WEBVTT - The Action Library, Part 1 and Part 2 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:03.240 Hey, listeners, just a heads up. This is a long 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:06.120 one because we're giving you two episodes in one this week, 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:11.360 so listen for parts one and two. In our very 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:13.480 first episode, I said that I hadn't been able to 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:16.120 get anyone from Paladin to talk to me. We've tried 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.680 a lot of former employees and authors, and everybody seemed hesitant. 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:22.960 But over the last two weeks we got some replies. 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.200 My name is David du Bro. I worked for Paladin 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:30.920 Press between and two thousand and ten. David grew up 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:33.960 in a suburb outside Philadelphia. A few years after he 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:37.040 graduated from college, he was working in a supermarket and 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:39.239 he needed a change. At the time, I was very 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.120 much into fantasy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.120 that kind of thing. Not necessarily D and D, but 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:47.960 you know, fantasy role playing text based over the internet 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.360 called a telnut protocol. He made some friends through this 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.880 online game called Amber. They invited him out to Colorado, 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:57.520 and he figured, what the hell, Okay, I'm going to 0:00:57.640 --> 0:00:59.720 drive out there and I'm gonna see if I can 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.400 make my life out in Colorado. At the time, there 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:07.520 was no monster, there was no linked in, so you 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:10.840 went looking for a real job through the one edge 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:13.040 of the paper. I know it sounds kind of ancient, 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:16.679 but that was what we did. David answered a nondescript 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.959 ad for an entry level customer service gig and got 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.959 an interview, and that company was paled and press. It 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:25.520 was very kind of secretive, is very kind of hush 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:27.240 hash I didn't know at the time what I was 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:33.080 getting into. So far in this podcast, we've spent a 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:35.280 lot of time on the triple murder for higher case 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.800 of Millie and Trevor Horn and Janice Saunders. When we 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.920 last left you, Lawrence Horn and James Perry were both 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:45.560 found guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. So 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.279 the two men responsible for this crime would be paying 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:52.000 for it for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.360 media couldn't stop talking about hit Man. Grew some triple 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.160 murder shocked the Washington, D C. Area. Today, it has 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:00.320 become the subject of a First Amendment fight over a 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:03.920 how to book. The killer apparently went by the book 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:08.440 This book, hit Man, a technical manual for independent contractor. 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.720 It's a very compelling correlation between the way these murders 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.000 were carried out and the suggestions in the book. Now 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:19.040 family members want the Murder Manuals publisher to pay. All 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:23.760 that attention introduced a lot of people to Paladin and 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.799 its enigmatic owner, Paider Lund. So I go out there 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.160 and I do this interview, and the owner of the 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.000 company he's there. He's he's wearing these like short pants 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:36.480 and his polo shirt, and he's got a handgun on 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:41.120 the desk. What's funny is that on this upper middle 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.280 class Jewish kid from Philly, things like self defense and 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.520 martial arts and knife fighting, they're they're not relevant to 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.840 my life experience, like guns or what other people do. Still, 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:54.799 he was intrigued, and they showed me a catalog and 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:56.120 they said, all right, well, why don't you take a 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:58.640 look at it and then tomorrow, UM, we'll call you 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:00.960 back if you're still interested. And I did, and I 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.240 was like, this is neat stuff. I mean, you know, 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:06.480 I'm a young man. I could either do customer service 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.280 for a company that publishes these kinds of books and videos, 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:13.440 or I could be you know, the executive assistant of 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:16.960 you know, the Boulder Philharmonic orchestra conductor. I'm like, all right, 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:20.240 there's no real competition here, So I started that next week. 