Speaker 1: M microphone. It works. UM, hey everybody. Uh, I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: I I don't know if you knew that. Um, I
Speaker 1: didn't butcher this introduction quite as bad as I like
Speaker 1: habitually am supposed to. So I apologize for that. I
Speaker 1: know that's why you all came. UM. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: today because we have both a subject that's really fun
Speaker 1: and a guest who I love. UH and M have
Speaker 1: been a fan of since forever. UM. David X. Cohen
Speaker 1: was a writer on The Simpsons, where he penned such
Speaker 1: episodes as Itchy and Scratchy and Pucci, which one of
Speaker 1: the best episodes of the show ever, made twenty two
Speaker 1: short films about Springfield UM, and coined the word cromulin
Speaker 1: which and then went on to be an executive producer.
Speaker 1: And they had water for Futurama, which is like huge
Speaker 1: chunk of my childhood. I'm sure a lot of people's
Speaker 1: childhoods here. So uh, that's that's yeah, let's be David.
Speaker 1: You want to come on out now to give you
Speaker 1: an all y'allen idea about what a good sport David is. Uh.
Speaker 1: When he agreed to be in the show, I said,
Speaker 1: we have this weird thing we do with machetes and
Speaker 1: bread products. Are you okay playing what is essentially tennis?
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, so we'll be We'll be gett
Speaker 1: into that later. Not just yeah, I was. I was
Speaker 1: on the high school tennis team, on a very bad team,
Speaker 1: but on the tennis team. So I'm planning to take
Speaker 1: it extremely seriously and beat you badly. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: a great night. David. How are you doing today? Very
Speaker 1: good and a little We did a two different Futurama
Speaker 1: related shows in the past twenty four hours. Well, today
Speaker 1: I have something that is not related to futur When
Speaker 1: you were a kid, did you ever read Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune magazine? I did not read Soldier of Fortune magazine.
Speaker 1: I read Mad Magazine. Is it similar? A lot of
Speaker 1: anger went into both, but probably more into Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune and a very specific kind of anger. Um. So,
Speaker 1: we're obviously in this place as a nation right now
Speaker 1: where like recklessly bad journalism has done a huge amount
Speaker 1: of damage to the body politic and we're all kind
Speaker 1: of grappling with what that means. But even within like
Speaker 1: the context of things like the Epoch Times and Bright
Speaker 1: bart News, Soldier of Fortune stands out is maybe the
Speaker 1: most reckless magazine anyone ever printed. And this is this
Speaker 1: may be a foolish question, but on behalf of the
Speaker 1: audience as well. Is it still going strong? Are they
Speaker 1: printing the magazine still? I remember it from when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. Is it still going printing? No, it
Speaker 1: still exists, and we'll we'll cover that at the end,
Speaker 1: but it's not it it's heyday. But and it's heyday.
Speaker 1: I think this magazine may have directly killed more people
Speaker 1: than any other magazine. Yeah, a lot, a lot of people,
Speaker 1: like so many more than you're going to expect. Are
Speaker 1: you ready to learn about Soldier of Fortune magazine? I
Speaker 1: am embracing myself. Sounds pretty grim. Now before we can
Speaker 1: talk about Soldier of Fortune, we have to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the man who created it, A near
Speaker 1: legendary figure named Robert K. Brown. So that's the origin man,
Speaker 1: and then you're named after him? Is that yes? Okay? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just there were a couple of other Roberts in
Speaker 1: between me and him, so I got an e last name.
Speaker 1: I mean, you two are the two main ones, I think, yea, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now Robert Brown was born on November two, nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: and Monroe, Michigan. And I've been able to find vanishingly
Speaker 1: little about his his early life until he entered college
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty. At the time, there was a draft
Speaker 1: going on, and Brown saw some sort of military service
Speaker 1: as inevitable. UM, and so he decided he'd rather be
Speaker 1: a fighter pilot than anything and he joined Air Force
Speaker 1: r OTC to try to make that happen. So pretty
Speaker 1: normal beginning for kid in the fifties so far, Yeah,
Speaker 1: fine start. Uh. He wound up having some behavioral difficulties
Speaker 1: in college and was forced to transfer in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three to the University of Colorado because, in his words,
Speaker 1: the dean and I agreed it was best I leave
Speaker 1: Michigan State. Uh. Was was this a violence related thing?
Speaker 1: Or did he have but like it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: he didn't also have like me two issues or I'm
Speaker 1: definite going I haven't heard any direct allegations. I would
Speaker 1: be uttered he was d in one specific way. So far, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that we know of, UM. But but
Speaker 1: it's also almost impossible that this guy didn't have something
Speaker 1: like that happened, given the rest of his background. Um so,
Speaker 1: due to a mix of his new colleges policies and
Speaker 1: his bad eyesight, Brown eventually had to accept that he
Speaker 1: was not going to become a fighter pilot, so a
Speaker 1: little bit of tragedy early on. So he joins the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps Reserve instead, but his recruiter is a guy
Speaker 1: who he goes on to call a snake whale salesman
Speaker 1: um and instead convinces him to join the Army when
Speaker 1: it's time to join full time rather than the Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: promising that he can become a special agent in the
Speaker 1: counter Intelligence Corps, which is not a job that he
Speaker 1: can actually have. Um So this was a bald faced lie,
Speaker 1: as are most things that military recruiters still young children,
Speaker 1: um but fantasizing about platinum blonds and Cadillac convertibles, Brown agreed,
Speaker 1: uh and signed on the dotted line. And by the way,
Speaker 1: as an and seen the current round of ads for
Speaker 1: joining the military, because they mean they they they're all
Speaker 1: portrayed as video games literally like three D graphics, and
Speaker 1: they're using like classic rock songs to you, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if they're also trying to get my generation
Speaker 1: to also sign up, but they're really, they really make
Speaker 1: it look really fun. I have to say, I'm excited.
Speaker 1: It's pretty tempting. I'm excited for the next round of
Speaker 1: adds that they set to fortunate Son, like, let's let's
Speaker 1: just go ahead and coren into the death of Irony
Speaker 1: and so um. Robert Brown uh winds up in the
Speaker 1: Army in October of nineteen and he loves it, particularly
Speaker 1: the shooting guns part. Um spoilers. This guy's kind of
Speaker 1: a big gun dude, um, which I know is a
Speaker 1: real surprise. Um yeah. So uh. The whole experience of
Speaker 1: basic training convinced him for the rest of his life
Speaker 1: that the draft was a really good idea that never
Speaker 1: should have been discontinued. So some people may disagree with that,
Speaker 1: so it's a strong take. Um yeah. Once Robert graduated
Speaker 1: from training, he was informed that the special agent job
Speaker 1: that he was promised was actually clerk analyst, which he
Speaker 1: considered to basically be secretary. Where so he signs up
Speaker 1: to be James Bond and he gets a job shuffling papers.
Speaker 1: That would be a good character to add to James Bunn,
Speaker 1: the guy who like slips the you know, razor razors
Speaker 1: into the letters in the mail room or something like that.
Speaker 1: What letter of the alphabets not claimed for a character
Speaker 1: in James bond am mail No M No, we've got
Speaker 1: an M I envelope e. Uh so yeah. Um. Robert
Speaker 1: was profoundly bad at this job and he failed the
Speaker 1: training course for it four times, um, which I I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how you do that. It was the alphabet
Speaker 1: um when he was. When he did eventually finally graduate,
Speaker 1: he found the idea of doing the work itself hateful
Speaker 1: because it didn't involve shooting anybody. Um. So instead he
Speaker 1: decided to go to Officer Candidate school in order to
Speaker 1: escape the tedium of desk work. He graduated and with
Speaker 1: later brag of two major accomplishments. In this period, he
Speaker 1: received more demerits than any other member of his class.
Speaker 1: And he was the best shot with a heavy machine gun.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, the guy with behavior problems is real
Speaker 1: good at shooting. So we're on a good path so far.
Speaker 1: Feeling optimistic about this guy. So is he was? He
Speaker 1: sort of was going postal basically accept he didn't it
Speaker 1: was it was before the chairm existed. He kind of
Speaker 1: he was a transitter And yeah, I guess right, and
Speaker 1: he found the one workers a bad name. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very good for all of he didn't become a
Speaker 1: postal worker, although bad for all of us that he
Speaker 1: got into journalism. So um. Brown's dreams of daring do
Speaker 1: in the army were initially cut short when his father died. Uh.
Speaker 1: He opted for a state side job in Wisconsin and
Speaker 1: worked at cushy desk gigs so we could help his family.
Speaker 1: He left active service in nineteen fifty seven, having failed
Speaker 1: to see any action, and he spent the next few
Speaker 1: years in the army reserves. Robert had fallen in love
Speaker 1: with the idea of being a soldier, but was frustrated
Speaker 1: by the lack of violence he'd actually experienced. But then,
Speaker 1: luckily for Robert, Fidel Castro launched a rebellion against the
Speaker 1: dictatorial rule of Fugencio Batista, providing Robert Brown with an opportunity.
