and Syria.

All the rest took place stateside, either on Fort Bragg itself or in Fayetteville, which is the town right by Fort Bragg. So can you talk about with this number of deaths? How does it compare, for example, to Fort Hood? And talk about what happens when you have this massive number of deaths. who is held responsible? And how are they dying? Well, so far nobody has been held responsible. Fort Bragg is the largest military base. However, the number of deaths there on a per capita and absolute basis outstrips any other that you might compare it to. For example, we're well aware that in Fort Hood and 2020, 38 soldiers died.

That led to extensive news coverage as well as two congressional investigations, which ultimately concluded with the entire chain of command of Fort Hood being fired. even though the situation at Fort Bragg is objectively worse and has been for years. So far, to my knowledge, nothing has been done about it. You say that Fort Bragg has a lot of secrets, a lot of underground narcotic secrets. It's its own little cartel. That was Freddie Huff, who is the ex-D-E-A agent, talking about Fort Bragg. What exactly does that mean?

So Freddie Huff was a corrupt North Carolina State Trooper and DEA Task Force agent who became a high-level drug trafficker in North Carolina. He was the connection between Los Zetas and Mexico and this group of Special Forces soldiers on Fort Bragg who were trafficking and distributing drugs in the area. And that quote was from Mr. Huff. And, you know, he was alleging that he sold, you know, hundreds of kilograms of cocaine to this group. How many people die of suicide, and how is that dealt with in the military at Fort Bragg? A shocking and depressing number. The Army is well aware that it has a suicide problem that has for a long time, but the numbers at Fort Bragg are really extreme,

and it's the number one cause of death at Fort Bragg by far, and many of those deaths are also drug-related, regrettably. So why isn't their investigation going to? on? As President Trump tariffs Mexico and increases tariffs on Canada, talking about fentanyl. Talk about what's happening at Bragg. Well, on the contrary, there haven't been, not only has there not been any sort of reforms or any crackdown on this, but Trump and Hegseth, they make a big show of their support for Fort Bragg, changing the name back to Fort Bragg from Fort Liberty, giving speeches there, touting the special forces in the Airborne Corps, without really taking

seriously some of these underlying and systemic issues, which are quite troubling. One of the ways you use these murders to talk about U.S. presence in the military around the world is when you talk about Timothy DeMoss, you say he was a quartermaster with the special forces and how he used his position, was it in Afghanistan, to bring drugs into the United States? Now, this is the guy who was murdered. Yes, that's the allegation. Not only did, not only was he involved in that, actually, Timothy Dumas, before he died, wrote a letter, a blackmail letter. It was with the intention of blackmailing the special forces because he had been kicked out of the army for his misbehavior and his crimes and had been deprived of his pension as a result of that.

In order to, in a stratagem to exert leverage on the special forces and get his, suspension reinstated. He composed this document, which purported to name the members of what Mr. Huff called the Fort Bragg cartel. But before he was ever able to release that letter, he himself was murdered. So let's talk about Afghanistan for a moment. Talk about the U.S. presence there, the forever war. And talk about heroin, drugs, and how they became so critical to the Afghan economy? And did the Taliban have anything to do with that? It's really shocking the degree to which the war in Afghanistan had to do with drugs and drug production. It's an aspect of the war that was never covered to the degree that it ought to have

been. Afghanistan, under U.S. occupation, became by far the biggest narco state in the world, producing more heroin than the entire planet could absorb. Most of the drug trafficking and drug production was being carried out and done by warlords, police chiefs, militia commanders who are on the U.S. payroll in a corrupt structure, which you could plausibly describe as a cartel that went all the way up to the president of Afghanistan, Karzai and his brother, as well as Ashrafgani. During the entire time that the U.S. occupied the country, it was turning out staggering quantities of very high potency heroin, which flooded the entire person. planet and caused terrible heroin crises all over the world, including in the United States.

Are you right? No person in any position of influence dared to suggest that the scourge of opiate addiction then afflicting the poor and working class across the United States might have resulted from the wartime narcotics bonanza. Right. And part of that has to do with the DEA's assertion that only 1% of heroin in the United States comes from Afghanistan. This is something that we were told by the DEA during the course of the war, and which was duly repeated by many media outlets. But I go into some detail in my book about why I believe that that number was fictitious.

