INTRODUCTION BY VANN SPENCER

FLAMING LIBERAL TOWN HOSTS A SHADY “HOTEL”

I have long been planning to write a book on what went on behind the I scenes of Soldier of Fortune magazine, which would, without a doubt, I be a bestseller. this thriller would provide any adventurer, scam artist, drama queen, scandal addict or madman the read of their lives, and I could retire in comfort. But first, the long awaited story of the magazine’s daring, maverick publisher himself must be told.

Before we jump into the action that takes place in many of the most treacherous battlefields in the world, I will expose the most tempestuous and threatening fight that Soldier of Fortune and its notorious publisher faced. A nightmare with Orwellian twists, the battle dealt a near death knell to SOF and dragged me against my will and better judgment into that bizarre world.

I was in my first year of law school. In my serene neighborhood set in the spectacular Rocky Mountain foothills, I could hear—far more often than any civilized neighbor or student seeking refuge should ever have to bear—earsplitting “music,” boisterous thundering voices engaged in a contest to out-bellow each other, drunken howls, hilarity and madness that went on for hours, shattering the night air and any existing peace.

I soon learned that the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine, Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Brown USAR (Ret.), aka “Uncle Bob,” “RKB,” or “the Colonel,” had established the “Brown Hotel” which the neighborhood dubbed the “House of Madness,” two houses down from mine. Without a doubt in violation of all zoning laws and noise ordnances, the “Brown Hotel” hosted an unending stream of action-seeking famous and infamous mercenaries and former Special Operations Forces-types. Scores of Viking or pirate-looking men, bearded or closely shaven, buzzed or with ponytails and tattoos, dressed in camouflage or black leather biker gear, met there to conspire not so stealthily for their next missions to Africa, Asia or Latin America. Myriad guests who roared in and out of the quarters on deafeningly loud motorcycles, chauffeured cars, macho trucks or revved-up autos often joined them. All came to visit the notorious Brown Hotel set in the unlikely locale of the flamingly liberal People’s Republic of Boulder, Colorado.

One of the countless rumors that made the rounds of the neighborhood had it that on one occasion an entire busload of Special Forces operators dressed in camouflage and berets drove into the driveway of the “Brown Hotel” and stormed in. the raucousness that night was beyond description, as the story goes. I found the outrageous tale far-fetched, as the neighbors warned that the squad was preparing to overthrow some dictator or even take over the Flaming Liberal Republic of Boulder. I found out that the incident was indeed true, except for the juicy part about overthrowing some dictator, but only for That busload. A U.S. Army Master Sergeant had called the Colonel and told him he was bringing 30 of his Green Berets out for mountain climbing training in the rugged Rockies. The Colonel flew into action, even providing rock-climbing instructors. That night SOF threw a Fourth of July-ish bash, the likes of which the neighborhood had never seen nor heard. It was not July, let alone the 4th.

Lest the reader believe that I exaggerate, here is how one partygoer in the “Brown Hotel” recalled one rowdy night:

It was sometime back in the early 80s after some gun show, a bunch of us would show up at your place to do some serious “partying.” I was there with my dog “Smokey” and my wife at the time, Lorraine. The only other name that I can remember was Chuck Taylor, who had been teaching at Cooper’s “Gunsite Training Academy.” The reason I remember Taylor is that when I woke up from sleeping (passed out) on the floor and took my dog out for his morning walk, I found a .45 caliber grease gun with a 30-round loaded magazine on the hood of his car out in front—covered with dew, as it had been out all night! Yes, sir! Those were some wild times . . .