Speaker 1: And as weird as it is for a guy who's
Speaker 1: like the founder of like this weird chunk of the
Speaker 1: conservative media today, uh, Robert Brown became a pro Castro
Speaker 1: activist and like spend time illegally smuggling machine guns to
Speaker 1: Cuban revolutionaries and stuff. So that's cool and um carry on. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah. He eventually tricked his colleges student newspaper into
Speaker 1: issuing him press credentials, which is one of the most
Speaker 1: important things about being a journalist is tricking someone into
Speaker 1: issuing you credentials. So he nails the first part of
Speaker 1: the job, and he spent some time in Havana, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't see any action. Um. And he gets repeatedly
Speaker 1: invited by people he meets in Havana to go attend
Speaker 1: to these other civil wars that are brewing all throughout
Speaker 1: Latin America, but he keeps missing out on them. Um,
Speaker 1: so he just is the frustration is just unbearable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah always uh, I don't know. I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: the always a bridesmaid, never a bride thing, but for brutal,
Speaker 1: grinding civil insurgencies, and it didn't come to me. You
Speaker 1: can work it out, so um. He did manage to
Speaker 1: participate as a war correspondent, though he was hired by
Speaker 1: the AP to interview a refugee Spanish general promising to
Speaker 1: overthrow the dictator, Francisco franco U. The resulting article did well,
Speaker 1: and Brown struck up a friendly acquaintanceship with the general
Speaker 1: who would helped train Castro's guerrillas too. The general gave
Speaker 1: Brown a copy of a book called A hundred and
Speaker 1: Fifty Questions for a Guerrilla, a manual for how to
Speaker 1: fight an insurgent campaign. Robert Brown instantly saw dollar signs
Speaker 1: and opened a publishing company to translate the book into
Speaker 1: English and sell it in the USA. It was he
Speaker 1: a good writer? Like? Was he actually competent in that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would say he was competent. He was good at
Speaker 1: what he was trying to do. He accomplished his goals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I should maybe I should try that career. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have an idea for a magazine. UM. Robert worked
Speaker 1: as a as a journalist for a little while, writing
Speaker 1: mainly for Guns magazine very August publication, What was the
Speaker 1: magazine about? Um? In similar publication. But as the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War kicked off for the United States and the sixties,
Speaker 1: Brown found himself drawn back to his dreams of getting
Speaker 1: shot at. That's that's good, that's his goal. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're getting shot at, that gives you an excuse to
Speaker 1: shoot at, to shoot back, right exactly. I can see
Speaker 1: why you would win to get shot It's every man
Speaker 1: who wants to shoot someone's dream. So Brown rejoined active duty.
Speaker 1: He became a Green Beret, and he served from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight to nineteen sixty nine. UH. He was wounded
Speaker 1: badly in a mortar attack and was kicked out of
Speaker 1: the Green Berets for reasons that are never really adequately explained.
Speaker 1: But he did have a good reputation as a leader.
Speaker 1: One of his comrades and medics of this about him
Speaker 1: decades later, he was the kind of guy you wanted
Speaker 1: as your CEO in Vietnam. He really stuck his neck
Speaker 1: out for the people he was in charge of. So
Speaker 1: and you got shot in it, and you got shot
Speaker 1: in it. So yeah, Brown was a pretty good soldier.
Speaker 1: He eventually retired as a lieutenant colonel. But at least
Speaker 1: for him, at least, the Vietnam War did not end
Speaker 1: well for the United States. Brown returned home to a
Speaker 1: nation UH that widely considered the war he nearly died
Speaker 1: and to be a colossal waste of money and lives
Speaker 1: and everything it can be a waste of wasn't It
Speaker 1: wasn't a great call um. Many protesters called soldiers like
Speaker 1: him baby killers, and Brown quickly recognized that he was
Speaker 1: part of a new generation of retired warrior who was
Speaker 1: increasingly isolated from mainstream American society. He'd been a kid
Speaker 1: during World War Two and that had been very celebrated
Speaker 1: as a collective endeavor. Uh, and he was frustrated that
Speaker 1: like his generation of soldiers weren't getting the respect that
Speaker 1: they deserved. He said, I'm going to go on the
Speaker 1: Internet and link up with other people. Like, oh, it
Speaker 1: hasn't been invented yet. You kind of spoil it because
Speaker 1: this guy does create the dark Web accidentally, just in
Speaker 1: magazine form. Yeah, I mean it's what It's what I
Speaker 1: would have done. I guess I'm just channeling. Yeah. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he finds himself like frustrated that he's not getting enough respect,
Speaker 1: that veterans aren't getting what he sees is enough respect,
Speaker 1: frustrated that America is on this new peace nick trend
Speaker 1: and not willing to go to war as often as
Speaker 1: he wants it to. Um. And so, like a rational,
Speaker 1: sane person, he goes on vacation around several civil wars
Speaker 1: in Africa. What do you what do you do? Right?
Speaker 1: You know? So, after a couple of years of living
Speaker 1: as a war tourist in places? Is that? That? Is
Speaker 1: that a real thing? I mean I've done a little
Speaker 1: bit of that. I know some I have. I won't
Speaker 1: name names, but I have a friend who's a disaster
Speaker 1: tourist who like, they'll go like, oh, you know, Fukushima
Speaker 1: hotel rooms in Japan are gonna be really cheap next week.
Speaker 1: And I thought at first you were going to say
Speaker 1: that he liked liked to visit the sites of terrible disasters,
Speaker 1: but he's just thrifty exactly. Yeah. No, Um, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've done some I've done. I mean I've I've worked
Speaker 1: in war zones and stuff. And there's a the spit
Speaker 1: that verge on uncomfortable tourism, like the hotels in Iraq
Speaker 1: are incredibly cheap and very nice. Um, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: just tiny aside along those lines for a second. But
Speaker 1: back when we were making Future Ima, we got invited
Speaker 1: to Matt Greeney and I get invited to some kind
Speaker 1: of a Kurdish film festival animation, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it was, and they're like, don't worry, you'll be totally safe.
Speaker 1: We'll have twenty four hour guards post game. And that's
Speaker 1: nothing makes me feel less safe than knowing. Any twenty
Speaker 1: four hour guard posted, Oh man, yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: probably would have sent you guys to Irbil. It's a
Speaker 1: nice city. Um. But yeah, I mean there's a K
Speaker 1: forty seven's all over the well less than here. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest, You're not going to a place with
Speaker 1: more guns. I did have the second time I flew
Speaker 1: in to Iraq, I had left a single round of
Speaker 1: nine millimeter in my bag. Um. And as we arrive
Speaker 1: at the airport in Iraq, they find it. And like,
Speaker 1: none of the airports that I scanned it through had
Speaker 1: found it. None of them had an issue. But they
Speaker 1: search all your stuff when you land in Iraq, and
Speaker 1: they were so angry, and I kept like looking over
Speaker 1: to my photographer being like, are they really worried we're
Speaker 1: gonna bring one extra bullet in? This is gonna tip it? Uh?
