14-00000 3a TO BE OPENED BY ADDRESSEE ONLY: 5 November 1970 MEMORANDUM FOR: Assistant Deputy Director/IOS SUBJECT : Military Armament Corporation, Powder Springs, Georgia; Subsidiary of __ Environmental Industries,..Inc., . Washington, D. C. - alleged CIA Involvement 1. On 3 November 1970, T. Preston HENDRICK, Washington, D. C. District Manager, Dun and Bradstreet, Inc., (DOD Contract 61-88 ML), — valuable WFO information source, contacted Special Agen : ‘by telephone and said he had a matter which he thought, in the interest of national security, we possibly ‘might be interested in looking into. He-briefly explained the problem which had come to his attention from|Dun & Bradstreet's Atlanta, Georgia Office, and it was agreed that Special Agen ould meet with him in his office the following day. 0° he attached xerox copies of an informal memo dated 20 October rom D&B's Atlanta, Georgia Office, Subject: Environmental Industries, Inc. (Exhibit 1); a D&B Business Information Report dated 9 September 1970 on Military Armament Corporation, Powder Springs, Georgia, representing a subsidiary of Environmental Industries, Washing- ton, D. C. (Exhibit 2); and a ten page article from the August 1970 issue of ''Atlanta"' Magazine (Exhibit 3). HENDRICK commented that this article (Exhibit 3) has no by-line heading, and no mention of the author's name and is written in such a manner as to imply an association between CIA and the principal of Military Armament Corporation Mr. Mitchell L. WERBELL IU. i - 2. On 4 November 1970, Mr. HENDRICK gave Special Agent
14-00000 - did not want to take any chances and decided to call Special Agent 3. Mr. HENDRICK noted that the attached memorandum from the D&B Atlanta Office (Exhibit 1) is self-explanatory, but added that the Atlanta Office is receiving a lot of inquiries on both of the companies. The D&B Report (Exhibit 2) is the first and only such report yet produced by Dun & Bradstreet's Atlanta Office. The Dun & Bradstreet Washington, D. C. Office has had no other require- ments for information on the local company, Environmental Industries, Inc. However, the D&B Washington Office, in response to the D&B Atlanta Office request for information, has so far ascertained only that Environmental Industries located at 955 L'Enfant Plaza 5S, W., _ -Washington, D. C. ostensibly is a one room type operation with a telephone (554-9572) and one female employee who. would not identify herself; this person told D&B's investigator that he should not have.come there-that everything about both firms had to come from Powder Springs, Georgia. . 4, Mr. HENDRICK said his first impression after the article (Exhibit 3) was that the comments involving CIA "were ridiculous, pre- posterous, and were written by a nut who is as nutty as Mitchell L. WERBELL If seems to be", however, as a citizen he (HENDRICK)__23 HENDRICK also thought it conceivable that fraud mig possibly be’ involved, but indicated that he has not mentioned this matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 5. Mr. HENDRICK said that at some point he will have to respond to Atlanta's request for information on Environmental Industries, Inc. either by saying the Washington Office is not going to write a report or stating an opinion that the information in the ‘Atlanta’’ Magazine article - that if at all possible he would appreciate some guidelines - if nothing more than sending the D&B Atlanta Office a xerox copy of the National Security Agency Act and CIA Mission as described in the United States Government Manual or some other public document. HENDRICK made it clear he was passing all above information to us on a completely informal unofficial basis and indicated he realized it is possible confirma- tion or denial of implied CIA interest may not be possible. ee iat if at ridiculous. Mr. HENDRICK indicated to Special Agent EDMUND X. KLIPA \ Special Agent in Charge
