14-00000 e u by AndrewSt.George the successful managers” of Bg America’s economy—its en- trepreneurs, financiers, mer- chandisers, ‘ = talking rebellion.-A kind of Febellion, anyway. There is no call to subvert the Republic, only to abandon it. In increasing numbers, ‘America’s wiost affluent and active elites are threatening to withdraw their funds, their assets, ultimately even themselves and their families from.the centers of the U.S. econ omy, which many of them seem to consider done for. Nicholas - von Hoffman, the acerbic and preter- naturally foresighted columnist of The Washington Post, found that in - Some of mid-America’s best execu- tive clubs, “Theré is talk of busing gold coins and keeping them in the office safe, of owning a piece of Jand to retreat to when the trouble starts.” The hero of the year’s most durable best seller, Kor Can Profit From a Monetary Crisis, by Harry Browne, is “Peter Panic.” the quine . ‘tessential American small investor. “He's in flight. from his own na- tional economy. Transferring every penny he owns from U.S. invest- ments into Swiss banks and Suuth African gold stocks, Petér Panic Practically doubles his worth fiom 1970 to "33; then he is ready to take the mest important Step to find himself a sechudéd rural cetreat to weather the “nation’s coming troubles. ‘ Hut retreat where? That's the basic problem none-of these doom Sayers grapples with. A. seven. ty-five-thousand-dollar-a-vear oman who pulls up lock, stock and bend eee ree a aa oft ; -€9 ESQuImE: srmRUaRY / *; 73 _ > oy Cae or-the: first time “ii history. investors—are - Capitalist revolution, the ultimate solution rives farmhouse may find there # mea- sure of protection‘ from random.-_ violence-or hé may ‘find, if real trouble starts, that in-his isolation he's utterly defenseless. " Unless, of course, he hus planned - ‘ahead—as far uhead and us care- fully a8 the originators-of what-one” can only call, for the noment, the Abaco Plan (it_remuins to be seen by events, of course, whether the ‘Abaco planners were as wise and prescient as they were farsighted and careful). The originators of the Abaco idea were the first to im- plement the urge to abandon Amer- ica with a concrete design, includ- ing a destination, provision for per- sonal and financial safety, monetary reward. and even a Utopian social Program. Though the men behind Abaco are nearly the opposite of the commune-seekers of the lute Sixties and early Seventies, their objectives are much the same. Ther '. seek a way out and a return te fundamental values, but their most fundamental value is the proposi- tien that each of them should be- many times a millionaire, untrou- bled by inflation. By the time you read this, the men cf Abaco may have accom- Plished the first stages of their pro- - fram cin which case you will have read about them in the newspas pers}--or they may have fated and be in the process af reproupiag. Bat Vd tike you to meet them as T dil. at a lunch in Washington, Do, Kast May. . ‘ “Can Hevourl aud tet stip the aga wf Bee"? . : tments to move to-a secluded . _ No.-sir!’ Not here in Duke Zei- bert’s plate you don’t: this well- bred Washington restaurant admits | no animals. Not even if thev’re wearing  eighty-dollar. Church's ‘shoes. Not even if they happen to be the familiar old two-legged war hounds who were made immortal in the Shakespearean Hne. and who are being made fashionable again this year by the success of Fred- erick Forsyth's’ lutest book, The Dous of War. mo Lo Here we are in 1974, murky, angst-ridden, confusing old '74, and with Forsyth's novel a best seller, hailed as “soon to be a itujor mov. ie,” deferentially praised for its. “reportorial realism," mere and Tore people are talking about “the cogs of War” as if they knew what the phrase. meant: an international cunspiracy of financiers and killer commandos who wage mercenary Mini-wurs in the quest fur maxie payoffs. What nonsense’ A drink at Duke Zeihert’s polished bar will five us a better view of reality than Fred Forsyth's — collected works. . Take Mister Mitchell Livingston WerLell here, a ruddy, jovial, mous- tached: chap, sipping his prepran- * dial Tangueray martini extra dry. it's obvious that if there were any. thing dogyy or bellicose about Wer- Bell he wouldn't be lunching where he is—at the head of the off Duke's - “prize front corner table, Or tuke the tall, well-tailored Man sitting nest te Werkell It is: Plain ata glance that he looks and hating just been overheard ask- ing, “May Po ohave the plekles, Pesse?"—suunds lize a patrician