Speaker 1: But um okay, so um. Robert Brown finds himself in
Speaker 1: Africa hanging out at a couple of civil wars, you know,
Speaker 1: shooting the ship with mercenaries. Um. And he meets a
Speaker 1: couple of mercenaries who are about to go over to
Speaker 1: oman Uh and fight putting down an insurrection for the Sultan,
Speaker 1: and this gives him an idea. He writes to the
Speaker 1: Oman Ministry of Defense and inquires about taking a job
Speaker 1: as a mercenary. There, they send him a contract. Brown
Speaker 1: had no desire to actually do this job, but he
Speaker 1: knew that there were an awful lot of glory seeking
Speaker 1: Americans who would jump at the opportunity, so he took
Speaker 1: out ads in a series of gun magazines, reading quote,
Speaker 1: want to be a mercenary in the Middle East, Send
Speaker 1: five dollars. Wow, that guy's a genius. He's like, so
Speaker 1: far you've come. You're like, this is going completely the
Speaker 1: wrong way. I'm just more and more impressed. But just guy,
Speaker 1: he's not a dumb man. It's a great grift. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: hundreds of Americans sending five dollars per chance to be
Speaker 1: a mercenary in the Middle East. Um yeah. He basically
Speaker 1: just xerox the contract, need mail it out to people
Speaker 1: who sent him the money. Um, and yeah, he makes
Speaker 1: like ten dollars and it's it's unlikely that any of
Speaker 1: his clients actually wound up fighting a Oman. One has
Speaker 1: to assume that most men who volunteered to join a
Speaker 1: war effort based on an ad in a magazine are
Speaker 1: not particularly qualified soldiers. But um, the financial success of
Speaker 1: the endeavor convinced Brown that there was a huge amount
Speaker 1: of money to be made and playing to the dream
Speaker 1: of in every man's heart that he might, in the
Speaker 1: right circumstances, be a total badass. Now this might be
Speaker 1: another dumb question, but is it legal to be a
Speaker 1: mercenary for another country if you're a US citizen? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we go back and forth on that. As a nation,
Speaker 1: it kind of depends on the war. You have to
Speaker 1: report the your income and you're like, I'm I'm fighting
Speaker 1: first different countries army Like that seems seems like you
Speaker 1: might invite scrutiny of your tax return at a minimum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I think it's one of those
Speaker 1: things like being a drug dealer. There's that thing the
Speaker 1: i R S lets you mark. It's like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to tell you how I got this money, but
Speaker 1: here's how much money I have. But but here's how
Speaker 1: many iraqi lira I made this year, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to write off a lot of ammunition. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So Robert Brown uses the tin grant he makes scamming
Speaker 1: gun nuts to fund the creation of a new magazine,
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune. His stated goal was to rehabilitate the
Speaker 1: image of the warrior in American society. So exciting. Yeah uh,
Speaker 1: he said this later quote, a lot of Vietnam veterans
Speaker 1: felt they weren't given their due, so I wanted to
Speaker 1: promote the concept of giving them recognition. We said, our
Speaker 1: blood was just as red as anyone who fought in
Speaker 1: World War One or World War Two or Korea. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't the case in society at the time. So
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune likely would have been a blip on
Speaker 1: the radar if it weren't for a particular stroke of
Speaker 1: marketing genius by Robert Brown. Because he didn't just angle
Speaker 1: it as a magazine for veterans. He fashioned Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune as quote, the journal of Professional Adventurers, So it
Speaker 1: was a magazine from mercenaries. Was it filled with his
Speaker 1: own more of those ads? Still the five the centi
Speaker 1: fire villari like because because again just again like just admiring,
Speaker 1: Like it's like I'm getting five dollars in the end,
Speaker 1: but they're not paying me for the magazine. So it's
Speaker 1: like if he could just invent the magazine just to
Speaker 1: run his own end. That's also brilliant. Yeah, he we'll
Speaker 1: get to that. This is a man who never gives
Speaker 1: up on his dream of getting other people to fight
Speaker 1: and someone else's worse. Um, and he's yeah so um. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem with magazine aimed at mercenaries is that there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of mercenaries, and and a lot of
Speaker 1: them can't read, and a lot of them cannot read,
Speaker 1: which is why you become a mercenary. Um. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there were like maybe a thousand or two people in
Speaker 1: the world who both spoke English and fit the definition
Speaker 1: of a mercenary. But Brown's real target was not hard
Speaker 1: bitten warriors. It was aging baby boomers who thought they
Speaker 1: probably could have been hard bitten mercenaries if they hadn't
Speaker 1: gotten that girl pregnant back in sixty two. Um. Here's
Speaker 1: how Mike Royko of the Chicago Tribune described the magazine's
Speaker 1: clientele in quote, It's directed at professional mercenaries, men who
Speaker 1: will fight for pay and those that want to hire them.
Speaker 1: But since mercenaries represent only a tiny portion of the
Speaker 1: reading population, the magazine tries to broaden its appeal to
Speaker 1: include those who might be called war fans. Weapons lovers,
Speaker 1: fanatic anti commies, and Walter Middi types to enjoy the
Speaker 1: vicarious thrill of reading about blood and guts. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the audience. We don't know anything about
Speaker 1: that group. That's um So he's but he's really he's
Speaker 1: the first person in American history to really like decide
Speaker 1: to market directly to that group of people. Um which
Speaker 1: turns out to be a really good idea from a
Speaker 1: money standpoint, or if you want to run for president
Speaker 1: or if you want to run for presidents. This is
Speaker 1: a very pro Trump podcast. Aggressively really offended people here. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we are we are in the middle
Speaker 1: of red San Francisco. I meant that in the opposite
Speaker 1: of the way most people mean. So. The first ever
Speaker 1: issue of Soldier of Fortune, it featured a glossy color
Speaker 1: picture of a soldier with a rifle behind a barbed
Speaker 1: wire fence with a red sun setting in the background.
Speaker 1: The whole image was cast in a green tent as
Speaker 1: it being viewed through night vision goggles. Articles included underwater
Speaker 1: knife fighting techniques, which I am desperately curious about because
Speaker 1: I can imagine a handful of people in history have
Speaker 1: had to stab someone while underwater. I'm sure it's happened,
Speaker 1: but to need to do it enough to have a technique.
Speaker 1: But you're sometimes you need to also defend yourself against
Speaker 1: a giant squid or something like that. It isn't not
Speaker 1: necessarily a human. There's a lot of stuff to stab underwater.
Speaker 1: That's a very good point. I am sorry for suggesting
Speaker 1: that people might not need to stab aquatic life just said,
Speaker 1: nive you you really you really grasp the fundamental precept
Speaker 1: of this podcast, which is abs. Always be stabbing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: always be stabbing. It might be it might be like
Speaker 1: an underwater high school biology class where they're doing a
Speaker 1: dissection in the in the way. So uh. Other articles
Speaker 1: included Urban Street Survival Part one, which I feel like
Speaker 1: the underwater knife fighting might help with uh, and of
Speaker 1: course American mercenaries in Africa. Now. That last article was
Speaker 1: a feature about the conflict in a little place that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist anymore called Rhodeja. What do you what do
Speaker 1: you know about Rhodesia diamonds? Right? Yeah, I think so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably named Cecil rhodes is Yeah, very good turned into
Speaker 1: is it is it? Zimbabwe? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nailed it great um now. Uh. But before it turned
Speaker 1: into Zimbabwe, it was a little bit of problematic um
Speaker 1: because Rhodesia was a white supremacist state um that broke
Speaker 1: away from the British Empire in nineteen sixty five over
Speaker 1: the issue of whether or not black people should be
Speaker 1: able to vote. They did not take the positive attitude
Speaker 1: on that. So the three percent of the nation that
Speaker 1: was white controlled virtually all of Rhodes's resources. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they knew that letting black people vote would change that
Speaker 1: state of affairs. Here's how Soldier of Fortune described the conflict.
Speaker 1: What the Brits wanted was for the blacks to get
Speaker 1: a vote, one man, one vote. Of course that would
Speaker 1: mean the blacks would get into power. So the white
Speaker 1: Rhodesian's unilaterally implemented the Universal Declaration of Independence in nine
Speaker 1: And I have to emphasize here they're not framing that
Speaker 1: as a bad thing. They're being like, of course, this
Speaker 1: is what happened. They were going to take all of
Speaker 1: their stuff that they stole from them. So this is Rhodesia.
Speaker 1: We're not maybe maybe not talking about a super woke town. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: for some reason, this piste off a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the vast majority of the population in Rhodesia
Speaker 1: did not support the white supremacist state that governed it,
Speaker 1: and many of these people decided to become insurgents and
Speaker 1: attempt to overthrow the government. Uh And, because they lived
Speaker 1: their lives dominated by an incredibly oppressive colonial capitalist system,
Speaker 1: a lot of them wound up being like, maybe communism
Speaker 1: is a good idea. Uh And. There were two different
Speaker 1: large groups of insurgents, one backed by the U. S
Speaker 1: s R. And one backed by China. Uh And, in
Speaker 1: the tradition of leftist revolutionaries throughout history, they fought each
Speaker 1: other as much as they fought the people that they
Speaker 1: were fighting against. Um And. But yeah, they still managed
Speaker 1: to put enough pressure on the embattled white minority that
Speaker 1: things began to get very dire for the government of Rhodesia. Now,
Speaker 1: this racist nation's problems were compounded by the fact that
Speaker 1: basically the whole world, save South Africa and Israel, slammed
Speaker 1: Rhodesia with sanctions. As life in the tiny, landlocked country
Speaker 1: grew more difficult, a large chunk of the white populace fled,
Speaker 1: mostly for South Africa. Stuck between a rock and a
Speaker 1: hard place, The Rhodesian government decided to turn their national
Speaker 1: struggle into a cost celeb for the racist people in
Speaker 1: the world. Good for them, Yeah, that's smart. Let's crowdfund
Speaker 1: our vicious war of colonial oppression. No one's tried it yet,
Speaker 1: so that's what they did. Um. Now, they didn't frame
Speaker 1: it as a racist crusade. I earned fifty blood diamonds
Speaker 1: this year. That's your that's my tax return for that.
Speaker 1: Just a sack of gore in quest they withheld. They
Speaker 1: withheld five blood diamonds. So, um, Rhodesia was eligient enough
Speaker 1: to do that. Like, we can't just say we want
Speaker 1: help fighting our super racist war of racism. Um. So,
Speaker 1: being somewhat canny, they decided to frame what they were
Speaker 1: doing as a battle against communism. Prime Minister Ian Smith
Speaker 1: called his nation the ultimate bastion against communism on the
Speaker 1: African continent. Mainstream American conservatives tended to embrace this idea.