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:25.400 David says the company wasn't quite what you'd expect from 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.760 the content. Peter was very adamant about not hiring a 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:31.440 bunch of Cammi clad wackos, which is, you know how 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.120 we kind of called it. There was at least as 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:37.560 many women as men who worked for Paladin Press. The 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.640 vast majority of the people worked for Palden didn't have 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.560 a real interest in the subject matter, which was kind 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:46.760 of interesting sometimes to work around. But it was amazingly 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:50.240 prosaic how boring the office work was. It wasn't like 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:54.360 everybody was walking around with a R fifteen slung over 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:58.800 his back, that kind of thing. A Washington Post article 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.560 from the year David was high described Lund sitting in 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:04.280 a modest office at an old wooden desk, with his 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.960 green beret tacked to the wall, piles of manuscripts everywhere. 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:10.800 Peter wasn't a big guy either, but he had this 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.400 fierce face, heard these eyebrows, and if he was mad 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:16.520 with you, you would know it. I never played poker 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:18.839 with him, but I imagine I would probably be able 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.200 to beat him a few times, just because he wouldn't 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:25.600 keep it off his face. Lund wore reading glasses in 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:28.479 knee high socks. He'd spent half the year residing in 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.560 a fourteenth century cottage in the Cotswolds, England, where he 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:35.200 hunted pheasant and trained a race horse named Miss Optimist. 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:40.000 Not exactly what I pictured. This was London his late fifties. Well, 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:46.880 Peter was an engaging fellow in terrorism expert Neil Livingstone 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.360 was a consultant for the ABC News show, and he 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:53.719 helped produce an episode about Lundon Palette and Press. He 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:55.840 and a crew flew to Boulder and spent the day 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.039 with lund in his office. I found Peter to be 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:05.480 pull eight, unassuming, unpretentious. He ran a very neat business, 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.840 very you know, it's very clean and very well organized 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:15.360 and so on. He described the things that he publishes 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.919 burning blow books, how to burn things down and blow 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:24.080 things up. He was rather un phased by the notion 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:27.760 that his books might be used by terrorists or killers. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.600 He said that we don't tell people how to use 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:35.800 the information. Honestly, there's a lot we don't know about 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.520 paydirt class in Lundon. Even after all this time we 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:42.839 know he was born in nineteen two. Livingstone told us 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:45.120 he was born in South Africa, but he couldn't actually 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.160 remember if that was right. He was married four times, 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.239 according to a Washington Post article, and didn't have any kids. 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:55.680 His military records are impressive. He served in the U. S. 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.640 Army from nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty eight and 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.159 then in the Army Reserve for two more years. He 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.240 was recognized as an expert gunner and a sharpshooter, and 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.400 he was a decorated veteran, having received the National Defense 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:11.800 Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Purple Heart, Parachute Badge, and 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:14.760 the Bronze Star, among others. And he was quoted in 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.640 a Soldier of Fortune magazine article as saying he was 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.560 an infantry platoon leader and rose to be commander of 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.159 a Special Forces A team and was in charge of 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.720 stopping North Vietnamese supply roots. And that's about all we have, 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:32.800 at least about his life before Paladin Lund called himself 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:36.960 a classic individualist, and he really was. You know, he's 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.200 wearing his shorts and his polo shirt. He's got this 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.200 revolver on his on his desk, you know, and it's like, 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.000 this is the closest I've ever been to a handgun 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:47.920 that hasn't been inside a police officers holster. And and 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:49.520 the thing is, he always had a handgun on a 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.279 desk until we changed, you know, cleaning services, and then 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.760 it became kind of an issue. But he had a 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.880 very strong feeling about the First Amendment and how inviolate 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:02.640 it was. I mean, he was you know, he was 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:04.400 who he was, and if he didn't like him, you 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:20.920 could eatch it and die. I'm Jasmine Morris from My 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:26.800 Heart Radio and Hit Home Media. This is hit many. 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.280 You know. It was early days of internet when I started. 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:50.640 At the time, we got to order through the mail 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.120 and via telephone. Mostly through the mail, we would send 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:56.720 out catalogs for free to anybody. We got plenty of 0:07:56.720 --> 0:07:59.880 requests for catalogs from people who were in prison. You know. 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.120 I guess it was kind of like a jerk off 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.960 magazine for for violence instead of porn, you know. But um, 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.800 it just had the products and the covers and stuff. 