Soldier of Fortune (magazine)

Soldier of Fortune (SOF), subtitled The Journal of Professional Adventurers, is a daily web magazine published by Susan Katz Keating. It began as a monthly U.S. periodical published from 1975 to 2016 as a magazine devoted to worldwide reporting of wars, including conventional warfare, low-intensity warfare, counter-insurgency, and counter-terrorism. It was published by Omega Group Ltd., based in Boulder, Colorado. In May 2022, founder Robert K. Brown announced that the publication had been sold to a longtime contributor, author and security journalist Susan Katz Keating, who grew up around conflict during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.[2][3]

Soldier of Fortune
September 1995 cover
Editor/PublisherSusan Katz Keating
Categoriesparamilitary
FrequencyDaily web magazine
Founded1975
CompanySoldier of Fortune[1]
CountryUnited States
Based inTampa, Florida
LanguageEnglish, many others
Websitewww.sofmag.com

History

Soldier of Fortune magazine was founded in 1975, by Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Reserve, (Ret.) Robert K. Brown, a Green Beret who served with Special Forces in Vietnam.[4] After retiring from active duty, Brown began publishing a “circular”, magazine-type publication with few pages which contained information on mercenary employment in Oman, where the Sultan Qaboos had recently deposed his father and was battling a communist insurgency. Brown's small circular soon evolved into a glossy, large-format, full-color magazine.

In 1970, Brown co-founded Paladin Press in conjunction with Peder Lund. The company published non-fiction books and videos covering a wide range of specialty topics,[5] including personal and financial freedom, survivalism and preparedness, firearms and shooting, various martial arts and self-defense, military and police tactics, investigation techniques, spying, lockpicking, sabotage, revenge, knives and knife fighting, explosives, and other "action topics".[6] After five years, he left in 1975 to start SOF magazine.

Significant to the early development of SOF was its recruitment of foreign nationals to serve in the Rhodesian Security Forces, during the Rhodesian Bush War (1964–79).[7][8] During the late 1970s and the 1980s, the success and popularity of a military magazine such as SOF led to the proliferation of like magazines such as Survive, Gung Ho!, New Breed, Eagle, Combat Illustrated, Special Weapons and Tactics, and Combat Ready. SOF was published by the Omega Group Ltd., in Boulder, Colorado. It currently is published by Soldier of Fortune LLC, and is based in Tampa, Florida.[9] At the height of its circulation in the early 1980s the magazine had 190,000 subscribers.[10] The April 2016 issue of Soldier of Fortune was the final print edition; further editions have been published online.[11][12]

Mainstream news media frequently portrayed the print magazine as extremist and dangerous—but nonetheless contacted the magazine’s staff for insider information on military and law-enforcement issues, a former editor (an ex-paratrooper) wrote about his 1995–97 stint at the Boulder publication. “The New York Times’ Denver bureau, a British newspaper correspondent, the Rocky Mountain News, local or national TV—I never knew who would be at the other end of a phone call. Sometimes it was goofy: A production assistant with the TV show ‘Murphy Brown’ desperately sought our permission to use a copy of Soldier of Fortune as a prop, to be read by the character Frank in an upcoming episode’s opening scene. … And sometimes the phone call was serious. … When my phone rang, I stopped pounding on my computer keyboard, irritated at the interruption, and picked up the receiver. It was the FBI. The special agent politely introduced himself and said he worked out of the Boston office. ‘OK,’ I replied. ‘What can we do for the Bureau today, Agent?’ He asked me if I ever had heard of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger. ‘Isn’t he a wanted felon?’ I replied, straining my brain. ‘A killer?’ The FBI agent replied affirmatively. He explained that this most-wanted felon was an Irish–American mob leader in South Boston who had committed many serious crimes, including the cold-blooded murders of more than a dozen people. Bulger had slipped away a few years earlier and gone into hiding, probably with his girlfriend and suitcases full of cash and guns. Investigators were coming up empty-handed, with no leads. That was why, the agent said, the FBI now wanted to purchase advertisements in Soldier of Fortune magazine seeking information leading to Bulger’s arrest.” The ex-editor also recalled his attempt to recruit gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to freelance a 600–700-word national-political essay for the magazine. Thompson’s up-front demands—two large-caliber revolvers with telescopic sights—plus past behavior doomed the idea, though. Office lore had it that years earlier “this big-name writer obtained press credentials to cover a Soldier of Fortune Convention and Expo in Las Vegas, an annual extravaganza in which Publisher Robert K. Brown took great pride and spent a lot of money. But instead, ‘gonzo journalist’ Hunter S. Thompson had created a ruckus when he got caught smoking a joint in the men’s room at the Convention Center, for which an indignant Brown had him ejected—or something like that.”[13]