Speaker 1: William F. Buckley organized the Friends of Rhodesian Independence campaign,
Speaker 1: which worked to spread propaganda to Americans about what a
Speaker 1: neat place Rhodesia really was. But no single publication did
Speaker 1: as much to popularize the Rhodesian cause as soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune magazine. Starting in nineteen seventy five, they ran a
Speaker 1: series of lurid articles about the American volunteers fighting in Rhodesia.
Speaker 1: Interviews with these men focused on the failures of the
Speaker 1: United States to stop Communism from getting a foothold in Africa,
Speaker 1: which was heightened after Congressional democrats had stopped the CIA
Speaker 1: from aiding fascists and Angola against the socialist regime. There.
Speaker 1: One mercenary in that first issue complained, the West isn't
Speaker 1: doing its job. The US especially isn't doing its duty.
Speaker 1: If they're too scared to fight the communists, then people
Speaker 1: like me have to act independently. I consider it my
Speaker 1: duty to fight in Rhodesia after Vietnam, in Angola, we
Speaker 1: can't afford to lose any other countries. Now. Did Robert sorry,
Speaker 1: what's his last name again? Brown? Brown? I knew, I
Speaker 1: knew it was something complicated like that. Did he did?
Speaker 1: He go? He did? Okay? I mean it was good,
Speaker 1: some good war tourism there. Yeah, because they've got armored
Speaker 1: vehicles so you're pretty safe to see. Yeah. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: he loved him some h He wasn't just writing from
Speaker 1: a distance. No, he's a he sees a lot of
Speaker 1: war over the course of his life. Just you know,
Speaker 1: all is somebody who gets to leave when they get
Speaker 1: border scared. Yeah, which is the best way to see war, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest. Uh so um. While Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune magazine did not throw out racial slurs, the racism
Speaker 1: in its Rhodesian coverage was really obvious. At one point,
Speaker 1: a mercenary was quoted as saying, what we have here
Speaker 1: is an ideal core of white people who were able
Speaker 1: to raise the standard of living among the Africans without
Speaker 1: us conditions, will decline rapidly now. After Vietnam, the United
Speaker 1: States had probably the highest population of unemployed combat veterans
Speaker 1: in the world, and a few of those men joined
Speaker 1: the Rhodesian fighting effort and rose to high levels in
Speaker 1: its military establishment. But most volunteers were far from hardened operators. Instead,
Speaker 1: they were folks who'd missed out on their chance to
Speaker 1: fight in Vietnam and wanted desperately to experience combat. For
Speaker 1: these men, Soldier of Fortune published a series of articles
Speaker 1: written by Major Nick Lamprect, the chief recruiting officer for
Speaker 1: the Rhodesian Army. He provided step by step advice for
Speaker 1: how they could apply to join and be flown out
Speaker 1: to the country to be inducted into the army as conscripts.
Speaker 1: Lampreck to promise that the work would be difficult but rewarding,
Speaker 1: saying Rhodesia has many things to offer. Good Rhodesian beer,
Speaker 1: a friendly populace, and what I would describe as a
Speaker 1: free and easy, unhurried way of life, lots of wide
Speaker 1: open spaces. It's fun to describe a friendly populace when
Speaker 1: you're trying to get people to fight a brutal anti
Speaker 1: in surgeon. Uh So, for years, Soldier of Fortune ran
Speaker 1: glossy recruiting articles with full page spreads featuring the elite
Speaker 1: Rhodesian Light Infantry and Seleu scouts locked in glorious combat.
Speaker 1: Some four hundred American men were eventually induced to join
Speaker 1: the fight, mostly from Soldier of Fortune magazine articles. That's
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars. That's two thousand dollars, and as you
Speaker 1: might expect from men who joined a war based on
Speaker 1: a magazine article, they were not very good at it.
Speaker 1: Most Rhodesian volunteers were people whose lives in the United States.
Speaker 1: We're not going super well um, so yeah. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, one reporter noted the majority found the routine
Speaker 1: too tough to last more than a few months. The
Speaker 1: desertion rate among American citizens who have joined the Rhodesian
Speaker 1: Army over the past two years is estimated to run
Speaker 1: about The best case scenario is eight of these guys
Speaker 1: are like, oh this is horrible. I don't like war
Speaker 1: at all. What a mistake I've made. But a good
Speaker 1: number of them died, John, I mean they joined, they
Speaker 1: joined the racist army like they could have joined the army,
Speaker 1: and they joined the racist army like. So of that
Speaker 1: didn't deserve a lot of them day oh yeah, So
Speaker 1: that a small percent that didn't desert and didn't die. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: not a lot of not a lot of long term
Speaker 1: veterans Rhodesian Army out there one day to retirement. John
Speaker 1: Allan Coey, a medic from Cleveland, Ohio, joined based on
Speaker 1: a Soldier of Fortune article and was gunned down by
Speaker 1: insurgents almost immediately after arriving in the country. Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune published a hagiographic article quoting him as saying this,
Speaker 1: since coming to Rhodesia, I've heard I don't even want
Speaker 1: to finish the st interviewed, very short, interviewed, finish the clock. No, no,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna let that one sit. Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune articles on Rhodes rarely made blatant lies. It
Speaker 1: was a lot easier to just ignore facts that didn't
Speaker 1: reinforce the narrative. And one piece they noted the unrivaled
Speaker 1: CELU Scouts, the covert elite special force regiment of a
Speaker 1: thousand that consisted of black and white, with a majority
Speaker 1: of blacks, were credited with gathering spot on intelligence for
Speaker 1: the regular army. Lines like that are technically true, but
Speaker 1: neglect to mention the fact that only white people were
Speaker 1: allowed to be officers as an army of conscripted black
Speaker 1: led by white volunteer soldiers. Maybe an important fact to include.
Speaker 1: I don't write for Soldier of Fortune. I'm just giving
Speaker 1: some notes now. I think I think you sound to me,
Speaker 1: you sound a little bitter. They never I mean just
Speaker 1: because that you couldn't get hired doesn't mean it was
Speaker 1: my dream ever since I came by my first copy
Speaker 1: of Soldier of Fortune. In that gun show, right next
Speaker 1: to the were mocked helmets, and the other were mocked helmets. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: the picture that Soldier of Fortune like to paint of
Speaker 1: the Rhodesian War was kind of similar to like the
Speaker 1: Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War here in the
Speaker 1: United States, that there was this like glorious lost land
Speaker 1: and this wonderful culture and like it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it was was tragically snatched by the jaws of these
Speaker 1: people who wanted to, you know, vote. So, actual articles
Speaker 1: from real journalists who visited Rhodesia painted a very different
Speaker 1: picture of what was going on there. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: now for a nineteen seventy nine Washington Post article I
Speaker 1: found by an actual journalist as opposed to a guy
Speaker 1: who just likes to get shot at for fun. Quote.
Speaker 1: The first impressions are of the rural South I knew
Speaker 1: as a boy in the nineteen thirties. Black maids and
Speaker 1: house boys earning twenty to sixty dollars a month, fetching
Speaker 1: bow saying master and boss. Black laborers working for twelve
Speaker 1: to twenty dollars a month plus rations cluster and grass
Speaker 1: huts on the white farmers land, like the Mississippi sharecroppers
Speaker 1: of the remembered past. They're like children. A housewife says,
Speaker 1: you have to do everything for them. You have to
Speaker 1: stand over them to get anything done. It's more trouble
Speaker 1: than it's worth sometimes, but they are very happy people.
Speaker 1: It's not like South Africa. A young woman asks if
Speaker 1: we have a dishwasher, a clothes washer and a dryer.
Speaker 1: She laughs, you know what we call them here, and
Speaker 1: then she says the N word. Uh yeah, not nice people. Um.
Speaker 1: Also kind of wild to say you have to do
Speaker 1: everything for the people whose explicit job is to do
Speaker 1: everything for you. I'm giving notes on Rhodesia now. Um.
Speaker 1: The Rhodesian Bush War ended in nineteen seventy nine, and
Speaker 1: when rebels succeeded in blowing up the nation's entire strategic
Speaker 1: fuel reserved, maybe you don't keep it all in one
Speaker 1: place again with a note, but like uh, at final toll,
Speaker 1: more than eleven hundred Rhodesian soldiers died, along with roughly
Speaker 1: ten thousand rebels and more than twenty thousand civilians. And
Speaker 1: it is unlikely that the few hundred mercenary soldier of
Speaker 1: fortune induced to joy and had a sizeable impact on
Speaker 1: the conflict, but they did an awful lot to influence
Speaker 1: how Rhodesia has gone on to be remembered by thousands
Speaker 1: of racists around the world. You remember that Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune article I quoted from a little earlier, the one
Speaker 1: that glossed over the fact that the nation was founded
Speaker 1: out of a desire to stop black people from voting.