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:13.360 You didn't have any real content to speak of. Playboy 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:18.640 Magazine once called Paladin quote the most dangerous publisher in America, 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:21.520 and it was a nickname that stuck. It does make 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:24.440 a good kind of tagline, right, that's something that you 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.680 can use to impress people who were impressed by that. 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.440 You know, we didn't call ourselves the most dangerous publisher 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:33.480 in America. We called ourselves the Action Library, and I 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:35.680 think that was a term of art that Peter created, 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.080 and that's what it was about. It was about, you know, 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.520 action versus danger, which is different. There's a value judgment 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.200 and danger when you think about it. Okay, what does 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.880 that mean? Dangerous? Publisher? Information isn't dangerous. That's what you 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:52.000 do with it, that's dangerous. Paladin Press was just the 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.720 small independent publisher serving a niche audience in a liberal 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:59.760 college town in Colorado, but it would become so influential 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.320 in ways that most independent publishers never could and never 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:09.280 would dream of. Unfortunately, Peter Lund died in two thousand seventeen, 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.800 so we can't hear from him directly. One person we 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.920 reached out to for more insight into Lund's life insisted 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.840 that we talked to Robert K. Brown, the publisher of 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.360 the Mercenary magazine Soldier of Fortune, who he said, new 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.440 Lund better than most. The next day, we got a 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:28.360 call from a Boulder, Colorado phone number and a gruff 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.480 but friendly voice on the other end introduced himself is 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:36.280 Bob Brown. Brown is eighty six now. He's sharp, very polite, 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:38.640 and he refers to get straight to the point. He 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:40.840 heard we were doing a story on Paladin and Lund 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.040 and he was calling us back because his friend said 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.560 we were good people. The call was quick. Brown is 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.559 quite hard of hearing, so phone calls are difficult these days, 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:53.040 and he respectfully declined to be interviewed, but he offered 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:55.960 to email us some information on Paladin and Lund and 0:09:56.000 --> 0:10:00.280 with an okay, Darlin, the call was over. The two 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.480 men met back in the early nineteen sixties. Brown was 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:05.880 about ten years older than Lundon, but they both had 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.160 military backgrounds and were attracted to the idea of mercenary 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.400 work fighting communism in foreign countries. Most of the time. 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.000 Brown mentions lund in his memoir I Am Soldier of Fortune, 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:21.319 it's about these near misses adventures they almost had. There 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:24.000 was the plot to invade Cuba and rescue some refugees 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.040 that was back in Miami in nineteen sixty three, But 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:30.760 it plays like a Looney Tunes adventure where their boat 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:32.760 gets stuck in the mud. They didn't pack enough food 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.439 and the guns didn't show up. In time, there was 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.800 a treasure hunt in Papua New Guinea, gold supposedly hidden 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:41.840 by a crooked priest. The time they tried to parachute 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.320 into Peru to deliver aid to a secluded mountain village 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:51.280 buried by a landslide. Brown actually laid the groundwork for 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:54.840 Paladin himself in nineteen sixty three, the same year he 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.200 tried to invade Cuba with one. First of all, what 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:00.480 was Paladin Pressed? This was a book company that put 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.280 out books for soldiers, put up books on how to 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.040 build bombs. Here's Brown on a Colorado public affairs show. 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.400 And it was also not very popular, definitely not well. 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:13.680 It was an offshoot of a publishing company I started 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:17.200 way back in nineteen sixty three when I published a 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:21.800 book called A hundred and fifty Questions for Guerrilla. Back then, 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:27.480 Brown called his publishing house Panther Publications. Paladin's website once 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:29.839 said this early work really set the tone for the 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.400 publisher's future. Quote it would be first to print books 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:37.320 about controversial or suppressed subjects, and it would also be 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:42.640 criticized for publishing works that some people found objectionable. Brown 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:45.880 is an adventurous and charismatic Vietnam vet with a colorful 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.720 military history. We found him on the Army Register from 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:53.720 nine and in various interviews and in his memoir I 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.760 Am Soldier of Fortune, Brown talks about serving in the 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.960 Army in the fifties and eventually rising to lieutenant colonel 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.120 and intelligence. He says he was also kicked out of 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:07.400 the Special Forces twice. He debbled in journalism, picking up 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.880 freelance assignments for the Associated Press, and he once told 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:13.679 a reporter that he planned to in script his tombstone 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:19.240 with his motto, slay dragons, do noble deeds, and never never, never, 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:25.600 never give up. When Brown first started Panther Publications, he 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:29.840 was mostly publishing military manuals like the Special Forces Handbook. 