And in fact, just as in Canada, just as in Australia, Russia, wherever you look in the world, by far the majority of heroin in the United States, I believe, came from Afghanistan. I wanted to move over to Ukraine. You have the summit that President Trump is holding with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. tomorrow. You spent a good amount of time in Ukraine. Talk about where you were, when you were there, and what the U.S. Special Forces were doing there. I was in Ukraine at the start of the war. I was in Kiev during the Battle of Kiev. And at that time, we had been told that there were no U.S. military forces in Ukraine that they had all been withdrawn on over as

President Biden before the Russian invasion. However, I was the first to report that In fact, there were members of the Joint Special Operations Command active in Ukraine from day one, including members of the Delta Force as well as SEAL Team 6. And that reporting was subsequently confirmed by other media outlets. They may not have specified what units they came from, but certainly the presence of U.S. special operators in Ukraine has been confirmed. So talk more about the significance of this, where they came from in the United States, what they were doing. Well, they all come from Fort Brett.

and the conventional troops that were there in Poland to back up the Ukrainian army also came from Fort Bragg, the 82nd Airborne Division. That's an illustration of the centrality of Fort Bragg to all U.S. military operations. Now, where are they in the country of Ukraine right now? That's not, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that anybody knows that. But certainly, it is concerning that we have our U.S. military personnel there in a conflict with another nuclear armed power. I wanted to go to President Trump's relationship with the military.

There's the op-ed in the New York Times today talking about how it was thought it would ultimately, interestingly, be the military that would stop Trump from using it on the ground in the United States. The headline is, we used to think the military would stand up to Trump, we were wrong. And I wanted to go back to, well, we've talked about. the New York Times revealing a trove of confidential military interviews with the Navy Seals who accused Chief Edward Gallagher of war crimes. He met with President Trump at Trump's private resort in Mar-a-Lago weeks after Trump overruled his own military leaders and blocked

them from disciplining Gallagher, despite him being, despite him being convicted of posing with a teenage corpse, In a high-profile war crimes case, he was also accused of fatally stabbing the captive teenager in the neck and shooting two Iraqi civilians. But he was acquitted of premeditated murder in the never-before release videos. The soldiers tell Navy investigators Gallagher was toxic and freaking evil. So he was a Navy seal. You served in Iraq. You also report on Iraq. Talk about the significance of this pardoning, ultimately, that Trump did of Gallagher and who exactly he was and where he was found guilty of committing these crimes in Iraq.

Trump's cozying up to war criminals like Eddie Gallagher is one of the most deplorable features of his administration and is an illustration of the incredibly deleterious effect that Trump's malignant command influences had on the entire Special Operations community. because Eddie Gallagher is somebody who was turned in by his own teammates who are far from bleeding heart liberals. These are active duty Navy SEALs fighting in Mosul and Iraq who see their chief murdering people right and left men, women, children, unarmed people. He was caught on video about to stab that teenage ISIS fighter in the neck. His teammates wanted him gone. The Navy SEAL command wanted him gone. But Trump saw an opportunity to make guys like Eddie Gallagher part of his personal political brand and that is he also pardoned people like Matthew Goldstein who is the Green Beret officer who admitted to a committee murder on live television

other people that Trump has made part of his retinue some of the craziest people in the special operations community all of this has had the effect of you know there are people in this community who do go by a sense of ethics and who are not so criminally inclined and the more Trump is in office and doing things like this, the fewer you have of those people, and the more you have of the sort of piratical types like Eddie Gallagher staying in and rising higher in the ranks. And you see that in the kind of fallout of the domestic crime that I describe in my book. We're talking to Seth Harpy is the author of the Fort Bragg Cartel. It's out this week, the subtitled drug trafficking and murder in the special forces. What did you discover, Seth, about

the intelligence role of Delta Force and its covert actions in countries where the U.S. is not at war. It's really incredible how little we know about the Delta Force. I believe my book is the only sort of serious investigative look at the unit, despite the fact that it is the most elite unit in the U.S. military and has been at the forefront of all U.S. wars since at least 2001. So Delta Force, I'd be happy to tell you anything about the unit. What should I say?

