Americans, mostly ex-Green Berets, participate in the training. The activities appear to violate a number of federal laws that prohibit any organized attempt by private citizens to overthrow or undermine another government. Terrorist or guerrilla training has changed in at least two ways since the 1981 story. While Camp Libertad once trained Cubans and Nicaraguans for attacks on their homelands, unofficial militia camps now train U.S. citizens for attacks on their own government. There also is the official U.S. terrorist training of Latin American officers at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Critics charge that the foreign officers receive training in executions and torture.
Alumni of the school have been implicated in the murders of priests, nuns, and others in Latin America, including the 1989 murders of six Jesuits and two women in El Salvador. The research was banned in 1969 due to public pressure. Third World countries are considered to be particularly vulnerable targets for a BW attack due to dispersed rural populations with poor health and nutritional status and barely sufficient agriculture for sustenance. There is a lack of distinction between offensive research, which is banned, and defensive research, which is still permitted. The DOD says it is funding cocci research to develop a vaccine.