14-00000 : Durs & Bradstreet, Inc. INTER-OFFICE MEMO , FOR AIR PAIL - CHECK HERE. me orrice ot Re PORT We Pew RO OFFice bt. SIGNATURE SUBJECT stents Pass Tie Oss 26 M0 TO DEPT, OR INDIVIDUAL MO. OV ATLtEL To Be Werog uence cen ) WD nrwaserca ( ye LT It roo tS  SoAsio, eau LTA Da mencnry Cone AER HE Oo &ATEAED pore Fo 4. 14 QI PYG OGsEs . rt nnn pp A ree i9L-42 (681007) O) continvuep on Reverse
14-00000 f . . ) at, re ofel stan, ae ytd. sikdt, tas. ae \ RUDRES SOR ESE) "de WE di FT tle init; nye we i - Bree . + ae a Yat oe a! lies: tet etae, GE loins BEM NEON ECR AMONCC Canes Sic D- U- N- $ . @ DUN & BRADSTREET, INC. STARTED RATING 9 | 004-969-3849 VOR 69 SEFT 9 1970 (FU 10-8) 1 MILITARY ARMAMENT CORP MFR GUNS 1970 ot (Subsidiary of Envircamental f industries, Inc., Washington, D.C.) RT #3 7 SUMMARY P.O. BOX 168 - oo | a . POWDER SPRINGS GA 30073. I. . PAYMENTS UNDETERMINED TEL 404 943-3574 ae EMPLOYS 12 Lt RECORD ~—s INCOMPLETE MITCHELL L. WERBELL, IIT, PRINCIPAL : cee . . Cte mee cee Smet bo ; wee ow : eee : . A A PAYMENTS .-...- Trade references destined. | FINANCE On Sept 9 i970, Mitchel! L. Werbell, ift, principal, deciined any and all Information. i investigation of outside quarters falled to reveal any detalis. An analysis by reporter Is Impossibie due to the lack of Informa-_ tion. _ A check with public records has been Initiated, and will be publ ished upon compietion. HISTORY Incorporated Ceb3 County, Georg!2 on duly i foro, Author? zed cap! tai 1,099,900 shares of common stock at-ne par vajue, Paic sa capital 24,000, WERBELL, hii, born about i918, married. Reperiediy was praeviousiy associated with Sionics, inc., Atlanta, Ga. Also appeared as owner of Mitcheli L. Wertell Advertising, Atlanta. OPERATION Qperates as a subsidiary of Environmental industries,-inc. Environmental industries, Inc., Wasaington, 0.C., deialls not availabie at thls Tima. Suajecr manufactures guns used In warfare. Sales are made to the U. &. Government and foreign governments. REporter estimates 20 accounts. Emp loys ia, inctuding officers... LOCATION: Operations conducted from 60 acre estate owned by Mitcheif L. Warbell, ill. 9-25 (32 87) THES REPORT MAY MOY 80 REPRODUCED {MN WHOLE OR IM PART IN AMY $GORM GR MANNER WHATEVER. husk as g basis for cradi#, inwrance, marketing {1 is turnished by OUN & BRADSTREET, INC. ie STRICT CONFIDENCE ot your request | under your swbrcrlotion _Sareamant for Your a "ee weet imenoce of this werning, Anorike DIM &
eet eae ete ~ a a é ee he fs pe P hcl dar 8a SOPANTINE Veiter House Comin ree Cominlitee said in an’ interview. a - ine Iepor te whieh “w was’ pre . “ pare or: the subcommittee ab last “Jusie 20, caused “some wile he arings “at this: agonizing in the Commerce * However, he said, I'd.» *" Committee: over whether to Lave greater - bope’ for -such : |) call a public hearing. hearings at ing at the truth if : Information in the report led © mey could be held in a forum~ to subpsening of CRS films, ies ofes th opportunity ty for: financlal records and logs in Tae invasion finally was bro - - connection with the invasion ken up by customs agents on - “attempt, Executive sessions Jat 1937, in araid at G i. were held at which CBS per- +2 sion plans or + that it had “any ‘complicity in the plot.”