Soldier of Fortune and its master-of-intrigue founder captured worldwide attention. Every fall, TV screens, air waves and journals would become filled with highly entertaining tales, not to mention rumors and flat out lies, about the scandalous Soldier of Fortune conventions held in Missouri and later in Las Vegas, where the mayor declared a “Soldier of Fortune Day’’

One far-fetched account of the first SOF “Congress” appeared in the Russian wire service, TASS, in September 1980:

In shirts with inscriptions like “Worship War” and “Happiness is in Murder,” with hands clutching at guns and rifles—this is how the U.S. press depicts today the professional gangsters and mercenaries ready at a moment’s notice to rush to far-flung areas in order to kill and hang people, and overthrow legitimate governments. These people have converged on the town of Columbia, Missouri to take part in the first “Congress” organized by the magazine called Soldier of Fortune, which specializes in providing publicity for mercenaries. Henceforward, such gatherings are to be held on an annual basis.

For three days in a row, hundreds of professional assassins competed in shooting and in the art of using knives and daggers. In the breaks between shooting competitions they boasted of their feats during their foreign trips, and unblushingly named the number of “communists” killed by them. Discussions in the conference halls centered on plans to give assistance to gangs that are now responsible for bloody atrocities committed in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and other countries. . . . The magazine Soldier of Fortune has published a large-circulation booklet specifically for the gathering of the assassins. The booklet has a characteristic title, “The Technique of Intimidation.”

Yet no one, certainly not the local or other law enforcement or CIA personnel who religiously picked up the magazine (whether they admitted it or not, mainly not), dared disturb the goings-on at the “Brown Hotel.” Many showed up at the SOF conventions, not wanting to miss out on the action.

Newsweek magazine’s Periscope section in September 1981 outed the CIA’s obsession with its nemesis, Soldier of Fortune, after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. response to the war:

They don’t like to admit it, but intelligence analysts at the CIA and the Pentagon rely on an adventure magazine published in Boulder, Colorado for some of their best information on Soviet military operations in Afghanistan. Every month the analysts comb through grenade launchers and other Soviet weapons that the magazine’s correspondents in Afghanistan have somehow acquired. Soldier of Fortune even offers to sell captured Soviet weaponry to the highest bidder, preferably, “U.S. or NATO intelligence agencies.” One Pentagon official says that the ease with which Soldier of Fortune obtains Soviet arms is a “real sore point” at the CIA.

After the Cold War wound down, the rabble-rousing warrior was continuing to rev up, concocting one scheme or another to keep his trigger finger on the pulse of the head-spinning action that the postwar chaos was creating around the globe.

I MEET THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE OF INTRIGUE

I opened the local paper one morning and read on the front page that the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine had been shot. Period! No details! Within no time, the international media had gone wild with the news of the “assassination” of the Colonel.

Even the radio talk show king at the time, Paul Harvey, jumped on board with the “rest of the story.” He claimed that Sheldon Kelly, a close friend and Reader’s Digest reporter who had linked up with SOF in El Salvador, and who was allegedly in some nefarious scheme with Brown to smuggle weapons out of the country, had assassinated his co-conspirator and made a run for it. Kelly allegedly was apprehended at the Los Angeles Airport on the pretext of gun smuggling.

I raced over to the “Brown Hotel.” I had always made it a point to avoid the notorious Lord of the Den of Who Knows What. But now overcome by a morbid sense of curiosity, I needed to know whether the House of Intrigue had lost its master in some wild jungle or in a combat zone or whether some hit man had really bumped him off.

I knocked, expecting a caretaker or a priest or a bunch of camouflage-veiled mourners. Instead, a very grumpy, unshaven RKB, with his strong aquiline face, his angry piercing blue eyes staring out beneath a baseball cap, cautiously cracked open the door. His thick moustache belied his thinning hair. I hid my shock. He ordered me in. He hobbled back to the mas-sive chair that was his throne, leaning on a sword or a cane, which one I could not tell. He was wearing a short-sleeve khaki safari shirt that exposed his strapping arms, with the top few buttons open to show off his muscular, hairy chest in his macho style, pain or no pain. His safari shorts were hiked up on one side above the bandaged muscled leg of an avid jogger. I was rudely and unabashedly introduced to the first (of what would become many) of his Tourette Syndrome-type outbursts loudly barked out in his deep gravelly voice, a wad of snuff bulging in one cheek. (He bragged he had used some of the finest china in the best restaurants in the world for a spittoon.) His outbursts, to put it mildly, can be mighty shocking even to the most hardened. His seething anger masked the pain in his fair, pale face. He had been shot in the calf with a .22 round and was going to miss his next big adventure.