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:33.719 They were publishing military manuals because they weren't classified, they 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:37.880 had free material to use. That's Michigan State professor and Larabee, 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.080 an expert on bomb making manuals. There's an Army manual 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:45.480 called booby Traps, for example, that really dangerous stuff comes 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:51.440 from directly reprinted army manuals. Or they would somehow take 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.600 them and rearrange them and cabled them together in some 0:12:54.640 --> 0:13:00.400 way to form new versions of these manuals, Mom has better. 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.800 They become a fight on too primas well. It was 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:07.040 definitely a very unsettled time in the culture Vietnam vets. 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:10.160 When they came home, they were not exactly welcomed with 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.360 open arms. Paladin has always been pretty ZEITGEISTI One fifty 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:18.400 Questions for a Gorilla by Alberto Bio, who was credited 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:21.640 with training Fidel Castro's fighters, came out just after the 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.240 Cuban Missile crisis. They were putting out military manuals during 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.559 the Vietnam War. A lot of the interest in these 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:33.000 kinds of manuals is attached in various ways to veterans 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:38.240 who had military experience, who also had read military manuals, 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:42.120 and who brought them home, and they maintained a continued 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:48.679 interest in this kind of military identity. Brown identified a 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:51.880 niche an audience saw them clearly because he was one 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:54.600 of these guys, and then he made and marketed things 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.360 for them. Here's how Anne Larabee describes the appeal of 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:03.000 these books. It's a kind of Maverick masculinity. Um. You 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.120 can see it in a lot of the Paladin books. 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:07.800 For example, there's a certain kind of masculine identity that 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.520 keeps being repeated, and it's this this guy who he's 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:16.080 not beholden to anyone um, He's not beholden to any 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:19.560 nation or any state, or any set of ideas. He's 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.240 this maverick who can take care of himself and who 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.600 has the violent means to defend himself. But eventually that 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:29.120 tight core audience of disaffected Vietnam vets gave away to 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:33.440 something else, may be less authentic. Again, here's David Dubro. 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:37.240 Most people they buy this stuff, they read it, and 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:39.800 they never do anything about it. They never actually do it. 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:42.560 They just wanted the knowledge. They just wanted to have 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.000 the thing and be cool and to know that, hey man, 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.800 I've got this information now and it's maybe counterculture and 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:51.960 I can pretend to be a badass. It doesn't mean 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:53.760 that they weren't band asses. I don't know. But the 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.880 point is, you know, most people, the vast majority of them, 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:02.080 just didn't practice it. And nine using the name Panther 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:06.040 became a major liability. Two members of the Black Panthers 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:08.560 were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.560 murder of a Nebraska police officer who died opening a 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:15.600 suitcase filled with homemade explosives. Others had been arrested for 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.680 planning to bomb department stores, including the Macy's in Midtown Manhattan. 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:22.840 And how were the Panthers learning to make bombs and 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:27.000 wage guerilla warfare? Well, some of their underground publications were 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:31.440 directing subscribers to check out a printing house Panther Publications 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:36.600 Congress noticed in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.800 by Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan summoned owner Robert K. 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:45.440 Brown to testify. Here's Anne Larabee again. It's kind of 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.360 an entertaining mistake that they thought that Robert K. Brown 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:52.960 was a Black Panther, that he had named Panther Publications 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:55.680 after the Black Panthers because that's where they were really after. 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.240 We couldn't get the audio of this because it's still 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.520 on reel to real, So I'm going to read the 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.480 senator's questions, and I asked my husband to read Robert K. 