Speaker 1: It sounds familiar. Yeah, well, that article was not written
Speaker 1: during the time of the Rhodesian Bush War. It was
Speaker 1: published in two thousand twelve. Three years later, in two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, Dylan Ruth walked into a black church in
Speaker 1: Charleston and shot nine people to death. A stated goal
Speaker 1: was to provoke a race war. He left behind a
Speaker 1: manifesto titled The Last Rhodesian. So yeah, there's a real horrible, negative,
Speaker 1: long term consequence to the myths that Soldier of Fortune
Speaker 1: was integral to setting up. So this is the actual
Speaker 1: death count is beginning. Yeah. Well and all those mercenaries
Speaker 1: yeah this yeah, yeah, um, and yeah. I want to
Speaker 1: note too that like, uh, basically, like the argument that
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune would make is that, like, well, Robert
Speaker 1: Mugabi took over Zimbabwe after Rhodesia fell, and he was
Speaker 1: terrible and he was he was a monster. Um, but
Speaker 1: that kind of neglects to mention that Mugabi wasn't a
Speaker 1: factor in like politics in the region until all of
Speaker 1: his predecessors were assassinated by the Rhodesian Army. I don't
Speaker 1: know notes again, so, uh, yeah, While the Rhodesian Bush
Speaker 1: War was a disaster for humanity, it was a great
Speaker 1: time for Robert Brown and his writers. They got to
Speaker 1: take a lot of trips to Rhodesia, drink that good beer,
Speaker 1: drive around in armored vehicles, shoot at people who were
Speaker 1: trying to vote. Um. It was a cool time for
Speaker 1: him and his friends. Can you shoot an a K
Speaker 1: forty seven? Well, you haven't absolutely, absolutely, and in fact,
Speaker 1: if you have the opportunity, it's almost required that you
Speaker 1: do so now obviously, Uh, as you noted a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier. UM, there's some legal questions about recruiting mercenaries
Speaker 1: to fight for a pariah state that the US has
Speaker 1: under embargo. UM, and the FBI did investigate into whether
Speaker 1: or not Soldier of Fortune was breaking the law by
Speaker 1: soliciting mercenaries. UM, but they kind of got off on
Speaker 1: a technicality because the soldiers who joined to fight Rhodesia
Speaker 1: joined the Rhodesian Army as regular troops, so they weren't
Speaker 1: legally mercenaries, so it was all fine. So that's cool.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, if you decided to start your own
Speaker 1: soliciting mercenaries business to fight for a ry estate, keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. And what do you call things matters.
Speaker 1: So by the end of the war, Soldier of Fortune
Speaker 1: subscription numbers were more than a hundred thousand people, and
Speaker 1: they changed into Soldier of Signed Contract magazine, signed legal contract.
Speaker 1: As long as there is a third party, we are
Speaker 1: not breaking any loss. Um. Yeah, so, uh, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That's the nineties rule. To an end, Brown continue. Brown
Speaker 1: continued to send his writers off to little wars all
Speaker 1: around the world. Six of them would ultimately die covering
Speaker 1: stories he sent them off on um, but he got
Speaker 1: to go to a lot of cool places. He focused
Speaker 1: primarily on struggles between communist and anti communist forces, like
Speaker 1: the Civil War in Angola, and Brown was canny enough
Speaker 1: not to solicit mercenaries directly in the future, but he
Speaker 1: didn't need to because many of his readers were the
Speaker 1: same kind of person that he was. And this is
Speaker 1: where we entered the story of a guy named David Buffkin. Uh. David.
Speaker 1: I mean this is I know there's something something weird here.
Speaker 1: The worst David and Robert had a less fruitful collaboration
Speaker 1: than us. This David was a former crop duster who
Speaker 1: decided to become a mercenary recruiter when crop dustin got boring.
Speaker 1: So pretty normal career path after forty years of cropdesting,
Speaker 1: you're saying, when god boring. Um, he decided to start
Speaker 1: putting up ads in local newspapers and soldier of fortune,
Speaker 1: trying to raise a hundred mercenaries to fight against communists
Speaker 1: and Angola. Now this was maybe a bad idea on
Speaker 1: its face, since the Cuban army alone had spent sent
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of soldiers sent to fighting Angola. But
Speaker 1: a hundred mercenaries, you know it's a start. Um. So
Speaker 1: to make his case seem more legit, he lied and
Speaker 1: said that he'd gotten an eighty thousand dollar ci a contract.
Speaker 1: A few dozen would be warriors reached out to Buffin, but,
Speaker 1: as one of them later recalled, Buffin obviously had no
Speaker 1: funds available. He operated out of motels, he had no office.
Speaker 1: Potential recruits had to pay their own travel expenses. It
Speaker 1: was definitely a shoestring operation, which is not what you want.
Speaker 1: If you're being recruited to go fighting for more, you
Speaker 1: want it if they're not paying for business class. I
Speaker 1: mean this, I mean this is where the word fortune
Speaker 1: comes in. It is not in the name. I mean
Speaker 1: it's gonna at least be like an upper tier airline. Yea. Anyway,
Speaker 1: a few very dumb men did agree to go. One
Speaker 1: of them was former CIA officer George Bacon, who had
Speaker 1: read this, read one of this guy's ads, and soldier
Speaker 1: of fortune decided to join the war effort. He was
Speaker 1: killed almost immediately. Um. Yeah. Daniel Gearhardt, a thirty four
Speaker 1: year old Vietnam veteran and financial distress, also replied. His
Speaker 1: wife told him this was a terrible idea, but Buffin
Speaker 1: managed to convince him, and soon he found himself over
Speaker 1: in Angola. He was captured immediately without ever getting into combat.
Speaker 1: His wife and family begged gerald Ford to do something,
Speaker 1: but asked hoping resting your hopes on. Gerald Ford was
Speaker 1: not any's other than Richard Nixon. One time. That was
Speaker 1: a big either that it equaled fifteen prisoners of war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does not. He did not come through for gear
Speaker 1: Heart Um and the government of Angola decided that what
Speaker 1: he'd done was a crime against their nation, Um, and
Speaker 1: they executed him and a bunch of other mercenaries. Uh.
Speaker 1: He and George were not the first soldier of Fortune
Speaker 1: Readers to die as a result of the magazine's classified
Speaker 1: ads section, and they would not be the last. And
Speaker 1: of course, the fact that human beings were dying as
Speaker 1: a result of his magazine's classified ads section had no
Speaker 1: impact on Robert Brown whatsoever. I found a copy of
Speaker 1: the magazine from nineteen eighty and I'd like to read
Speaker 1: you a handful of the different ads. Male twenty five
Speaker 1: years old, five ft nine hundred and thirty five pounds.
Speaker 1: Desire security position any location. Excellent marksman and speaks fair German.
Speaker 1: I'm anti social, but prefer and prefer working alone. I
Speaker 1: served in the American Army. Possessed no combat experience. There's
Speaker 1: nothing unsettling about that guy. That guy basically had the
Speaker 1: same build as me and was billing himself as a
Speaker 1: massive security I mean, he's a good marksman and he
Speaker 1: speaks German. He is more qualified than me. Um also
Speaker 1: from Toledo, Ohio. The next Dad x C I a
Speaker 1: attache seeks area in US to fulfill purpose of pro
Speaker 1: Western ideals and their success trade crafts many cutout, sanitization, sanctification, playback, disinformation,
Speaker 1: bag jobs, false flag legends, peeps and sounds. Sneaky's sisters available.
Speaker 1: I don't know what sisters have, no idea what that
Speaker 1: in CIA parlance, what that means. But all of that
Speaker 1: sounds incredibly shady. Yeah, dead serious inquiries only contract contact
Speaker 1: micro data systems in Huntington Beach, California, So that's probably cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Madman's Book of Formulas how to make step by step
Speaker 1: goodies like knockout drops, explosives, silencer's poisons, letter bomb, and
Speaker 1: many others must in completing your library. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many times if you needed a letter bomb, you get
Speaker 1: a space on your shelf. You gotta play something there.
Speaker 1: You might have a lot more space in your shelf.
Speaker 1: And the last one I'm going to read right now
Speaker 1: wanted patriots, especially veterans who see the coming national crises
Speaker 1: and desire to be prepared. Right for free information to
Speaker 1: Christian Patriots Defense League or Citizens Emergency Defense System Flora
Speaker 1: Illinois or call gives a phone number, day or night,
Speaker 1: attend weekend Freedom festivals and conferences in June and September
Speaker 1: on Acre Estate. So that's that's good. Act. Now time
Speaker 1: is short. The first the earlier ones. Now these are
Speaker 1: just individuals postings. Yeah, do we have do we know
Speaker 1: what the outcomes of any of these? Not of these?