The “accident,” he told me, happened during a moment of one of the “Brown Hotel’s” chaotic, drunken fiascos they called a “party.” The culprit was Galen Geer, Vietnam vet, who had long joked about being the only mere auto mechanic in Vietnam while all the other vets were Rangers, SEALs, or Special Forces who saved entire villages and fought ferocious firefights on a daily basis. Geer had been mucking around with his Jennings .22 after countless drinks, and while showing the piece off to RKB, accidentally fired. The bullet flew through Geer’s hand and penetrated almost all the way through RKB’s right calf already scarred from mortar round fragments in Vietnam. The grumpy Colonel found one bright spot in the whacky incident. “The .22 bullet is coated in some kind of wax. Since the bullet went through Galen’s hand first, it removed all the wax so when it lodged in my calf, the wound did not have to be debrided. A quick incision with a scalpel removed it, and it dropped into a pan with a loud cling just like one you would hear on Gunsmoke,” he said.

“Right,” I thought. “You could come up with a better story than this lame one.” I found out later that it was true.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF A MERC—
A “SOMEDAY I’M GOING TO . . .”

The Colonel was tied in with a global network of professional soldiers and coordinated contacts where I was to study international law, whether it was in Asia, South Africa, London—the land of many mercs—or Paris, the land of many more mercs.

I went on to spend months with the fascinating “dogs of war” of many nationalities, many of which are players in this book. I found the worldly warriors unlike the stereotypes of trigger-happy, unkempt burly brutes that ate raw meat, human or otherwise. I met many soldiers of fortune during those years, including Brits, French, South Africans, Australians and a number of Americans. The least memorable were those wannabes who were legends in their own minds, boasting endlessly of their kills, conquests or trophies, real or imagined. Some who had served from Rhodesia to South Africa, to Lebanon to Oman and beyond spoke matter-of-factly of their adventures. The most fascinating of all verbalized with their wary, piercing eyes, not saying much. They didn’t have to— they had fought ruthlessly in vicious battles and survived. Many of their opponents had not.

They were unpredictable, some savory, others unsavory, some complex and some simple, but all so interesting that I determined to write a book about the psychological profile of a mercenary. Another “someday we-are-going-to” brainchild.

A couple of years after the Colonel’s shooting incident, in my last year in school, a pompous, narcissitic professor, about whom I fantasized sending some of the Colonel’s friends to make sure he had given his final lecture, flunked me after I said something of which he disapproved. The politically motivated Dean of the Law School said he could do nothing because the professor’s wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the school. With the hope of shutting me up the fastest way possible because an unfair flunking grade amounted to an unfair expulsion, which could prove to be very uncomfortable for him, he told me he would arrange for me to take another course. He cautioned me to make every effort to score an “A” to average out the bad grade to a “B” or the deal would bomb. In law school “C” is a flunk.

I took the only course available before the end of the next quarter in order to graduate. If I did not earn an “A” to make up for the failing grade, I would probably be joining some Foreign Legion somewhere and would not even be able to defend the ne’er do wells. The course? Trial tactics! Me, who froze in front of any audience? We had to take a mock case from beginning to end, including complaints, responses, motions, depositions, etc. etc. etc. We were required to present both sides, but were to be graded on the final defense of our client. We barely knew what a motion meant.

WHAT JUSTICE?

I get bored easily, and that wouldn’t help my efforts to complete grueling exercises in an attempt to earn one of the only A’s of my life. Why not make Soldier of Fortune Magazine’s rogue Colonel as my “client”, I thought in one enlightened moment? At the time the Colonel was besieged by legal claims. Apparently a couple of criminals had linked up in an ad in SOF, and months later one of them had killed someone. It mattered not that if evil men, however they met that their murderous actions were the responsibility of the evildoers. As soon as the case was filed the mainstream press turned personal “Gun for Hire” ads placed by security guards, personal protection professionals and other independent advertisers into “Hit Man Ads.” Then as now, the media attracts a much bigger audience with spectacular half- or untruths, and in this case rather than holding murderous psychos responsible for their actions, the media blamed a publication and its publisher.

