Mitchell WerBell III
Mitchell Livingston WerBell III was a U.S. Office of Strategic Services operative, mercenary, paramilitary trainer, firearms engineer, and arms dealer.
Early life and OSS service
WerBell was born in Philadelphia, the son of a Tsarist cavalry officer in the Imperial Army of Russia. Journalist Penny Lernoux described WerBell in her 1984 book In Banks We Trust as "a mysterious White Russian." In 1942 WerBell joined the Office of Strategic Services and served in China, Burma, and French Indochina. As a guerrilla operative during World War II, he carried out a secret mission for the OSS under the command of Paul Helliwell in China with E. Howard Hunt, Lucien Conein, John K. Singlaub and Ray Cline. Following World War II, WerBell briefly worked as the director of advertising and public relations for Rich's, a department store in Atlanta, Georgia; he left after a year to open his own PR firm.SIONICS
After WerBell closed his PR firm to design suppressors for firearms, he incorporated SIONICS to design suppressors for the M16 rifle. The name was an acronym for "Studies In the Operational Negation of Insurgents and Counter-Subversion". Through SIONICS he developed a low cost, efficient suppressor for machine guns.In 1967, he partnered with Gordon B. Ingram, inventor of the MAC-10 submachine gun. They added WerBell's suppressor to Ingram's machinegun and attempted to market it to the U.S. military as "Whispering Death" for use in the Vietnam War. WerBell is credited with over 25 different suppressor designs and the "WerBell Relief Valve", a mechanism designed for machinegun suppressors. WerBell's modular designs and use of exotic materials such as titanium in sound suppressors influence their design to the present day.
SIONICS was absorbed by Military Armament Corporation, later called Cobray, where WerBell developed a training center for counterterrorism in the 1970s. The courses lasted 11 weeks and students included members of the military, high-risk executives, CIA agents, and private individuals. WerBell concurrently ran Defense Systems International, an arms brokerage firm.
Mercenary activities
In the 1950s, WerBell served as a security advisor to Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and to the Batista regime in Cuba.According to FBI archives, WerBell may have attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro.
In 1965 WerBell allegedly played a large part in planning the US intervention in the Dominican Civil War, codenamed 'Operation Power Pack'. The intervention was largely successful in restoring order on the island.
WerBell helped plan an invasion of Haiti by Cuban and Haitian exiles against "Papa Doc" François Duvalier in 1966 called Project Nassau. The mission, which, according to Federal Communications Commission and the Special Subcommittee on Investigations of the House Commerce Committee, was financially subsidized, and to be filmed by CBS News, was aborted when the participants were arrested by the FBI. WerBell was released without being charged.
In 1971 he co-founded the Miami-based arms sales company Parabellum Corporation with his friend Gerry Patrick Hemming and the Cuban exile Anselmo Alliegro. In 1972, WerBell was approached by the Abaco Independence Movement from the Abaco Islands, a region of the Bahamas, who were worried about the direction the Bahamas were taking and were considering other options, such as independence or remaining a separate Commonwealth nation under the Crown in case of the Bahamas gaining independence. AIM was funded by the Phoenix Foundation, a group that helps to build micronations. The AIM collapsed into internal bickering before a coup by WerBell could be carried out.
In 1973, WerBell was asked to assist with a coup d'état against Omar Torrijos of Panama, according to CIA documents released in 1993. WerBell sought clearance from the CIA which denied getting involved in coups. The plan was not implemented. In 1977, at the suggestion of Roy Frankhouser, WerBell was hired by Lyndon LaRouche as his head of security.
In a 1979 20/20 interview WerBell claimed that Coca-Cola had hired him for $1 million to take care of kidnapping threats against its Argentine executives during an urban terrorist wave in 1973. Coca-Cola later denied the claim.
In a 1981 interview, WerBell revealed he was about to break with the U.S. Labor Party, whose security staff he had been training at his Powder Springs, Georgia estate.
Later in life WerBell claimed he was a retired Lieutenant General in the Royal Free Afghan Army or sometimes an Afghan Defense Minister after supplying Afghanistan with large weapons contracts and training. WerBell claimed he was given the billet of Major General in the US Army to allow him to travel freely in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War to demonstrate and sell his silenced submachineguns and sound suppressors. This has been confirmed by Major General John Singlaub and Lt Col. William Mozey.
Other exploits
WerBell and Mario Sandoval Alarcón's associate Leonel Sisniega Otero plotted a coup in Guatemala that failed in 1982.In 1988, Sheriff Sherman Block of Los Angeles announced that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt wrote WerBell a $1 million check in 1983 to kill Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Walter Annenberg, and Frank Sinatra. Los Angeles television station KNBC displayed a photocopy of the check. WerBell died at the UCLA medical facility in Los Angeles on December 16, a month after receiving the check.