Speaker 1: We'll get into some of some of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: are they looking to be hit man or like? What
Speaker 1: is that? Yes? Okay, Yeah, So the slogan for Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune, displayed in vibrant color on a poster and
Speaker 1: their Boulder, Colorado office was killing is our business, and
Speaker 1: business is good. This is good branding, but it is
Speaker 1: not strictly accurate. As the years went by, Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune made less and less of its money directly soliciting killers,
Speaker 1: which is legally dicey enterprise, and more money just allowing
Speaker 1: random murders to advertise through their classified ads section. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it is just like Facebook. It's a little more
Speaker 1: ethical than Facebook. But yes, essentially, you know you can
Speaker 1: say this for Soldier of Fortune. It didn't start any genocides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a lot of uh, very sketchy individuals started putting
Speaker 1: in adsu in in uh Soldier of Fortunes classified section.
Speaker 1: One of them was a Knoxville, Tennessee, nightclub operator and
Speaker 1: former prison guard named Richard Michael Savage, which is the
Speaker 1: name you'd expect for the story I'm about to tell. Um.
Speaker 1: So he places an ad saying gun for higher. Thirty
Speaker 1: seven year old professional mercenary desires jobs Vietnam veteran, discreet
Speaker 1: and very private bodyguard, courier and other special skills. All
Speaker 1: jobs considered now. He would claim in court later that
Speaker 1: he received thirty to forty calls a week after placing
Speaker 1: this ad in the June eighteen nine five issue of
Speaker 1: the magazine. One person wanted him to recruit a small
Speaker 1: army to rate a gold mine in Alaska. So that's cool, yeah.
Speaker 1: Another floated a plot to steal an army payroll in
Speaker 1: South America. Um and people were at magazine, reported in quote.
Speaker 1: Another wanted to rate Nicaragua and promised to supply guns, camouflage, clothing,
Speaker 1: rubber boats, and fifty thous dollars for each mercenary when
Speaker 1: the raid was completed. Savage was enthusiastic about every hairbrain
Speaker 1: scheme he heard, but ultimately was persuaded to concentrate on murder.
Speaker 1: So if the caller sounded discreet, Savage would ask for
Speaker 1: a round trip airline ticket and a thousand dollars. The
Speaker 1: two would meet face to face, then feel each other
Speaker 1: out in a minute of death until each was certain
Speaker 1: of the other's credentials and in a way, Robert Brown
Speaker 1: had succeeded in creating a primitive version of the Dark Web.
Speaker 1: But while every hitman on the Dark Web is just
Speaker 1: an FBI agent, the men who advertised in Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune were actually willing to commit murder on strangers. Uh
Speaker 1: Savage took a job to kill a guy named Richard Braun,
Speaker 1: a man in Atlanta. He and to Triggerman, who he
Speaker 1: also recruited through Soldier of Fortune magazine, ambushed Braun and
Speaker 1: his teenage son with a Mac eleven. They killed Braun
Speaker 1: and wounded his boy. Four months after this, Savage was
Speaker 1: hired to kill Anita Spearman of Palm Beach, Florida. He
Speaker 1: subcontracted this hit out to yet another Soldier of Fortune reader,
Speaker 1: a guy named Do tre Uh. Do Tree and Savage
Speaker 1: were paid twenty thou dollars to the hit by Spearman's husband,
Speaker 1: who was also a big fan of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another hitman was Texas trucker John Hearn. He ran an
Speaker 1: ad in four issues of the magazine looking for high
Speaker 1: risk assessments US or overseas ease. So many people called
Speaker 1: Herne that he had to hire an answering service to
Speaker 1: handle all the demands of his callers. Wanted him to
Speaker 1: commit some kind of crime, arranging from bombings and jail
Speaker 1: breaks to simple assault. He received three to five contract
Speaker 1: murder requests every single day, which says a lot about
Speaker 1: the readers of Soldier of Fortune, a random doing the
Speaker 1: magazines willing to kill people. I got people I won't killed.
Speaker 1: In February five, Herne took on the job of murdering
Speaker 1: Sandra Black. Her husband paid him ten thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: shoot his wife to death. Are you noticing a pattern here? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: a few months later when he was hired by another
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune reader to kill two other people. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know then he was caught shortly after that. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was tried, and he insisted that he never would
Speaker 1: have gotten started as a hit man if it weren't
Speaker 1: for Soldier of Fortune magazine. And normally I'm hesitant when
Speaker 1: people blame a magazine for but might be a point here.
Speaker 1: Richard Savage was also caught by the law, and he
Speaker 1: too squealed on soldier of Fortune magazine and a delusion
Speaker 1: news news coverage hit the magazine. Robert Brown denied any
Speaker 1: responsibility for the deaths. He ordered his executive editor to
Speaker 1: make this statement, We're as culpable as any newspaper which
Speaker 1: accepts an ad from a used car salesman and doesn't
Speaker 1: go check on the condition of the brakes. M what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Those are analogous situations. Yeah. Still,
Speaker 1: Brown was wise enough. Sometimes you do see the card,
Speaker 1: it says it comes fully loaded. That's similar. That was
Speaker 1: pretty bad. Sorry. Now, Brown was wise enough to stop
Speaker 1: running ads for murderers in six mainly because of the
Speaker 1: legal complications, But if he felt any guilt over all
Speaker 1: of the deaths, he did not show it, Describing his
Speaker 1: career this way in a six editor for the last decade,
Speaker 1: I've hunted terrorists with the Rhodesian African rifles and fired
Speaker 1: up a Russian fort in Afghanistan with a mujah Haddeen.
Speaker 1: Between firefights, takeovers and insurgencies, I managed to put out
Speaker 1: a magazine. He's pretty cool. Guy uh. He also managed
Speaker 1: to get sued by Richard Brown's sons for his role
Speaker 1: in their father's murder. They were awarded four point three
Speaker 1: million dollars in civil judgments, which were upheld by a
Speaker 1: US Court of Appeals. In nineteen ninety two, The New
Speaker 1: York Times wrote this about the case. The Eleventh Circuit
Speaker 1: panel said, however, that while the advertisement in the Texas
Speaker 1: case was fascially innocuous and ambiguous in its message, Mr
Speaker 1: Savage's advertisement clearly conveyed that he was ready, willing and
Speaker 1: able to use his gun to commit crimes. When the
Speaker 1: list of legitimate jobs i e. Bodyguarden, courier is followed
Speaker 1: by other special skills and all jobs considered, the implication
Speaker 1: is clear that the advertiser would consider illegal jobs. The
Speaker 1: panel said. The publisher could recognize the offer of criminal
Speaker 1: activity as readily and as its readers obviously dead. So
Speaker 1: court makes a good call and Brown wounds up settling
Speaker 1: with the Brown family for two dred thousand dollars, Which
Speaker 1: is not enough? Was he When he was interviewed about
Speaker 1: this later in two thousands sixteen, he said this, they
Speaker 1: really tried the magazine, not the cases. Two guys meet
Speaker 1: through the magazine. They have a friendly relationship for six months,
Speaker 1: they don't talk about anything illegal, but then six months
Speaker 1: later they agree to commit this horrendous crime. Well, if
Speaker 1: they meet at a bar and six months later they say,
Speaker 1: let's rob a bank, should the bartender be held liable?
Speaker 1: It was total crap, which gives me an idea for
Speaker 1: a bar. I want to start with all jobs considered,
Speaker 1: now for another and again you you'll be able to
Speaker 1: enjoy the dual pleasures of life. That's there aren't any
Speaker 1: drive drink and shoot bars. The pleasures we could We
Speaker 1: could combine the the l against of a Texas drive
Speaker 1: through liquor store um with the elegance of drunkenly shooting
Speaker 1: at the landscape in Texas. This is really I'm so drunk,
Speaker 1: I missed the landscape. I hit that guy whose name
Speaker 1: you gave me. I feel like we'd make more than
Speaker 1: two grand before they finally got us. Yeah. So from
Speaker 1: that point on, Soldier of Fortunes Classified ads section turned
Speaker 1: to slightly more liscid fair. They sold mail order brides,
Speaker 1: bounty hunter training manuals, Secrets of the Ninja lessons, Nazi
Speaker 1: surplus gear, machine guns, silencers, and sniper rifles. Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune also did a brisk business and selling the kinds
Speaker 1: of T shirts that are all too common and randomly
Speaker 1: generated Facebook ads today, shirts with slogans like happiness is
Speaker 1: a confirm to kill. There are a few social problems
Speaker 1: that cannot be solved by the proper application of high
Speaker 1: explosives and the ever popular kill them all and let
Speaker 1: God sort them out. Yes, this is this is the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff I actually do think of when you
Speaker 1: say a Soldier Ford and all those products they used
Speaker 1: to crank out like that. That's much more seething I
Speaker 1: remember than the actual magazine. Yeah, that's like one of
Speaker 1: the real law Like this is where that all gets
Speaker 1: A lot of that gets started. Like I think some
Speaker 1: of these phrases had existed before, but no one had thought,
Speaker 1: what if we just sell T shirts with this written
Speaker 1: on it? Too dangerous people? Uh? Going back to Iraq,
Speaker 1: one of the there's a lot of random mercenaries you
Speaker 1: encounter in her bill, And there was this way we
Speaker 1: were I was buying carpets with my photographer and one
Speaker 1: of the guys we see like standing in the middle
Speaker 1: of the bizarre is just like this tall white guy
Speaker 1: in his early twenties with a beard and a T
Speaker 1: shirt that has written in red letters, I'm just here
Speaker 1: for the violets. It's like, don't wear the shirt here, man,
Speaker 1: Come on, dude. Uh so Uh. Soldier of Fortune also
Speaker 1: contributed to the birth of the needlessly aggressive sticker industry,
Speaker 1: selling door stickers labeled is their life after death, trespass
Speaker 1: here and find out. Never mind the dog, be aware
Speaker 1: of owner and bumper stickers like, the only way you'll
Speaker 1: get my gun is to pry it from my cold
Speaker 1: dead fingers, well putting stickers ever that now I'm really mad.