14-00000 bessapemsetpemmemeeeneenen London clubman. And thas just. what he ix: Rebert Hamilten, Rar- on of Pethaven and Stenton, a dis- tinguished member of the House of Lords. - In fact, a. good look ‘at the leg- + endary Mitch WerBell—millionsire ” firearms tycoon, designer of the world’s best muzzle silencer,. ad- venturer, friend of dictaturs and "C.LA. agents, manipulator’ of the lack of small. nations—and-at ‘the . seven men’ who are his luncheon - ". guests today reminds’ us that, in real life, the strateyy of private . wars, demands, first of all, fimesse. ass Forsyth’s s-telling, “the dogs of “vwar? get togethér only to make hard- boiled “conversation about : “knocking off an entire republic” ‘with the aid-of World War H ma- chine ‘pistols laboriously concealed in oil drums. WerBell’s world jis “Mie tary Armaments Corporati and Sionica‘Inc:, he designs, ‘and manu--- factures” hia own -weaponrs, which ‘are recugnized all over the world as the miost sophisticated small arins obtainable. . Having acquired a taste for irregular warfare as an 0.8.8. commando feader behind “Japanese” lines in World War If, WerBell ia rumored-tu have taken a hand int a long string of mini. wars since then, from the South Chia Sea to the Caribbean and the Me iterzanean, But WerBell frowns on crass badinage, especiaily with food. At Zeibert’s the table talk is rostiys-about g.stronomy today, in - part because the dill sours and soft- shell crabs are truly: remarkable, in part because the host at the neigh- boring table is Clifton Daniel. the silver-haired Washington bureau chief of The New York Times. Eut by the time coffee and Cour- voisier arrive, Daniel and his party depart. WerBell lights a finely veined Montecruz double corona, “1 talked to the island tuday,” he says, and suddenly the table is all atten- tion. he island”--that's what this ‘lunch is all about. The island ts Abaca; not yet. an inde. pendent republic, nor a center of commerce and finance, but coral hump, either. In fact, Abaco Lis the second-largest landmass in the Hohamas—-Great .Abace and fattle Abaco, surrounded by a aprinkling of amall reefs and cays, over seven hundred square miles of fertile teopicsl paradise. Mitch Werbell and his gucets have cone to Washington to discuss a project 2 FSQuIRE: Pe BRUART different. A top. executive: of ; Des” fe | by ho means a negligible straight out of a Forsyth seripe: the take-over of Abaco—an action that will allow these men to get themselves and.their money profit- ably out of the U.S. To be sure,- any resémblance to popular fiction stops short with the . basic idea.’ Commands politics is dead. It will no longer ‘do to break open a case of booties hand pre-| nades and storm the palace. In fact, | Abaco has no palace. What it does | have is'six to seven thousand native ‘inhabitants who lead lives ranging from | quiet stagnation to mute poverty. 2 ' To be conquered, Abaco ‘must ‘be “attacked that fiindamental, aspect of territorial ‘expansion has not changed in four thousand years— but-in an age of psychological war- fare, motivational research; sub- -liminal propaganda and ‘behavior Wodification, the tactics must be different. WerBell's ‘first ‘assault-on * 5 Abaco has been psychological.” With - reat skill and ruthless persuasive- ness,- -the citizens of Abaco are ‘con vinced, step ‘by step, that they must “become an independent nation: that “becoming an independent nation is the greatest, most rewarding thing in.the.whole wide worid: that it is they, the citizenry of Abaco, -who must urgently need and demand and fight for status as a self-gov- erning commonwealth. “TD talked to the island for. almost an hour this morning,” WerBell re-... Peats genthy, now that everyone around the table ia watching him with close attention. “They finally got-the slips. They've already dis- tributed half of them. They'll make a one-spot run this weekend-and see how they score. They think irl) be sixty to sixty-five percent.” No translation is needed. As the Watergate tapes have demonstrat- ed, men who share a secret scenario come tu share a secret language, us if by osmosis. WerQfell’s remarks reveal that he has had a long-dis- ‘tance conversation’ this morning with one of his. chief operatives on Abaco, using a clear phone line— i.e., a connection involving untapped phone numbers. (Uf the conversa- tion had not involved a key agent on Abaco, and if the phone’ nud been” Suspect, the | conversa ition would have been brief.) The ayent on the island —most likely C. Ro Chuck" Halk who has served as WoerHell's principe! aper- “ative on Abaco during most of the Summer of 1074-—reported that the special courier who ovcasionally ar- “rises from Miami aboard a small amphibian seaplane, bringing con- sipaments which the Nassau au- 3.8 thorities are not sunpnsed te ge had delivered a shipmrent