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:09.720 Brown's parts. Senator McClellan began the questioning, do you feel 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:12.160 that by this kind of activity you're contributing to the 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.800 violence that is occurring in this country and a building 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.240 up of a guerrilla movement in America, no more than 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.600 General Motors in respect, possibly to the Black Panthers driving 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.800 a General Motors car to conduct a bombing. People advertise 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:26.920 weapons for sale too, but they don't advertise that it 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:30.760 is to be used for murdering people. McClellan looked closely. 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.240 In one of Brown's book ads. This says grilla warfare. 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:36.520 It says that is the purpose of it. What other 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:38.960 purpose do you advertise it for? If you did not 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:42.600 say guerrilla warfare and the documents you sent out simply 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.560 because we describe guerrilla warfare does not mean that we 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.880 are promoting guerrilla warfare within the United States. Sir, By 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:51.960 this kind of publication, you are, in a sense advocating 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:56.560 and encourage guerrilla warfare in the United States. I disagree 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.760 with you. I am not encouraging it. You do so 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.720 by making available the things that are needed to carry 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:06.879 it out successfully. The book itself does not pick up 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:28.120 a gun, Senator. We'll be right back. After the Senate inquiry, 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.440 Panther publications became palid and press. Brown didn't want any 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:35.560 more government types confusing him with the Black Panthers, and 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.720 his old friend Peter Lund joined the company as co owner. 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.399 In an interview on a Colorado public affairs show, Robert K. 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.639 Brown put it this way. I got together with Peter Lund. 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.800 He had money, I had none. We put the company 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.320 together with his input acation that started palid and Press. 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:56.680 That happened in seventy. Then I sold my interest out 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:01.520 in nineteen seventy. By the time and officially joined Paladin 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:05.320 in nineteen seventy, the FBI had begun investigating how they 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.479 came to publish these official military technical manuals. But they 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.720 quickly realized these manuals were in the public domain again, 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:18.080 and Larabie the Army tried to pull them back. It 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:21.200 reclassified some of its manuals, and it also wrote to 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:23.520 libraries and he asked them to send back their copies 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.280 of things like booby traps and other kinds of manuals. 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:28.560 They tried to haul them back, but it was too late. 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:33.400 They were already well seated out there through these paramilitary publishers. 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.760 In addition to asking for these manuals back, officials approached 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.640 libraries and asked to see a log of everyone who 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.479 had checked out one of these books. The librarians were 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:45.840 up in arms because they really saw it as an 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.920 assault on the right to read. And because these books 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.400 weren't classified, the libraries owned them. They really took offense 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:57.040 at the Treasury Department coming out and putting them under 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:01.159 some kind of surveillance. The American Library Association took a 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:05.920 very significant stand against government interference in people's right to read. 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:12.080 That was their platform. Here's a moment where Paladin really 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:14.240 does seem like it's fighting the good fight for the 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:17.080 First Amendment, which protects a lot of the freedoms that 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.080 have really come to be associated with what America means. 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.760 Freedom of religion, the right to peaceably assemble and protest, 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:27.240 and most importantly for our story, the right to free 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.439 speech and a free press. It was a platform that 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:36.240 would also serve Paladin Press for decades. Brown and Lunde 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:40.119 ran Paladin together for four years until Brown got itchy feet. 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.240 That's how he puts it in his book. He sold 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:45.800 his stake in Paladin Press to lund for just fifteen 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:50.119 thousand dollars and returned to mercenary work, this time in Rhodesia. 