‘Embarrassment to State’ : Arrest Closes Alabama Mercenary Training Base

Mercenary instructor Frank J. Camper’s arrest on federal firebombing charges accomplished what Alabama officials had been trying to do for months--shut down a training camp that Alabama Atty. Gen. Charles Graddick had called an “embarrassment to the state.”

In 1980, Camper founded the Mercenary Assn., tucked away in the backwoods about 10 miles outside of Hueytown, Ala. Participants from around the world paid Camper $350 for his two-week crash course on how to kill, maim and use automatic weapons and knives, among other things, according to the school’s promotional literature.

Camper, 39, is accused of masterminding a plot to blow up two cars in San Bernardino County last year, according to a federal grand jury indictment. Two Orange County schoolteachers who were angry at former employees hired Camper to intimidate the employees, according to the indictment.

Camper, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, is due to stand trial Tuesday along with his girlfriend, Lee Ann Faulk, 27, and William Dean Hedgcorth, 23, a former teacher at the training camp who is accused of participating in the firebombings. Faulk and Hedgcorth are from Birmingham, Ala. Two other Camper employees, Paul Johnson, 42, and James Larosa Cuneo, 22, have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Camp Now Empty

The two teachers agreed Friday to plead guilty to reduced charges.

The training camp, once bustling with an international clientele and the chatter of submachine-gun fire, is empty, according to Richard J. Palmisano, group supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ Birmingham office.

“There is no field training going on,” said Palmisano, who arrested Camper at Camper’s Alabama home last spring.

Six days before the Aug. 13, 1985, firebombings in Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga, the Alabama attorney general filed a civil suit against Camper alleging that he was operating a private school without a license and thus should be barred from operating the training camp.

The suit has yet to go to trial, but Camper’s arrest means “he is prevented from operating a terrorist training school in Alabama,” according to Janie Nobles, executive assistant to Graddick.

Nobles said the Alabama Department of Education refused to issue a private school license to Camper, but he continued to teach students in the Jefferson County woods.

Secret Missions

“He was sort of a minor league folk hero for a while,” Nobles said. “But, if he does attempt to return to Alabama, he will be prosecuted through this civil lawsuit.”

Camper, a Vietnam War veteran, licensed firearms dealer and former Porsche mechanic, claims to have conducted secret missions for the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to his attorney.

On several occasions, FBI officials have publicly confirmed Camper’s role as a paid informant for the bureau. Camper is being held without bail at Terminal Island federal prison in San Pedro and has been unavailable for an interview.

But Camper’s Atlanta attorney, Walter M. Henritze Jr., said he is puzzled by the federal government’s eagerness to prosecute a valuable and trusted informant.

“Camper is a super law-and-order patriotic person,” Henritze said. “From our viewpoint, this whole thing is silly, even if you assume my client committed these acts, which we deny.”

He said the firebombings are “certainly not the crime of the century” because “no one was injured and there was never any attempt to injure anyone.”