Even I, who knew nothing about the practice of law, with what little the Colonel told me about his opponent plaintiffs, was sure he had been sold down the river by a sea of incompetent attorneys. It is no secret that The Flaming Liberal Republic of Boulder is noted for its plethora of pot-head, “nose candy” addict and substance-abusing members of the legal profession.

Feeling the crunch, he invited me to observe one trial in Texas that was going forward after months of pleadings and motions being thrown back and forth. For two dramatic weeks while playing hooky from school, I watched in horror as the nightmare unfolded. The case opened to a surreal start.

“What are you trying to do, counselor, make me make a mistake? This morning you give me responses to 51 motions?” the judge told the Colonel’s waste-of-time attorneys, one a womanizer more interested in his conquests than the case, even during the trial. Maybe if the judge had a reputation of being partial, which I doubted, it was apparent he had already made the decision and manipulated the trial to reflect it.

I knew that the case was over but the trial proceeded. I desperately tried to convince the Colonel to kidnap the opposing counsel at gunpoint and force him to represent SOF and simultaneously bury his defense team alive. I promised that the secret would go with me to the grave.

A slick, well groomed pretty boy in his 3 os, with a good old boy’s slow Texas twang, the opposing counsel was well aware that the media vultures were all over the case with their cameras. He had hit the big one in terms of fame. He gave an obviously well rehearsed performance that was theatrical, brilliant, and had some of the most convincing presentations I have ever seen, though mostly a pile of lies. The victim’s family, by design, was dressed and told to conduct itself in such a pitiable manner that the jury and audience were instantly overwhelmed with sympathy.

Local prosecutors had already convicted the two perps in a criminal trial in which SOF had no involvement.

This drama spelled huge trouble for a notorious tough guy defendant with the reputation of publishing the most daring and controversial adventure magazine in history. I doubted that RKB and his army of uniformed former military officials and colossal tough guys charging through the witness stand could ever convince anyone that SOF could be innocent of any accusation, no matter how false or outrageous, anywhere, then or ever, especially to a jury of working stiffs who identified with the plaintiff. And to make it even worse, one of SOF’s bigheaded witnesses, unprepared, told an irrelevant bold face lie on the stand, which the plaintiff’s lawyer exploited to the hilt to impeach his testimony.

SOF lost. After the verdict, we were mobbed outside the courtroom by media vultures scrambling for comments or wanting interviews with the bad boy of journalism.

The case was appealed. And now many media outlets, which had helped create the hysteria, suddenly became terrified that such a meritless case would put a damper on their own freedom of speech and hit them in their pocketbooks when an inevitable slew of cases would be filed against them based on this precedent. So they filed supportive briefs. Personal ads that were likely to attract some pervert or ax murderer had become the vogue in many journals. RKB’s skilled appellate attorney won the appeal, which was really a no-brainer for any attorney who was sober. But by then the sensationalist media, no longer threatened, had lost interest. The damage was done.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH COMES WITH A DUMPTRUCK LOAD OF HITCHES

I spent hours of toil and sleepless nights on the case. I picked RKB and the “hotel” guests’ brains without telling them why, just feigning interest. I prepped mock witnesses (students), who all eagerly volunteered to participate in the trial of a reputed scoundrel at this private, liberal law school. I chose the jury based on one criterion: rebellious-looking males.

Presenting the “plaintiff’s” case was simple: a notorious magazine that shocked the conscience with questionable ads and content had to be shut down.

As the stages of the case progressed, I still picture the Trial Tactics professor—slim, impeccably groomed with a well modulated voice and perfectly timed delivery, enhanced with strategic hand gestures, who well earned his reputation as one of the top trial tactics professors in the region—observing with amusement, fascination and intrigue my bungling. I did not have a read on him, as he was too smooth.