You tell us. You did the... The intelligence gathering, you said. Yes. So it's interesting because a lot of people are not aware the extent to which these type of units, Delta and J-Soc, which Delta is a part of J-Soc, besides their paramilitary capacities,

besides their operations doing assassinations and abductions in war zones. They also have a strong intelligence gathering capabilities, and they have troops that are overseas, that are active duty, U.S. military members who are not wearing uniforms, who are not carrying IDs, who are operating under cover identities, sometimes pretending to be American businessman, other times pretending to be State Department employees, but in fact are carrying out military operations and countries with which the United States is not at war, including things like bugging missions, other

things that we don't know about. And I think what's most crucial to emphasize in this context is that unlike the CIA, unlike other civilian intelligence agencies that are subject to congressional oversight and must report their covert actions to Congress, the military is largely exempt from that type of oversight. And so I think that's one reason why you have seen a lot of the authority over covert action shift from civilian agencies to JSOC over the last 20 years. Before we wrap up, I wanted to to go to these latest moves by Trump. I mean, that special secret directive,

we're using it today to talk about what's happening at home when it comes to drug cartels. But what about, and you've reported from Mexico, what about what Trump is saying that the Pentagon can deploy in countries like Mexico, the Mexican president said, you know, to have a very fierce reaction against this, going after drug cartels there.

you started talking about Fort Bragg being a place where some of the most dangerous of these cartels were actually trained. That's right. Los Santos were trained at Fort Bragg at Fort Benning, and they also received training from Israeli instructors before they went rogue. Another indication or another illustration of how U.S. military intervention often stimulates drug production. What was the second part of your question?

Well, talking about Mexico and the U.S. deploying troops there. I mean, it's complete to the extent, in these days, with the genocide in Gaza and so many other things going on, we almost have lost sight and seems like nobody cares about international law, but I just want to point out that kind of the obvious that using military force against drug traffickers, however bad you think drug traffickers are, that's a total violation of the laws of war. They're not combatants in war.

They're criminals. So that's one thing. Another aspect of it is, you know, the sort of typical Trump showmanship. It's not clear to me, having worked in Mexico as a reporter for years, that the sort of cartels that the DEA creates organization charts to illustrate and tout and purport. I don't know that those really are such coherent organizations as they might imagine. And I question whether they have the intelligence on these purported organizations where they could actually carry out military strikes on them.

I don't know that they actually have the targeting intelligence for that to become a reality. But in any event, they ought to look more closely at the drug crime that's taking place in the United States and even on our own military bases. And can you talk about the long U.S. history, military and clandestine operations and drug trafficking in Southeast Asia, for people who are not aware of what happened, as well as in Latin America, for example, all the illegal funding and support of the Contras in Nicaragua and the thousands of Nicaraguans who were killed? Sure, there is a long pedigree of this kind of thing.

Covert alliances between U.S. Special Forces and paramilitaries and intelligence agencies and foreign forces that are implicated in the international drug trade. As you indicate, one of the first examples of that was in Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam during that era, as well as in Central America, the case of the Nicaraguan Contras. However, I must say all of it pales in comparison with the complicity of the practically the whole of the U.S. government with heroin cartels in Afghanistan during the war.

The amount of drugs that were produced, the openness of the alliance between the United States and known drug traffickers in that country surpassed anything that we had previously seen in American history. What most surprised you, Seth, in your research for the United States? book, you as a member of the military, but then stepping outside, you became a lawyer, you were an assistant attorney general in Texas, but a long-time investigative journalist around the world. The stuff about Afghanistan, I think, was the most shocking to me because it was one country where I had not worked, and I really wasn't aware of the degree to which the U.S. client state was the entity responsible for producing most of the drugs in Afghanistan. I have

kind of snowed like everybody else with this narrative that it was the Taliban that was doing it. But in the course of writing the book, the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban in 23 had completely eradicated all drug production from Afghanistan. So seeing the Taliban come into power and totally eliminate that massive drug producing industry that the U.S. had not only tolerated but supported for 20 years really showed, I guess really belied, you know, the the claim until then that it was either the Taliban or it was both sides when in fact it was really our guys that were doing it the entire time. Do you think with this special directive, a secret directive that Trump has signed, that special forces operations in Latin America

will increase under the guise of fighting cartels? It's possible. I find that to be a very complicated prospect. So many of the drug traffickers in Latin America are military or police forces that are allied with the United States. Things are changing in Mexico and in Colombia, but historically the biggest drug traffickers in the Americas have been, let's say the Colombian army and right-wing paramilitaries affiliated with the Colombian military, as well as, you know, you see the same type of phenomenon in Honduras and El Salvador and also in Mexico.