Speaker 1: That's that is not right. One of the things that's
Speaker 1: funny about that last one, if you're one of the
Speaker 1: best scenes in the original Red Dawn movie is like
Speaker 1: when the Russians invade. You see the back of this
Speaker 1: guy's truck that says, the only will get my gun
Speaker 1: if you pipe from my cold dead hands, And then
Speaker 1: he's lying dead behind the truck because the Russian army
Speaker 1: shot him to death and ironically enough, uh was I forget?
Speaker 1: His first name is Milch. The guy who wrote Red
Speaker 1: Dawn was like the focus of a massive feature article
Speaker 1: and Soldier of Four where he like showed that he
Speaker 1: had no understanding of the irony effets um. So Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune continue to play host to a series of
Speaker 1: classic articles for the modern man, who's pretty sure he
Speaker 1: could have been Conan the barbarian with a few cards
Speaker 1: that landed differently. And I think the single best example
Speaker 1: of this magazine's content is the classic article Secrets of
Speaker 1: Modern battle axe Fighting on dry land with any artist
Speaker 1: knows you have to branch out. You know, you start
Speaker 1: teaching people how to knife fight an alligator, but eventually
Speaker 1: you don't use that type of battle ax in a
Speaker 1: in a high humidity and a battle axe underwater? Are
Speaker 1: you mad? The article opens with the author announcing that,
Speaker 1: for reasons that are never made clear, he has won
Speaker 1: an award that just happens to be a hand forged
Speaker 1: orse battle axe. Being the kind of man who writes
Speaker 1: for Soldier of Fortune, Jeff Cooper decided that he desperately
Speaker 1: needed to know how to kill people with this axe. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the only manuals he could find on the matter were
Speaker 1: written an old Norse and did not contain much in
Speaker 1: the way of details as to how to have an
Speaker 1: axe fight. I had no there was a famous one
Speaker 1: I had written by Gary Guy GaX. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of death could have been averted if some of
Speaker 1: these guys could have just been given dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 1: Books like this is the healthy way to deal with
Speaker 1: these impulses. So Jeff gets his ax, realizes there's no
Speaker 1: good books on how to fight with axes, and he
Speaker 1: and a friend decided to spend the afternoon inventing a
Speaker 1: modern science of battle axe fighting by jabbing vaguely at
Speaker 1: hay bales in an empty field. David, I want you
Speaker 1: to take a look at one of the insert pages
Speaker 1: from this How would you describe those pictures? It looks
Speaker 1: like a man and viciously attacking a bail of hay
Speaker 1: and to the point that he's drooling with pleasure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's he's wearing the kind of hat that like everyone's
Speaker 1: grandfather wears when they move permanently to Florida. You know
Speaker 1: it's a you know, you know it's not a fair
Speaker 1: battle when your hat doesn't fall off. Uh So, And
Speaker 1: I'll pass this out in a little bit when I
Speaker 1: get past this paragraph. This is worth seeing. One shot
Speaker 1: didn't wasn't enough? Shows six almost identical. Mean if you
Speaker 1: want to know how to funk up a bail of
Speaker 1: hay with the norse axe. There's no better place to go, like,
Speaker 1: there's really are no other sources. So uh this new
Speaker 1: business was safer than soliciting hitman and mercenaries. But Robert
Speaker 1: were standing inside of a bale of hay. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of kids playing hide and go seek were
Speaker 1: tragically tragically. It didn't wind up all right for everybody
Speaker 1: I found the needle. Uh So Robert Brown was not
Speaker 1: satisfied though with running a safe, profitable, profitable magazine filled
Speaker 1: with ridiculous sax fighting artimles. No, he still was desperately
Speaker 1: addicted to war tourism, and the primary purpose of Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune magazine throughout its entire run was to enable
Speaker 1: his habit. Throughout the mid nineteen eighties, Robert Brown and
Speaker 1: his magazine got increasingly involved in the El Salvadorian Civil War.
Speaker 1: He visited for the first time in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: and spent several happy days fighting alongside a quadra of
Speaker 1: mercenaries and paramilitary fighters. Back Roberto de Albuson Debison was,
Speaker 1: in the words of the U. S Ambassador to L Salvador,
Speaker 1: a pathological killer who bragged about the need to exterminate
Speaker 1: two hundred to three hundred thousand people in his own country.
Speaker 1: So Robert Brown's like, this is my dude to hand
Speaker 1: this out pass it around. So uh, Dobbison ran death
Speaker 1: squads which often massacred women, children, and a huge number
Speaker 1: of priests, and Robert Brown was only too happy to
Speaker 1: help with us. By night four, he claimed to have
Speaker 1: sent more than a hundred mercenaries into the tiny country.
Speaker 1: He also claimed that his readers had donated more than
Speaker 1: four million in supplies to fight the contract for for
Speaker 1: the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. When he was criticized over
Speaker 1: the fact that his magazine was actively enabling death squads
Speaker 1: in several nations, Brown wrote this, We're not content just
Speaker 1: to tell the story to the best of our ability.
Speaker 1: We also help equip, aid and train the world's anti
Speaker 1: communist freedom fighters. We make no apologies about this or
Speaker 1: for our virulent, anti tyrant, anti communist editorial stance. Now
Speaker 1: does this tie into the Iran Contra stuff in anyway?
Speaker 1: Like that that was the the people who were actually
Speaker 1: accomplishing cricket stuff but successfully for a little while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like the tourist version of like and not
Speaker 1: legally committing treason, I guess. And he didn't get a
Speaker 1: Fox new although he did wind up as one of
Speaker 1: the board members of the n r A, So they're
Speaker 1: not totally different people. Um so tragically, and this is
Speaker 1: really gonna hurt a lot of people's feelings. Brown's second
Speaker 1: plan trip to go fight Nel Salvador, was canceled when
Speaker 1: one of his own mercenaries shot him on accident in
Speaker 1: the lake. It happens to the best of us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've all been there. Now. I'm gonna read a quote
Speaker 1: from the Chicago Tribune and describing what happened. Colonel Brown
Speaker 1: and his kitchen table buddies were talking about a flight
Speaker 1: tell Salvador that Brown was to make the next day. Brown,
Speaker 1: who was a captain in Vietnam, claims to be helping
Speaker 1: train the Salvadoran army on an unofficial basis. He says
Speaker 1: he's making them tougher and more disciplined. As the evening
Speaker 1: wore on towards midnight, one of Brown's buddies, who writes
Speaker 1: for Soldier of Fortune, took out an automatic pistol he
Speaker 1: was carrying and showed it to Brown. Brown's buddy talked
Speaker 1: about his pistols, heft, the trigger action, and the other
Speaker 1: qualities that pleased gun lovers. He pulled the trigger. Being
Speaker 1: a gun expert, he knew it was empty. That was
Speaker 1: sarcasm on the author's part. When Brown's buddy pulled the trigger,
Speaker 1: there was a loud explosion. He stood there for a
Speaker 1: moment with his mouth wide open, and he looked at
Speaker 1: his hand and saw a hole. He had shot a
Speaker 1: hole through his hand. Brown looked down at his leg,
Speaker 1: his leg hurt. He saw blood running out of his calf.
Speaker 1: The bullet, after blowing a hole in the buddy's hand,
Speaker 1: had blown a hole in Robert's and or in Brown's leg.
Speaker 1: The owner of the gun was right, it did pack
Speaker 1: a wallop. Brown looked down at his bleeding leg. Then
Speaker 1: he looked at his buddy and said, you stupid son
Speaker 1: of a bitch, You shot me, and now I can't
Speaker 1: go to El Salvador. Can I ask a question about
Speaker 1: his rank because it referred to him as colonel in
Speaker 1: the first sentence, but he immediately said he served as
Speaker 1: captain when it was actually, so, what's the colonel? Friend?
