Eleven thousand copies of the U.S. Constitution stood piled yesterday in a garage, at the end of a cul-de-sac on White Pine Lane, outside of Manchester. A pickup truck from Long Island with a dozen bullet-hole stickers down its side was parked next to them. In the back was bathroom tissue, reams of paper and two dozen air mattresses.

"We need to buy coffee, frozen dinners, eggs, and bread," said Vijay Boyapati, who paid $5,000 to rent the house through Jan. 10. "We're going to need to feed a small army."

Boyapati, 29, is the man behind Operation Live Free or Die, an effort to bring 1,000 people to New Hampshire before the primary, to campaign for Ron Paul, an anti-war conservative running for president who mourns the end of the gold standard, interprets the Constitution literally and wants to put the federal government on a diet. Boyapati discovered the Republican congressman while watching the party's first primary debate last May. Seven months later, he has quit a lucrative job at Google to focus his efforts on the race, renting homes to house volunteers from across the country.

"I want to go all the way to November," he said. "I think we've got a pretty good chance to change things."

Boyapati started a website this fall, at operationlivefreeordie.com, where 370 people have pledged to come to the state. They indicate particular dates and jobs they can do, as well as money they can pay. Another 120 committed to come before Boyaparti launched the site. The site has already raised $50,000 for the project, and Boyapati has spent $10,000 of his own money. He hopes to attract hundreds more people, all from his laptop in the three-bedroom home.

In the kitchen, there is a ten-pound bag of rice and an institutional-sized can of baked beans on the fake granite counter. Six green potatoes sit in a bowl under the stainless-steel microwave. A group of women from the Free State project, calling themselves the Ladies of Liberty, Boyapati said, had come by a few times to cook and deliver a few cases of Samuel Adams beer.

"When you grow this quickly in a few weeks," he said, "it's hard to organize."

With the money he has raised through his website, Boyapati said he has rented 10 houses. About 60 volunteers are here over Christmas, he said. People have arrived from California, Oklahoma, and New York. One family moved to the Seacoast from Arizona. "It's not a Republican message," Boyapati said. "It's not a Democratic message. It's an American message."

Harry Harrison, 64, came back to the United States from self-imposed exile in Panama for the effort. Yesterday, he visited with Boyapati. He is heading up a house in Moultonboro for a month, where there is room to sleep 18.

The security search he underwent to fly back to the United States on Dec. 12 reminded him why he had left.

"You think that it is inconvenient to fly in-country?" he said. "It is infuriating to get on a plane to get back to the United States."

He had left in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, he said, deeply disturbed by the direction the country took after the attacks.

"We saw the fear-factor come into play: keeping people in constant fear that there was going to be another one," Harrison said. "Remember the warning systems they posted everywhere?"

Harrison served as a Marine twice, in the Vietnam War. He spent his career developing computer communications systems, in the oil and gas industry in Houston. His first vote for president was for Barry Goldwater, in 1964. His last was for Ronald Reagan, in 1984.

He came back because he said that he hopes Paul can win, and he trusts that as president, he would faithfully protect the Constitution.

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