of biank survey forms. These polling: slips, devised by a prestigious U.S. opin- jon-research firm, are to moniter sentiment on Abaco in favor of ine dependence—not just once, but week by week, as WerBell’s psywar campaign unfolls. _ . Furthermore. WerBell learned this morning that a test sampling focused on a single Abaco settle ment, perhaps Marsh Harbour ‘or Fox Town, had been scheduled by his. agents on Abaco for the coming weekend. The organizers expected to poll between sixty and sixty-five percent. in favor of independence-— an impressive score, reflecting the © fact that the covert political came _paign of WerBell and. Co. is in its sixth month. : - aré indeed—not. merely .2e- - rious: but experienced, pow. érful and farsighted. Three sof. WerBell’'s luncheon & puests are former C.I.A. ca- reer officers, all three recently re. tired. from its clandestine Services . branch, where they acquired in- valuable-experience in the manipu- lation, dismanthng and rearranging of governments. John Muldoon, who is WoerRell’s principal agent in Washington, haz served as a PolAd a political adviser—in Vietnam cand Africa, Walter Micke-n has seen similar duty in a number of Southeast Asian countries, and Ted Roussus, a tanned, greying man, has been a senior C.LA. clandestine services official in the Mediterra- nean—litaly, the Balkans, above all Greece— for alnigst twenty years before he retired last year to’ join, ostensibly, the management of the Astor, Washington’s best Greek restaurant, long owned by his family. . These men are not war hounds or runslingers. Their ethos and. telos thrust not toward violence but toward control. They are technetron- ic conflict managers—planuera, or- ganizers, and only occasionally the manipulators of vivlent action. Mu doon is a tall, pink, deep-chested Trishman faithfully cust in the mold ‘from which most of the chief in- apecturs of large American police departments seem to spring. Mick- em looks bike an Ive Deague prad- uate instructor, biond, button-dowa, horn-rimmed, alert, with a Hong Kong Racquet Cheb tie to match his mive blacer. The pipe-smoking Roussos, in his Gawlessly cut En- “yloh trepieuis, demunstrates what the French mean when ther say re these: people: serious? * They we Cte
44-0000 . ment” with such amazi none.of the world’s major press has : “potted | what is going on. ‘A number ‘ ees distingué—the aging Charles Rover plunked in a spy scenario, looking not so much the part of James Bond as his enigmatic superior, M. At ’ three, folluw ‘Wer Bell's br iefing with small nods and ‘half smiles of ap- proval. Werfiell talks on, his exes on the pearl-grey ash of chis cigar, his growly voice low. There's ‘work to | be done—lots of it. The day known ss U.D.1.—that is, .the date: when _ “Abaco breaks away ‘from-the-Com-— . moniwealth of the. Bahamas, the Unilateral’ Declaration. of Indepen- dence—is tentatively set for New Year's Day of 1978. The operations _ required to seize. control of the is- land ave been’ disguised..as the “uprising” of an “autonomous, lo- eally organized. independence. move- local organizations “gd: hoc" groups of: ‘seemingly. and deceptively’ ‘have sprung up to handle those ac-. ‘tivities that cannot be kept from~ public view—propaganda, organiza- . ‘tion,. and so forth. There are: the Abaco Independence Movement (known as A.I.M:)}; the Abaco De- velopment Council; Friends of Abaco; the “Prosperity "74" Eco- nomic Conference on Abaco. Every one of these cover organi- zations has been clandestinely cre- ated, financed and managed from WerkHell’s headquarters in Powder “Springs, a-suburb of Atlanta. To ‘ coordinate their activities—propa- ganda, recruitment, proselytization, © the importation of distinguished “Abaco’s head honcho: mil- dionaire, ideologue and phi- fosopher Michael C. Oliver. ry -Peonisirig independence -mi .who are discreetly flown to Miami. Qn arrival, the. independence ac- ‘tivists. are either enrolled in politi- cal indoctrination courses. held in. , guest speakers from the US. who preach the independence gospe! but- tressed by a variety of economic ard political promises—a carefully camouflaged “forward -heacguar- ters” has been set-up in Miami. A large, deceptively suburban house at 1666 S.W. Twelfth Street hides a high-powered SSU.radio station, a “dispatch center” for herdling earge traffic with Abace via a smal! seaplane, and a halfway house for ants Nismi, or, having been provided -with plahetickets: under various cover names, they are flown farther sorth Gy o tra ag base near Ag- , lanta, where. they receive paramili- tary’ training ‘tihtder ‘the command ef-a former U.S. infantry omcér, ’ Col. Robert Bayard.. Col Bayard, a tall, leathery man ‘in thé Gary Cooper mold, with grey eres and a shock of reddish brown hair, is the officer in charge of “spe- “the cause of U.D.L cial ‘personnel. Young. muscular, unattached: Abaconian independence enthusiasts, whose commitment te is especially strong, are given seven weexs of Supersecret instruction in the use of. small arms, and other commands skiils at the proving grounds Kells) srma3 company. ervunds? Well, WerHell Proving maxes plenty of padvets that bear testing. ‘His companies: produce a deadiy sniper rifle, “accurized,” autoriat- septa day a”, ay ie i demolition devices - of Mitch Wer- oe ed, utterly silent, with tHe built-in capability of plugging a beer can at &@ thousand yards-—-"We guarantce thes much.’ savs Werbell—and a special sighting device which en- ables the rifleman ‘to fix his target day or night. With Gordan Ingram, WerLell has designed and produces the incredible Ingram, a miniatur- ized submachine gun no larger than the familiar. .45 service auto- matic, eight hundred rounds per ‘minute, the whole shooting match about as noisy as a very fast Ping- Pong match-——“pac ... pac... pace pacpac’—the barrel is a patented.— WerLell silencer. There is plenty of “sophisticated equipment” to test. But among visitors who have been invited there more than once, the place—electronic security fencing, the dog patrols, the imperious warn- ‘ing signs, the helipad for eambst — choppers, the airstrip for: the com- fiany Learjet—umong people whe call Mitch by his first name, the place is known as “the farm.” SAraining special personnel is a rigorous regime. and Col Bayard) keeps himself ia shape; at Zeibert’s he takes grilled liver and a. singie beer, and lunches in silence, seldom intervening in the discus- sion, occasionally glancing ut his wrist) chronumeter—he must be back at the farm by nightfall, ‘and a3 a mere colone!, he must “fly: come” mercial’—no Learjeta pre-warmel on the ready strip. Setting eut the final phases of the Abaco take-over campaicn, Wer- Lor JL ABACO: NATIONAL LAND TRUST - oe ENTITLE MENT, CERTIFIE TE SS LA6D Go OTe ap TTR os ae cma rth A AT SelERT ID cesta” od oy ee Soave Meee eT me PTFE BOT Fa ake ToD etcctive tlase aro ‘tyes oF &h, yes. the seven thousand native Inhabitants; ofter the revolution, every Abaconian will met a certificate like this one, worth one atre of homestead fand absolutely free, 433 ASQ. TeAeUARY rs)
14-00000 a ee See eee: een mien eter nae . fects Bell sounds as amoothls wad play- fully Machiavellian as the senior. ., account executive of » medicni- sized ad agency’ plotting a tricky. but not really make-or-breck media - bE: tz". The Support of the locals is -ehiatipe- their sélf-image.” Bis $ easy; "just Baten, We're gonna use only -:the truth: “Abaconians:, ‘think of . themselves .:.°. well, as people of modest means. “Ia ‘reality, they're...” “gold... And this is by..no means: sane . ‘other hollow hype. ‘No effective. Pas ; “war concept is. Stretching across the central ‘and southern.reachea of Abaco there are 300,000—three. hiindred thousand acres: of -undeveloped prime® land, potentially, 3 f Cay dy self: -governing: Bahamas. Com- _monWealth, : administered ‘by (the Pindling. government in “Nassau, they're still government land, strict- iy no trespassing for. private, Citic, "gers: dust suppose, the scenario goes, that'on January 1, 1975, woul old torpid hung over “sorry-general- the-switchboard-is-closed” New. Year’s Day, Great Abaco and Little | | . Abaco and all the lesser cays, reefs and coralback adjacent thereto, de- clare thermselves.an inilependent re- public. This vast virgin acreage Would: be—up for grabs. Every na- tive-born Abacunian could line up for his divvy. ; “Willhe get it?" asks Ted Rous- 808 at the restaurant. “Oheho, you bet your boots,” says WerLbell, “Here, see if | can find this stiff...” He flips through his attaché case, custum-made by Peal’s of London, pulls out sume gold- rimmed, ‘elaborately printed bands. “Blere.. the Abaco National Land Trust } Land Entitlement Certificate. This Says every native Abaconian adult seta his one-acre homesite free and Clear after. independence. And on the beneficiary shure, he'll get some of the major lease revenues, Here's the teader, lays it all on the line. Yousbet they'll pet a share. Pro vided, the tender savs right here, Provided! that the political siden ton fe Abaca ix just and fairs" ” i and fair.” says Roussos) W course, just and fair. if the Nat ional Land Whatnot gives @ach native a cne-acre homesite, it will yise them all, man, woman and 66 FSannar- FeeRUARY - ' . There héis... ial: “To-get it, we're gonna” and: teneficiary Share Certificate. . ' And here's. the other gizmo, the children all