Speaker 1: I mean? That was after his time. Actually doing anything
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, but he was really Yeah, he retired as
Speaker 1: a lieutenant colonel. Okay, but it's not uncommon for people
Speaker 1: to get like a bump when they leave, especially if
Speaker 1: you've done shady things that they want to get you
Speaker 1: out of the service for. There's a lot of questions
Speaker 1: about what he actually he may have had some dirt
Speaker 1: on somebody else, yeah, something like that, or he uh,
Speaker 1: they just really wanted him gone because he was an embarrassment.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say, hard to say so um. As
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties wore on and the Cold War near
Speaker 1: it's near its end, so too did the business of
Speaker 1: soliciting mercenary fighters to crust socialist up movements. Being a
Speaker 1: right wing or a far right crypto fascist, Robert Brown
Speaker 1: transitioned seamlessly from demonizing left wing movements around the world
Speaker 1: and towards attacking the US government. As the Cold War ended,
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune became one of the prime sources fueling
Speaker 1: the American militia movement. In April nineteen ninety five, it
Speaker 1: did a cover story on the Michigan Militia, the largest
Speaker 1: such patriot group in the country. That same month, Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune subscriber and former Michigan Militia member Timothy McVeigh
Speaker 1: set off a truck bomb outside the Murray Building in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, killing a hundred and sixty eight people and
Speaker 1: injuring seven hundred. When McVeigh was caught his car was searched,
Speaker 1: the police found a photo copy of an underground far
Speaker 1: right far right zene titled The Resistor. Sixty Minutes correspondents
Speaker 1: Steve Croft described it as a political warfare journal, describing
Speaker 1: the U. S Government as a deadly enemy that needed
Speaker 1: to be crushed with lethal force. Its publisher, Stephen Barry,
Speaker 1: was a former Special Forces man who went on to
Speaker 1: for the National Alliance, at the time the largest neo
Speaker 1: Nazi group in the United States. Now. The FBI obviously
Speaker 1: wanted to track down how this copy of The Resistor
Speaker 1: had wound up in Timothy mcveigh's hands. By reading the
Speaker 1: fact signature, they were able to trace it back to
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortunes offices. It turns out Robert Brown had
Speaker 1: sent nine hundred free copies of the zine to Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune subscribers as part of a promotional author offer.
Speaker 1: It's like a tote bag. Here's it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the mp R gives you a little bag, Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune gives you this Nazi guide to murdering people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty cool? Right? Yeah? I mean it's a value for
Speaker 1: the other eight people. Like, that's a collector's item. I
Speaker 1: have had it? How many times can I walk out
Speaker 1: from one? Um? So? Uh now? The bureau obviously wanted
Speaker 1: to know if Steven Barry Nazi had any ties to
Speaker 1: Robert Brown, so they leaked Verry false intel and watched
Speaker 1: as Surely enough it appeared in the next issue of
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune magazine. So that's cool, he's friends with
Speaker 1: some Nazis. Good stuff. Uh Now. Obviously, of course, you
Speaker 1: know there were legal consequences for this, right, No, nothing happened.
Speaker 1: Brown did regularly find himself under investigation and was often sued,
Speaker 1: but he always managed to stay in business and just
Speaker 1: shy of committing any felonies. After the Oklahoma City bombing
Speaker 1: and Patriot Movement, the Patriot movement got to toxic, but
Speaker 1: once the nineties ended, Soldier of Fortune pivoted yet again
Speaker 1: by focusing on the dangers of immigrants and Muslim extremists. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, Soldier of Fortune published a two
Speaker 1: part series on a group called Ranch Rescue a Border,
Speaker 1: a border vigilante militia that later pistol whipped and sent
Speaker 1: Rottweiler's on immigrants in Arizona in Texas. Yeah he's a
Speaker 1: I mean, he's the guy I've been reading about for
Speaker 1: the last twelve pages. He's he's piece of shit. Uh.
Speaker 1: In October of two thousand nine, Soldier of Fortune did
Speaker 1: a feature on Sheriff Joe R. Pio of Maricopa County, writing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: his tough stance on a legal immigration is what he
Speaker 1: is getting beat up for by liberals promoting a legal immigration.
Speaker 1: They neglected to mention that dozens of prisoners had died
Speaker 1: in our pios shells jails, often being from being illegally
Speaker 1: restrained and boiled to death in a hundred and forty
Speaker 1: five degree cells. Under al Pio, the Maricopa County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: office paid out more than a hundred and forty million
Speaker 1: dollars in wrongful death suits, which again didn't make into
Speaker 1: the Soldier of Fortune article. Shockingly, Robert Brown was not
Speaker 1: an instant fan of the candidacy if Donald J. Trump
Speaker 1: when interviewed about it in two thousand sixteen, he expressed
Speaker 1: his belief that the man was a buffoon and would
Speaker 1: hand the election to Hillary Clinton. He has kept his
Speaker 1: mouth mostly shut about Trump since then, often involving himself
Speaker 1: though in internal n r A politics. He was once
Speaker 1: the organization's vice chairman, and he regularly speaks out about Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're interested in who to vote for
Speaker 1: for the n r A board, Uh, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: check out this guy's opinions. He seems to have good judgment. Uh.
Speaker 1: Soldier of fortune stopped publishing a physical magazine in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen. The digital media crash, you know it hit
Speaker 1: us all well, physical media crash. Uh. Brown had to
Speaker 1: lay off almost all of his staff and go digital.
Speaker 1: The periodical is still online and still just as racist
Speaker 1: as ever, although it's increasing irrelevance has made it less dangerous.
Speaker 1: In late two thousand nineteen, the online edition of the
Speaker 1: magazine republished that two thousand twelve article about Rhodesia. Whatever
Speaker 1: else you can say about Robert K. Brown, he's not
Speaker 1: a quitter, although he really should be. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: the story. That's this. He's still alive. So David, you
Speaker 1: convinced me, You convinced me for the first interview. I
Speaker 1: was impressed, but that by the end, I admit, the
Speaker 1: scale tilted a little bit. The center of gravity just
Speaker 1: got enough in favor of Bastard. Yeah, so that's cool.
Speaker 1: It's way worse than I expected to say. It's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing. I didn't when you said it killed a
Speaker 1: bunch of people, I didn't. I didn't see the yeah
Speaker 1: people truck bomb coming stills. Yeah, it's I mean, you
Speaker 1: know a lot of things played into that, but Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune didn't help. So uh. I mean, they look
Speaker 1: like they could use investors and a new writing team,
Speaker 1: you know, well, the fut dramas up the air. That's
Speaker 1: why I brought you here. One of my favorite quotes
Speaker 1: from Like Brown in the Modern Day, from like a
Speaker 1: year ago, as him being like, I still think I
Speaker 1: have one more left in me blurt um. So uh, David,
Speaker 1: that's been the episode. But of course we can't conclude
Speaker 1: a live show without doing something reckless with machetes. You know,
Speaker 1: I have not explained to you why we do this,
Speaker 1: because I don't know how to. If you've you've write
Speaker 1: jokes for a living, have you ever had a running
Speaker 1: joke that went on way longer than than you could
Speaker 1: have possibly anticipated, to the point where you can no
Speaker 1: longer explain how it started. No, we haven't, and bite
Speaker 1: my shiny middle ass um. Now, I want to make
Speaker 1: a couple of safety notes. Safety is always very important.
Speaker 1: So these are I have only brought to this show
Speaker 1: the dullest and last knives that I own. Well that
Speaker 1: now you're glad it's rusty. Yeah, no, key that that's
Speaker 1: remember that Dolan. Rusty, safe and trusty. That's the knife rule. Now.
Speaker 1: I think what we're gonna do is we're gonna play
Speaker 1: us a quick little round of tennis, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna hand some bagels out into the crowd and you guys,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna basically act as like a living
Speaker 1: skeet machine to Oh god, you brought a bag of them. Jesus,
Speaker 1: I told you it got out of hand. Now, as
Speaker 1: I said, I played tennis. I don't know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: What are the rules of this sport? I don't know
Speaker 1: how the rules of tennis. I'm going to toss a
Speaker 1: bag of bagels underhanded towards you, the whole bag, hold bag,
Speaker 1: and you try to hit it as hard as you
Speaker 1: can and then I'll say love serving love. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that means, don't explain it. Am I trying
Speaker 1: to slice it? Or yeah? You just want to hit
Speaker 1: the thing I throw with sharp sharp? Yeah, I'm not trying.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not trying to hit it this way
Speaker 1: back to you, top spin love, You do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: But it's most fun to just like really tear into that. Okay,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna do, all right, always again, always mistabbing,
Speaker 1: and again, because safety is incredibly important here, we're not
Speaker 1: starting with the bagels. We're starting with ultimate burger buns.
Speaker 1: Um Because you don't want you don't want to like you,
Speaker 1: you got to calibrate, all right. I feel like basic
Speaker 1: human decency compels me to put a stop to this
Speaker 1: before we crossed too much of a mess. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the That was the stupidest and most fun
Speaker 1: thing I've done in a long time. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the interview part of this. All right, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the fucking episode. Have a good night, drums. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, David really appreciate it. H. My deepest apologies
Speaker 1: to the stage crew. H