So when they talk about targeting these people, who exactly are they talking about? Well, you've set us up well for our next segment. I want to thank you so much, Seth, for joining us. Seth Harp, Rolling Stone investigative reporter. His new book is just out. It's called The Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. Up next, we go to Columbia to speak with Senator Ivansapeda about the sentencing of the former Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, to 12 years. Stay with us.

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What's going to be what's going to? Oh, my arbor me-lo's-tumband. That's what you're going to be a lot of it. Janaya by the New York-based Mapu Sound System, performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Mimi Goodman. We turn now to Colombia, where the former president, Avido Uribe, was recently sentenced to

12 years of house arrest after we was found guilty of witness tampering and bribery. Uribe is the first former president of Colombia to be found guilty of a crime, convicted of bribing and prison members of paramilitary groups, to coax them into retracting, damaging testimony exposing his ties to U.S.-backed right-wing power military groups. Uribe was a staunch U.S. ally who ruled Colombia from 2002 to 2010. During Uribe's presidency, there were thousands of extrajudicial killings of civilians who were then purposely mislabeled as rebel fighters in what became known as the false positive scandal.

The killings took place between 2004 and 8 as the U.S.-backed Colombian military intensified its crackdown on FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces. of Colombia. To discuss all this, Democracy Now, Juan Gonzalez and I spoke last week with the leftist Colombian Senator Ivan Cepeda in Bogota, whose spearheaded efforts looking into Uribe's collaboration with paramilitaries. Senator Cepeda's father, the leading leftist politician Manuel Cepeda, was assassinated in 1994. One note, this interview took place before Cepeda's colleague, the Columbia Senator Miguel Uribe, no relation to the former president. died two months after he was shot at a campaign rally in the capital Bogota.

We spoke to Senator Ivan Cepeda last Wednesday. It's an honor to have you with us, Ivan Cepeda. If you can talk about the significance of what has happened to Uribe right now, his conviction and sentencing and what it means for a global audience. Well, thanks to Amy Goodman, Van Gonzalez, and democracy now. First of all, I'd like to thank Amy Goodman. Juan Gonzalez and Democracy Now, I would say that the significance of the what happened in the Colombian judiciary on July 28th, well, that there are two main points. First, it's the first time

that a former head of state has been criminally charged and particularly has been found guilty, has been convicted of criminal charges in Colombia. And second, Alvo Ribe is a very powerful figure. He is the leading figure of the far right in Colombia, and I would say a leading figure of the far right in the Americas. When he became president in 2002, he sought to impose a model that legalized the narco-paramilitary forces and that sought to leave them in positions of power. Could you lay out some of the evidence that was presented against Uribe and talk about your personal relationship to this case? In the year 2011, when I went from being a member of a human rights organization

to a member of the Colombian Congress and still a human rights activist, two members of the paramilitaries gave statements in which they said that Uribe had founded a paramilitary group at one of his large ranches. And in the Congress, I organized a debate about this and then Uribe became involved in a major criminal enterprise in which there were 20 false witnesses who were either former drug traffickers or members of the paramilitaries, 20 persons who then made false statements. And Uribe filed a libel suit against you in 2012? Would you talk about that and how that developed it? Yes, when Uribe tried to say that the paramilitary statements were slanderous, he then said that I had tried to bribe them in the form of money and legal assistance

to get them to make statements against Uribe and against his brother Santiago. And then when the Supreme Court investigated the situation in 2018, they found that I did not do anything illegal. And to the contrary, they turned the situation around and began to investigate Uribe for having tried to change the statements of paramilitaries in prison and he became the one investigated and I became the victim. Can you talk as well about other investigations against Uribe, for instance, the 1997 massacre of farmers by the paramilitaries when Uribe was governor of Antiochia?

Yes, Uribe has been facing many investigations, but if we talk about the 1990s, there are three main ones. This is when he was the governor of Antioch, as you said. First was the assassination of leading human rights defender, Jesus Maria Valle, who had been looking into many complaints of violations carried out by the government when Uribe was governor. Second, the massacres of under the government departmental of Uribe.

In second, the massacres of Elaro and La Granca, which were carried out by paramilitary groups in Antiochia. And third, this other matter of the formation of a paramilitary group at his asienda,

paramilitary group known as the Bloque Metro. Now, these three investigations are all all being merged together today, and it seems that they may well receive greater impetus now that this decision has come down in my case concerning the situation of the paramilitary groups and Uribe. Senator Sopeda, you are sitting in your office, and behind you is, I think it's an iPad that says 6,402.