together, one perce of their own land. Who will decide ‘what's inst god fpip?” “Ah... probably I will.” the low toice, the bony -figure in the forty-ninedollar Robert Hall drip-dry suit, the jack- et bulge between chest afd armpit centouring ‘not the familiar shoul- “der holster but .a Hewlett- Packard minicaleulator: Mike Oliver Ukes sitting at the for énd of the table ‘with a notebook beside the butter ‘plate:., He-has lunched here prudent- 2 dy ’and salubriously on nothing but - cold: fishy aiid ‘icéd tea and witha health-conscious: frown for the va- por of two-dollar cigars, staring in- . “tently at every ‘speaker i in turn, now staring at Ted ‘Roussos over the re é “You. have. ar.good: point, -a “point but 4 a ‘good: -point. ‘Juat’ sumebody decides’ what they sre supposed to mean. On Abaco, I will ‘decide,’ That's the big: point, isn’t it?” -: Right you are, Mike. -Chestr- Mitch WerBell and Big Jack Mul- doon and Smart Walt Mickem and Courtly Lord Bethaven in their be spoke three-hundred-dollar suits and club ties and hand-rubbed Peal's cases, and Bob Bayard in his craggy silence, and all the other N.C.P. staff (New-Country Project is what that stands for) and special personnel drawing contract pay on or about Abaco are ultimately only meant to enforce what Mike Oliver considers just and fate and desir- able. Ted Roussos knows it, too; he resigns from the project the day after the luncheon meeting. But no one else does. Why should they? Mike Oliver is here, after all, not just as the founder and constitu. . tional creator of a perfectly seri- ous American new-country move-" ment, but in representation of a powerful syndicate of financial backers. It-is, above all, Oliver who is muking independence an immi- nent reality fur the citizens of _Abace, most of whom have never heard his name. Hut.among the driven, troubled, questing financiers of America, Qliver is more than a name. To many dusiness Jeaders he's a mira- cre werker, a miner prophet on the crumbling walls of the city, a far- sighted sentry registering the ap- prosch of the forces of darkness. , For a specter ix haunting America A new apparition of four space aye horsemen: Inflation, Ungmpley- meut, Depressien and Chaos, And BAS ‘fair’ -are only “words until providentially, at this critical june ture'in mid-1974. Michael C. Oliver, in asentiation vith Witche™ Wee Rell, offers the driven rich an alter- native: not just some ‘backcountry hidey-hole, but citizenship and rési- dénce in an entirely new country: a newborn commonwealth wholly ded- icated to the protection of private ‘wealth and the survival—indeed, the reriral—-of the classic free enterprise system. Long before the Dow hit the. five hundreds, and coffee went up to . fifty cents a cup, long before old people’ began eating, dog foed and farmers ‘dumping their cslves into ditches, Mike Oliver foresaw that the free-enterpriee economy was. ‘doomed -in—Amrerica: It sounded - » Strange st first, coming from Mike’ - Oliver, this single-minded belief in devaluation; decline and fall, for i in . the mid-Sixties-the-dollar was still the fixed star of the economic firma~ ment, the U.S.-economy was boon ing, and Oliver himself seemed the very embodiment of the American dream of success: a European im-- -. migrant to the-U.S, at eighteen, he had made his first million by thirty : (real-estate development, construc- tion) and 1965 saw him living-on a charming wooded estate in Nevada with a pretty wife named Betty and three lively children. Approaching fifty, Olver was the president of sever:! medium-sized corporations, a setled, induential community leader and the employer of a rave. ishingly beautiful secretary named Vicky Jo Todd, who was crowned Miss Nevada in 1970. Yet for al- most ten years, where other busi- nesamen and economists saw only progress and prosperity, Oliver di- wined a long-range trend tuward de- ; pressivn and disaster. Worldwide travel and an intense reading of economica helped con- vince him by 1965 that. aa he told a visitor years later, “They're go- ing to screw up the money.” He felt certain that debauchery of the dollar would lead to political crisis, inflation, and ultimately to sume sort of dictatorship. “Once I saw that the dollar was - kaput, that Whatever the govern- ment did would only make matters _Worse, 1 dumped my stocks and bonds ‘and switched to.a strong position in gold coins. Everyon laughed, except miy frienda; my friends said Ful gone crazy. Well, as ‘you know, it turned out that I'd made some pretty sharp bets in the money market, and instead of call- ing to supyest where | could get - sume perchotherapy., my friends called to (Contiuned on page $32) APD? tapeeepeeatice..  cuee Bi