"Gun for Hire" lawsuits

Grievous injury

During the late 1980s, Soldier of Fortune was sued in civil court several times for having published classified advertisements of services by private mercenaries. In 1987, Norman Norwood, of Arkansas, sued SOF magazine, because of injuries he suffered during a murder attempt by two men hired via a "Gun for Hire" advertisement in the magazine. The US District Court denied the magazine's motion for summary judgment based upon the Constitutional right of free speech under the First Amendment. The Court said, "reasonable jurors could find that the advertisement posed a substantial risk of harm" and that "gun for hire" ads were not the type of speech intended for protection under the First Amendment.[14] In the end, Norwood and Soldier of Fortune magazine settled his lawsuit out of court.[15]

Wrongful death

On February 20, 1985, John Wayne Hearn, a Vietnam veteran, shot and killed Sandra Black for a $10,000 payment from her husband, Robert Vannoy Black Jr., also a Vietnam veteran. Black communicated with Hearn through a classified advertisement published in Soldier of Fortune, wherein Hearn solicited "high-risk assignments. U.S. or overseas". In 1989, Sandra Black's son Gary and her mother Marjorie Eimann filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against SOF magazine and its parent publishing company Omega Group Ltd., seeking $21 million in redress of their grievance. While he was on death row, Black's lawyer attempted to use his client's post-traumatic stress disorder as a defense, citing trauma from bombing civilians and watching fellow soldiers die.[16][17]

Robert Black was executed for Sandra's murder in 1992. John Wayne Hearn received a life sentence. He received two additional life sentences for separate murders committed in South Carolina and Florida. On January 6, 1985, Hearn shot Cecil Batie, the ex-husband of his girlfriend's sister, Marlene Sims. On February 2, 1985, he murdered his girlfriend Debra Ann Banister's husband, John Joseph Banister, who was also a Vietnam veteran. Hearn avoided execution after agreeing to become a witness for the prosecution. Also charged were Debra's sister, Marlene Hearn, as well as their parents, Franklin and Iris Sims.[18][19]

In 1985, Debra was found guilty of second degree murder for her role in John Banister's death. She received a concurrent 30-year sentence for conspiracy to commit first degree murder after pleading no contest in Batie's death. She was released from prison in 2004. Marlene Sims pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first degree murder and arson, for burning down her grandmother's home along with her sister to get insurance money. She was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison, and was released in 1988. Franklin and Iris Sims were each sentenced to five years of probation and fined $5,000 after pleading no contest to being accessories after the fact to murder.[20]

The jury found Soldier of Fortune grossly negligent in publishing Hearn's classified ad for implicit illegal activity (murder) and awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 million in damages. However, in 1990 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the verdict, saying that the standard of conduct imposed upon the magazine was too high, because the advertisement was ambiguously worded.[21][22]

Contract killing

In 1989, four men were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the 1985 contract killing of Richard Braun, of Atlanta, Georgia. The killers were hired through a classified services advertisement published in SOF magazine that read: "GUN FOR HIRE". Braun's sons filed a civil lawsuit against the magazine and a jury found in their favor, awarding them $12.37 million in damages, which the judge later reduced to $4.37 million. Nonetheless, in 1992 the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the judgement of the jury, saying "the publisher could recognize the offer of criminal activity as readily as its readers, obviously, did".[15] The Brauns and SOF magazine settled the wrongful-death lawsuit for $200,000.[23] One consequence of the lost lawsuits was that the magazine suspended publication of classified advertisements for mercenary or related work, either in the U.S. or overseas.[23]

Editors
  • Jim Graves, former managing editor and columnist.[24]
  • Susan Katz Keating, editor and publisher (as of March 30, 2022).