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:55.320 Again from his memoir quote, all sorts of adventurers, ne'er 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.600 do wells, and fugitives from all over the world were 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.120 headed for the land of high a guns. Some intend 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:06.359 on fighting the communist back terrorists, and others just to 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:12.040 kick some butt. Not long after he founded Soldier of Fortune, 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:16.679 that magazine would advertise for Paladin. They advertised the hit 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.560 Man Book too, which is actually how detectives believed James 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:25.879 Perry discovered it. Referred to as the Journal of Professional Adventurers, 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:30.280 the monthly magazine published stories of mercenaries fighting wars all 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:34.359 over the world and quickly gained a following. In an 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.600 interview with news Max Brown explains what set the reporting 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.040 in his magazine apart. Some journalists did appreciate what we 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.680 were doing in the quality of journalism we were coming 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.439 up with, but certainly the fact that we were involved 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:52.040 in training various and sundry groups, the one that comes 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.240 with the mind, of course of the countryes in Central 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:58.719 America and also in El Salvador. Most journalists took exception 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.800 of fact that we carried guns everywhere. When and if 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.639 we get fired upon, we and uh fuck her back. 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.920 That being said, Uh, we really didn't give a who 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:12.880 what the other journalist said, and he was say none, 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.760 I'm ever want to challenge us physically in the back 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.040 of the magazine. There were also classified ads for things 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:24.879 like ninja lessons, gun silencers, and job ads for guns 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:29.919 for hire. In a man would answer an ad and 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.600 Soldier of Fortune to hire a guy to kill his wife. 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.840 A jury in a wrongful death lawsuit found the magazine negligent, 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.640 although a circuit court of appeals later reversed the verdict. 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:46.439 That same year, four hitmen, also advertising and Soldier of 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:50.879 Fortune killed a man named Richard Braun. Again, a jury 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.720 found the magazine negligent and the case was settled out 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:57.560 of court. And shortly after that and Arkansas man suffered 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:00.600 injuries when he was attacked by two men, one who 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.199 had advertised in the magazine. When the judge suggested the 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:07.639 magazine ad was not protected under the First Amendment, Brown 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:13.840 settled so in Soldier of Fortune stopped publishing ads for 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:18.439 hired guns, though Brown never claimed personal responsibility for the deaths, 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:21.600 telling the New York Times, I feel I should be 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:25.160 no more concerned about that than the auto dealer who 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:34.720 sells a car that runs somebody down. Peter Lund had 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:38.840 the same view, and while Brown stopped publishing some controversial content, 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:43.720 Lund started publishing it under his helm Paladin actually expanded 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:51.480 way beyond official military manuals and guerrilla warfare books about revenge, mayhem, explosives, survivalism, 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:55.639 and contract killing. Just to be clear, Palat and Press 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:58.520 published books and videos on a wide variety of topics. 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:03.640 One Palatin author described it as ranging from outlandish to legitimate. Training. 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:08.639 By the early nineties, Paladin went mainstream. By then, the 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.080 book The Ultimate Sniper was considered an authority and was 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:15.840 required reading for professional snipers and training with law enforcement 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:19.119 in the military. Bob Dole wrote the foreword to a 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:23.200 Paladin book about skiing, and the humorous book Get Even 0:23:23.400 --> 0:23:26.439 The Complete Book of Dirty Tricks sat on shelves at 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:30.520 Barnes and Noble. The company was offering seven D print 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.520 titles and selling as many as three D fifty thousand 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:37.760 books a year. Lund was employing more than people, and 0:23:37.840 --> 0:23:39.920 Paladin was a place where you can move up if 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:41.840 you had the right work ethic and if the boss 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:45.000 liked you. And David was often one of the first 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:47.800 to arrive at the office. You know, I would get 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:50.560 in there and then like Pater's already, He's in that 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:53.359 upstairs office kitchen, you know, frying up pork chops at 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:56.520 five five in the morning, and you know, the joke was, 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.040 I mean, like, you haven't lived until, you know, had 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:01.480 pork chops with pay here at five in the morning. 0:24:01.760 --> 0:24:04.320 He just loved meat man. He ate a lot of meat. 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:09.120 David was eventually promoted to manager of Paladin's video production department. 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:12.560 Peter was not a guy who gives ada boys. Peter 0:24:12.720 --> 0:24:15.040 was a kind of boss who said, black man, you're 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:17.080 doing good. You know you're doing good because I haven't 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:20.359 shake hand you. He preferred to let people do what 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:22.040 they were supposed to do, and then he would do 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:25.119 what he had to do. Lund treated his employees well. 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:28.679