PETE BUTTIGIEG
OPIUM
In the shadow of such history, Buttigieg said he'd long considered military service, but it wasn't until he volunteered to help the Barack Obama campaign in 2008 in Iowa that he was inspired to sign up. At the time, Buttigieg's day job was working for the global consulting firm McKinsey and Co.
Buttigieg joined the Navy Reserve in 2009, when he was 27, as an intelligence officer through the Reserve's direct commission program offered to applicants with academic degrees. It made him an officer without first having to go through the months of officer training, as most did.
The direct commission program is somewhat controversial because many see it as a fast track to military credentials for the politically ambitious, and Buttigieg acknowledged that he felt "pressure" to earn the rank he'd already been awarded.
His job would prove an unusual one. Rather than deploying with the troops with whom he trained, he was sent to Afghanistan to join what was called the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, a multi-agency task force led by the Drug Enforcement Administration along with the military that also included representatives from departments including the FBI and Treasury.
"We dealt with things like bank fraud, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking and the opium-heroin trade," said Army Reserve Col. Guy Hollingsworth (ret.), the military commander of the task force when Buttigieg arrived. "And we would partner with folks as needed to try and root out some of that from a terrorist perspective."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intel-analyst-military-uber-inside-mayor-petes-afghanistan/story?id=64847210