Sources within the Special Operations community have described a situation to SOFREP in which SEAL Team Six operators are routinely high on drugs while conducting highly dangerous direct action missions while deployed abroad.  Operators are known to abuse methamphetamine and other uppers on a regular basis during combat operations.  The use of cocaine and methamphetamine is also quite common while re-deployed back to the United States.  The question remains as to how elite Special Operators who must hold a Top Secret security clearance are allowed to not only remain on the SEAL Teams, but also to retain their security clearance.

That they are not stripped of their clearance would imply that they are not being tested for drugs, or if they are, that the results are covered up.  By some accounts, the legal counsel out at Dam Neck has a full-time job ensuring that SEAL Team Six operators retain their clearance and are not kicked off the teams.  “The drug use, it’s growing,” a Navy SEAL told CBS News.  “People that we know of, that we hear about have tested positive for cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, marijuana, ecstasy.”  Whether or not the SEALs who spoke to CBS are SEAL Team Six operators or served on one of the other SEAL teams is not known as they spoke to the press on the condition of anonymity.  Considering the peer ostracization and command reprisals they would face for exposing the drug problem on the SEAL teams, it is understandable why they wanted their identities concealed.

“You stand up for what’s right, and you get blackballed, or driven out,” a SEAL told CBS.  Another confirmed saying, “It’s a career killer.”

What is worse than drug use is the criminal culture that has come to dominate Naval Special Warfare’s most elite unit, a culture that not only tolerates drug use but also money laundering, unethical behavior, corruption, and war crimes.  It is a conspiracy of silence in which unit members all have dirt on one another, locking them together in a mafia-like organization in which no one dares to snitch.