Frank Camper

Joseph Franklin Camper Jr (born 1946) is an American veteran, mercenary, and writer. Camper served in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, after which he began working as a mercenary and FBI informant. In 1980, he established a mercenary training school on the Warrior River in Jefferson County, Alabama, which ran up until Camper was arrested in 1986. Camper's actual highly classified background with military intelligence, CIA, ATF, and FBI was released in July 1988 when he testified before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and Internal Operations of the Committee On Foreign Relations, explaining the conflicting intelligent community cover stories. Such claims was he was recruited by the FBI in 1970 to work as an undercover informant. He was first tasked with infiltrating political organisations like CPUSA branches, later posing as a military advisor to radical groups like the Alabama Black Liberation Front. The school was advertised through military affairs magazines like Soldier of Fortune, and charged $350 for a two-week course.

Camper would later say he opened the school with two founding principles, to "enable the U.S. government to gain a great deal of intelligence and indeed initiate many operations that were successful to stop criminals and terrorists", and "to get and prove out possible foreigners who would work for the U.S. government in the future." From 1981 to 1986, Camper and the school received approximately from the U.S. government in connection with this work. The group was hiking through a private 13,000-acre ranch, wearing camouflage fatigues and carrying knives, bayonets, and automatic rifles.

In April, Camper, along with his business partner and fellow camp instructor Robert Lisenby were arrested in Miami. and Camper had informed the FBI about Lisenby's plan before it went ahead. The charges against Camper were dropped, and he later served as a key witness in Lisenby's prosecution.

Camper applied for a private school license with the Alabama Department of Education in 1981. He announced he was restructuring the school into a self-defense club after the threat, but continued operating.

Actor Robert Duvall trained at the school in 1985 in preparation for his role in Let's Get Harry, a 1986 action film where he played a mercenary assisting a group of plumbers in rescuing their friend from Colombian paramilitaries. Duvall received training in hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting at the school. At the school, Camper trained them in weapons and explosives, hand-to-hand combat, and assassination techniques. During their visit, Camper said he discussed the planning of multiple terror attacks inside of India with them, including poisoning the Mumbai water supply. They hired Camper to firebomb the cars of Robyn Richoff and Harriet Russo, former employees of the pair who had complained to state agencies about their dismissals. In August, Camper and three other instructors drove out to California and both cars were firebombed, but no one was injured. On May 21, 1986, Camper and the three instructors involved in the bombings were arrested in Hueytown, Alabama.

After his arrest, the Alabama Attorney General Charles Graddick submitted a lawsuit to close the school, claiming it was operating without a valid state private school license and training "mercenaries, terrorists, and guerrillas". While on bail awaiting trial, Camper announced his retirement as a mercenary, and opened a small computer business in Alabama named ABC Computers.

Senate testimony In 1988, Camper testified in a public hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the Iran-Contra affair about his work as a mercenary in Central America during the early 1980s.

Mind control

In his book The MK/Ultra Secret, Camper argued that Lee Harvey Oswald was the subject of a CIA mind control project of the 1950s, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy was organized by a team of disgruntled right-wing politicians.

Publications The Mission (Manor Books, 1979) Sandcastles (Manor Books, 1980) Mercenary Operations Manuel (Desert Publishing, 1986) L.R.R.P.: The Professional (Dell Publishing, 1988) Merc: Professional (Dell Publishing, 1988) Long Range Recon Patrol (Namiki Shobo [Japan], 1990) Covert Operations (Ashai Sonarama [Japan], 1991) Special Operations (Ashai Sonarama [Japan], 1991) Shamal (Ashai Sonarama [Japan], 1992) High Seas Security (Loompanics, 1993) Live To Spend It: A Mercenary Guide for the 90s (Delta Press, 1994) The MK/Ultra Secret (Christopher Scott Publishing, 1997) Mindbenders (Zinn Communication, 1999)