Soldier of Fortune

September 1995 cover
Editor/Publisher	Susan Katz Keating
Categories	paramilitary
Frequency	Daily web magazine
Founded	1975
Company	Soldier of Fortune[1]
Country	United States
Based in	Tampa, Florida
Language	English, many others
Website	www.sofmag.com

Soldier of Fortune (SOF), subtitled The Journal of Professional Adventurers, is a daily web magazine owned and 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, author, editor, and security journalist Susan Katz Keating bought the publication from the founder.^[2][3]

History

Soldier of Fortune magazine was founded in 1975, by Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Reserve, (Ret.) Robert K. Brown, 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.

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).^[5][6] 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.^[7] At the height of its circulation in the early 1980s the magazine had 190,000 subscribers.^[8] The April 2016 issue of Soldier of Fortune was the final print edition; further editions have been published online.^[9][10]

The magazine currently is published by Soldier of Fortune LLC, owned by Susan Katz Keating, and is based in Tampa, Florida.^[11]

In the online magazine, publisher Keating revived original reporting, and sent correspondents into the field in Ukraine, Serbia, Israel, and along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. She introduced a new section entitled The Fire Pit, wherein readers submit personal stories of war and adventure.^[12] Among those whose stories appear in the section are Gen.(Ret) Scott Miller, formerly the four-star general in charge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan ^[13] and Jan Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Memorial Wall,^[14] along with numerous warfighters and veterans.^[15]

The magazine gained publicity in July 2023 when Keating published her investigative series on the cocaine packet that was discovered inside the Biden White House.^[16] The articles were picked up by Radar Online,^[17] the New York Post,^[18] and other outlets.

"Gun for Hire" lawsuits - 1980's, Under Robert K Brown

During the late 1980s, Soldier of Fortune under Robert K. Brown was sued in civil court several times for having published classified advertisements by private "guns for hire." 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 magazine settled the lawsuit out of court.

On February 20, 1985, John Wayne Hearn shot and killed Sandra Black for a $10,000 payment from her husband, Robert Vannoy Black Jr. Black connected 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.

The jury found the defendants grossly negligent in publishing Hearn's ad for implicit illegal activity (murder) and awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 million in damages. 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.^[19][20]

In 1989, four men were convicted of conspiracy to 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. In 1992, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the judgment of the jury, saying "the publisher could recognize the offer of criminal activity as readily as its readers did."^[21] The magazine subsequently suspended publication of classified advertisements.

In 2022, publisher Keating affirmed that under her watch, the magazine would not publish such advertisements.

Editors

• Jim Graves, former managing editor and columnist.^[22]
• Susan Katz Keating, editor and publisher (as of March 30, 2022).

Notable contributors

• Jan Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Memorial Wall
• Col. David "Hack" Hackworth, US Army (ret./deceased)
• Ltc. Robert C. MacKenzie, US Army (ret./deceased)
• Ltc. Oliver North, US Marine Corps (ret.)
• Dale Dye, US Marine Corps (ret.)
• Al J Venter
• John Plaster, US Army (ret.)

See also

• Soldier of Fortune (video game)

References

Further reading

• Lamy, Philip. "Millennialism in the Mass Media: The Case of 'Soldier of Fortune' Magazine." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 31, No. 4, December 1992, pp. 408–424. doi:10.2307/1386853. JSTOR 1386853.

External links

• Official website