Notable contributors

See also

References
  1. Omega First Amendment Legal Fund, All Business, allbusiness.com
  2. "Soldier of Fortune Founder Robert K. Brown Passes the Torch to New Publisher After 47 Years". Soldier of Fortune Magazine. May 6, 2022. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
  3. "A Message From SOF Publisher SKK: A Tribute to RKB, and Looking Ahead". Soldier of Fortune Magazine. May 6, 2022. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
  4. Robert K. Brown Archived 2008-06-10 at the Wayback Machine, Biography, National Rifle Association
  5. "ExpertClick - Error Page". www.expertclick.com. Archived from the original on October 18, 2006. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
  6. "Paladin Press - Publishers of the Action Library - Hotels Worldwide". www.at-hotels.com. Archived from the original on March 28, 2007. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
  7. Ward Churchill, "U.S. Mercenaries in Southern Africa: The Recruiting Network and U.S. Policy", Africa Today, Vol. 27, No. 2, External Intervention in Africa (2nd Qtr., 1980), pp. 21–46
  8. James Taulbee, "Soldiers of fortune: A legal leash for the dogs of war?", Defense & Security Analysis, 1475-1801, Volume 1, Issue 3, 1985, pp. 187–203
  9. "Contact Us Archived 2011-09-30 at the Wayback Machine." Soldier of Fortune. Retrieved September 24, 2011. "2135 11th St. Boulder, CO 80303"
  10. Meany, Thomas (August 1, 2019) "White Power." London Review of Books, Vol 41, No 15. Page 5.
  11. "Soldier of Fortune magazine to stop publishing after 40 years". Guns.com. March 1, 2016. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
  12. The Internet Claims Another Victim – ‘Soldier of Fortune’ Magazine To Cease Hard Copy Publication, Go Digital Only Soldiers Systems. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  13. Kufus, Martin (2022). Plow the Dirt but Watch the Sky: True Tales of Manure, Media, Militaries, and More. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122568503-plow-the-dirt-but-watch-the-sky?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=6P5sRi0m9v&rank=1. pp. 83–92. ISBN 979-8-9874406-2-9. {{cite book}}: External link in |location= (help)CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  14. Norwood v. Soldier of Fortune, Inc., United States District Court, W.D. Arkansas, Fayetteville Division, January 29, 1987
  15. Smothers, Ronald, Soldier of Fortune Magazine Held Liable for Killer's Ad, New York Times, August 19, 1992
  16. Belkin, Lisa, Soldier of Fortune Magazine Is Sued Over Slaying, New York Times, February 14, 1988
  17. "THE WRONGFUL DEATH OF BOB BLACK". Chicago Tribune. June 9, 1992. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  18. By (September 13, 1985). "JUDGE WON'T CUT BOND IN MURDER CASE WOMAN FACES CHARGE OF HAVING MATE KILLED". Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  19. "Soldier of Fortune Killer: John Wayne Hearn". The CrimeWire. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  20. "Sisters' Husbands Are Murdered Just One Month Apart By Hitman — Who Ordered The Killings?". Oxygen Official Site. January 31, 2021. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  21. Award in Case of Killer Hired by Ad Is Overturned, Associated Press, August 18, 1989
  22. "Transcript of the Fifth Circuit's decision in Eimann v. SOF". Retrieved May 30, 2020.
  23. Moscou, Jim, Soldier of Fortune Toughs Out Changing Times, New York Times, October 16, 2000
  24. Clausing, Jeri (Mar. 2, 1988). "Jurors trying to decide whether Soldier of Fortune should..." UPI.

Further reading
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