The time came for the closing argument for the defense of my “client.” I admitted that some of the magazine’s provocative content and ads pressed the boundaries of insanity. I pled the case based on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech, which in my mind was an obvious, unconditional constitutional right.

Fortunately, not until I taught Constitutional Law did I face the harsh reality that the right of freedom of speech comes with a dump truck load of hitches. Or that political correctness, like an engorged predator blob, had gradually gobbled up what used to be a basic tenet of freedom down to its core; and it was still gnawing.

I can’t say that I even liked my “defendant” at first, as I perceived him as rather a loud, foul-mouthed rogue with a “hotel” that had walls overloaded with weird trophies and awards; a showman who loved to shock his audience. His fetish for phony but lifelike-looking skulls placed everywhere—on desks, shelves, t-shirts and posters I still don’t get. I can’t even tell you whether I believed in his causes at first, but by the time I gave my closing statement, after witnessing the actual trial and reading the appeal I knew he had been given a raw deal.

THE BLOOD SHED IN VIETNAM WAS JUST AS RED

I painted a portrait of a former U.S. Army officer, a man of enormous courage, obsessed by his still raw outrage at the likes of sellouts like John Kerry, Jane Fonda, Walter Cronkite, and other members of the media. Of his fury at the treatment of his team members by the anti-war crowd after their return from Vietnam that had crushed many of the troops who had for a decade risked their lives. He was fighting to vindicate the memory of those who died.

Always lurking in the back of his mind since the war ended so wrongly, won by the military but lost in Washington, was the thought that Vietnam veterans felt sold out by Congress and the Democratic Left. He, like the rejected Vets, resented the fact that they received no recognition for their sacrifices. He worked on the premise that the blood that was shed in Viet-nam was just as red as that shed in World Wars I or II or Korea. So he decided to focus on world events as well as provide a voice for Vietnam vets.

The classroom was hushed.

A POSTER BOY FOR TRUE GRIT

Perhaps I was driven by the enormous respect I had for another professor at the law school from whom I took numerous classes, and who despite my not so brilliant performance in his courses was fair and became a friend and invaluable advisor. He was the poster boy for true grit, determination, and hard driving success. He had been seriously injured in Vietnam, yet he completed advanced degrees in tax law after the war ended. I would try to hide my grimace as he would slowly, proudly walk into classrooms through the front door with his arms braced by crutches, often masking the pain in his face. Never complaining, never beaten down, he established one of the most distinguished international tax law programs in the country, and he was the director. He in turn expected hard work and excellence. He often asked about my neighbor, the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

But I realized by the time the class ended that day that a couple of the students never knew their fathers who were killed in Vietnam, and nearly every one of them knew a friend or family member who had been affected by the war. Most of them were not aware of the aftermath that Vietnam vets endured.

My classroom “client,” who would never have existed without the real deal and whose story was so gripping that it didn’t even have to be embellished, won the case. The jury deliberated for only a few minutes and was unanimous. The entire class voted after the jury. The verdict was unanimous. And obviously that included the professor, who gave me an A. It had nothing to do with legal skills. It had to do with harsh reality.

After I left the neighborhood to go live in Europe for a couple of years to finish my dissertation, the “Brown Hotel” was shut down. The Colonel had his contacts find me when I returned to the States, wondering if I could weigh in on his latest legal tight spot. He looked beat up, worried. He was still having a rough time repairing the damage of those unfortunate days. A few more cases were pending. His insurance had dropped him. The days of lavishness were gone, and along with them most of the hundreds of “friends.” He recruited me to help keep his passion alive.

I owed him for unknowingly letting me use him to help me keep my career, and for offering to come bail my sorry butt out of Africa, Russia, the Middle East or other places I was if I got in a jam. A study published while I was living in Brussels had rated the U.S. media on the bottom of the list of truth-in-media in the Western democracies.