Can you explain what that number is? Also tell us what happened to your father, the leading leftist politician, Manuel Cepeda. Well, that's the figure that's been established by the judicial authorities in what are poorly named the false positives. These are young people who were taken away and murdered by members of the members of the. the Army. Right now, that figure is 6,402, but it's presumed that there are many more, and they were accused of being terrorists and guerrillas, but they were just young people looking for work. Now, my father, he was assassinated more than 30 years ago. Now, in the wake of a decision

by the Inter-American Court, it was determined, this is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, It was determined that he was assassinated by members of the military who carried out the operation working together with paramilitary forces. And the Colombian state has now expressed apologies in this matter. I wanted to ask you about the U.S. role through these decades in supporting what is known as Plan Colombia, right through to now, where you have the U.S. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denouncing Uribe's trial. Rubio said on social media, Uribe's only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland. The weaponization of Colombia's judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome

precedent. It almost makes me think that they might impose more tariffs on Colombia to take him out of house arrest. But if you can comment on the U.S. role through these years, Senator Soppeda. Well, about the years of the Plan Colombia, regarding the years under Plan Colombia, well, it's been clearly established that during those years, Colombia saw a massive human rights violations. Indeed, these were the worst figures ever for forcible displacement, disappearance, extraditional executions and major growth in paramilitary activity.

And this is exactly during the years that this Plan Colombia aid package was being provided, which was supposedly aimed at reducing violence. It was supposed to the help that was giving the government of the United and will contribute to superer the violence in Colombia. And with relation to the declarations of the Secretary Marco Rubio, Now, as regards what the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has said about the conviction of Uribe, I would simply subscribe to the words of Representative Jim McGovern. Who has said that this is a shameful statement because it is gross meddling in Colombian sovereignty.

It's really a reckless accusation against the Colombian judiciary in general and against this judge in particular, who clearly acted within the rule of law and made a decision based on judicial considerations. So I would simply repeat what President Petro said yesterday, which is that we call for respect for our national sovereignty. So as he did yesterday, President Petro, we exigimo that's respect our sovereignty. Senator, it's been nearly 10 years now since the Colombian government. reached peace accords with the FARC, the largest of the many guerrilla groups in Colombia over the last 60 years. What is the status of political violence in Colombia today?

Are trade unions and human rights groups free to operate? The process of peace and the 2016, the 2016, and the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, has represented a major historical step forward in Colombia. There was a significant reduction of violence, and in some parts of the country, very notable improvements in the human rights situation. Unfortunately, however, this has not represented an end to violence. There are still guerrilla groups,

there are still drug trafficking groups, as well as paramilitary networks. So drug trafficking is still a major problem that needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed in a new way, in ways that not in the way traditionally that it was addressed. Petro has a records very important with relation. And finally, under the current Petro administration, there has been a major reduction. in human rights violations by military forces, human rights violations have reduced significantly and in some areas and at sometimes practically non-existent.

Significatiminti, and in some cases, I wanted to ask you as well about the current governments stand on the Israeli war against the Palestinians, especially the genocide in Gaza, President Petro, has been very outspoken on his positions. What kind of reaction has this resulted in for Colombia? The President Petro, for Ourrador, has completed a role of the leader international in this camp. President Petro, and this is something we're very proud of, has been an international leader in this respect. not only before the latest phase of the genocide began, which even before October 2023,

President Petro had proposed an international conference to resolve the peace issue as between Israel and Palestine. And then, in the latest phase, more criminal, obviously, the action of Hamas, but over all this... And then, in the latest phase, which is to say after the action

by Hamas, and particularly since the genocide by Israel against the Palestinian people, he took a very clear stand, broke relations with Israel, sought justice, has sought justice internationally, and has

called for an immediate fault. to the violence. This is similar positions have been hoisted in Latin America and internationally of support for these same stands, but the response really needs to be much clear and much stronger, particularly from Europe, say, Canada and the United States, where it has been too weak so far. which the reaction has been, to say it's a devil for part of the government.

Colombian leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda speaking to us from Bogota. Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was recently sentenced to 12 years of house arrest after he's found guilty of witness tampering and bribery.

That does it for our show. I'm Amy Meadman. Thanks for joining us.