We got rid of all the nuisance cases the way the first one should have been dismissed. The public stayed out of it this time, the way it should have earlier but for incompetent fame- and money-grubbing attorneys and sensation-seeking media. RKB did much of the work, doggedly going back and forth with me to the venues of the cases. In LA, I teamed up with one of the greatest attorneys or men I have ever known, Larry Straw. He fought on with us until the end in spite of horrendous pain he was suffering in the last stages of cancer. He died young, shortly after we won the most threatening case, thanks to his brilliant procedural skill. In a bizarre twist of fate, the plaintiff had as bungling of a counsel as SOFhad in its original disastrous case.

The Colonel and my proudest moment was when we received a public apology from the toad of a City Attorney of the Flaming Liberal People’s Republic of Boulder, who had defamed the magazine in the local paper. Or maybe I should say that it was a moment of triumph marred by one of the Colonel’s many unrestrained moments to protect an underdog or one less fortunate.

The opponent was a small, wiry 5oish-year-old man who came up no higher than the Colonel’s shoulder, and who suffered a gnarled, withered hand and walked with a limp. When he shuffled into the pretrial negotiating room, the chivalrous Colonel, who had sworn vengeance for weeks since he read the lies, had never seen the little, lying toad before. Ignoring the malevolent look in his opponent’s eyes, he shot up from his seat, pulled the opponent’s chair out to help him sit behind the table and offered to carry his load. Concerned that my worst client ever was going to blow the case, I kicked him in the leg under the table so hard that I was sure that I had killed him by severing an artery or producing a blood clot that would shoot straight to his bleeding heart. I’m not sure whether he came to his senses or whether the piercing pain in his leg dazed him long enough to silence him for me to get the job done.

“Did you ever read the magazine before you allowed that scathing criticism?” I asked the toad.

The weasel of a City Attorney had to admit he had never read SOF before he defamed it. His lies were based on old media hype. That is just how it was and still is. Lies and rumors; bigger and better lies; and more unfounded gossip.

A PRESS ROOM WITH A VIEW

I have since been daily watching an unrelenting warrior, a survivor who refuses to give up his passion, who is willing to work tirelessly around the clock to keep his mission alive—that of supporting the troops who have been involved in the War on Terror for over a decade, and the underdog everywhere. Stories of Vietnam vets still run frequently in the magazine.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not painting the portrait of a saint—quite the contrary. I often wonder why he is still alive with his smirking cool and his uncanny talent for goading those in his line of fire to blind mur-derous rages. I am number one on that list, and after a decade of constantly nearly coming to blows, have made absolutely no progress in convincing him that his right of freedom of speech is not absolute.

The side of this business I dread the most is when the normally devil-may-care, boisterous RKB goes silent, and I know he is grieving. I will never get used to it and it will never get easier. It happens far too frequently these days and no doubt it did during those Vietnam War days. It is when some young trooper he knows or former team member or old professional soldier, military colleague, or other great hero who was his friend is killed or dies.

The latest tragic death that clouded his office with an eerie, dark quiet was that of an American hero, SEAL Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle, 38, who served four combat tours in Iraq, who we spent time with, and who was the cover story of SOF in its April, 2012 issue. He was gunned down on a range in Texas while helping a 25-year-old PTSD Iraq War vet. Kyle, like countless other troopers who told us that they joined the military after reading Soldier of Fortune, wrote last year when he autographed his book, American Sniper, “SOF, thank you for all your great articles. You actually piqued my interest to join the military.”

The Colonel is most proud of having served as a catalyst to interest young men in joining the military, whether it be a SEAL like Kyle or some young patriot joining the Army, Marines, Air force or Army to be a truck driver or cook. He takes incredible pleasure in realizing SOF indirectly helped send scores of terrorists to Hell.

His dogged determination helps support his unquenchable thirst for global intrigue and adventure, not to mention his unfeigned delight and deep satisfaction when he ruffles Leftist feathers.

RKB is a rebel with a cause—that of battling against tyranny, fighting for the underdog and protecting our First and Second Amendment rights. Here is his incredible journey.

—VS