- * Asked whether the network: -had Snow ldege that was being: violated, “Salat -gaid: ne. would wale ereport, CBS © a viuhition of law. Bue neral position is that vislalion is general- an, or there is reason to ve thal law enforcement : s know about it, then * PI Beach, Fla. CBS had nO vy Bs testified, Plum we yi ‘ced without notifying sonnel . ended, is i ive lwement the: Pree: Salant said CBS News’ ex- tions af the Speci accused Seven = a sere indiete ‘by penditure for ihe ‘Haitian CBS of irresponsibility and a saa jury as ringleaders of . ; project” wa 8 betwee wn SEEO 7 six of them were said the network may have 7 pranident of and $170,008, “About § ut t ay 3 convicted in Novem- : x j ral ut ‘ ne ed an} eye 2 “at thits went “tor eX hal Sw ees : fi aan vlad hx federal sat Act ner 1687, whit ile the charges “ “ops. 2. casts--travel, buard, Jot ing “AP the Munitions: Control Law, the agains, the seventh -.were . “= and payments to non-staif pe RICHARD 8, SALANT : Communicdlions Act of ‘1934. =O Aopped by ti the Justice Depart- : ses) sonnel,” he said. ey "and seyeral firearms Jaws... * I 38 P part of an investigative te Although CBS has been’ closed. The | invasion itselfnev- .-° The! probers recommended FB Po Apt oon the activities of Cue Tinked to. the invasion attempt | er came off, a that the network be called to According to the Commerce Noedt-Haitian exile groups.” in earlier news accounts; de-s “This conimittee has anex- .;  publi¢: account in open hear- subcommittee staff report,: ‘the | ‘ But ne denied that the nete tails of the network’s Involve. cellent picture of what took ings before the Commerce’ Flot was batched early, in'l work helncd finance the iny - -ment have never been ‘dise?" place” a menher of the which has authori- Committee, See CBS, Pag j - eee nee Re weet
de® ep “iy, hey ail seize Muiti train ~ Deuiaiea Reputille S2 oR as a pruning uf vsirike at Cuba,” renorl contends CBS. 2 -Dout it in March 1956, in April to film inva-.: preparations, . including . s shipments and cach- wi did so judune andat’. fines, Tt Turther con s thal the nelwark pul up. a daw: and | the Fental of uf of Hs ope rae Ve ee ting report : . o Vale Pre: aad ‘Father. Jean e bas ean be 3d tartan treated af : vofedla Chae neiwerk Che pecedd oo divaedoae “lal Theil Hel tad doe pacpateiifoed, : Polat opmid & ahfie toed tee goisdl ont eit ns fisactead dial “(hub cad diveati - 2 ealled ont i ¥ eprepar. na” Hailian ‘invasion; “and ‘he leading “igetors in the asion” crama, according ‘Votes Masferrer Rojas, year-old Cuban right-winge -fown as “The Tiger.” He: antrgied a privale army in: - The. conspiracy took shape yba_ when Pulgencio Batista. initially as just one more Latin as dictator, ~~ intrigue ‘in Florida to topple ttee -rep says CBS’ association . with the tors “March Staff "report: ‘as a°man with: background in arms sales to Latin ' governments, is intro- duced’ by St. George to Me- Mullen in April at Wer Bell’s : "The Rev. Jean’ “Baptiste. _ the regime of Cuba’s Fidel “home in Powder Springs, Ga. atest a Catholic priest and: ° Castro. a “  ‘MeMullen, said the report, . former education minister . In this instance, "the plan: “ was told of Wer Bell's efforts wkler Haitian Pre esident Fran; called for’ Masferrer to bei in-; "to find a suitable base in the - Duvaliers:-::- mde, stalled as chief-of-Cuba while. Domincian ‘Republic’ for Mas- John Aton Constanzo-Pelau, - Father Georges took over Hai-) > -ferrer to launch his i invasion. 2 fCuban conspirator. who al- ti, provided a two-stage inva- . LS legedly ‘assisted. CBS ‘in its; | sion was successful.,: : filming. He «was:recently shot. -)., CBS enters. -the ‘picture ft : ae rough: MeMullen,;-a-producer: eager. to film. arms-smuggling } activities. The special subcom- a_price,-exclusive.CBS filming mittee’s chief:- investigator,’ . °. of clandestine arms. ship-> James -P. Kelly, himself afor- © ments, training exercises and . ‘ mer CBS employe, is said to _ the actual invasion could be wi Bons dealer linked to clan’ ‘have worked on a project ’ arranged. oh tine operations. ij yo with McMullen in 1965 to film). = MeMullen agreed to: ‘pay ; aa e in Latin ‘A aerica, He ete export tof puplus fight- close. to. $80,000 for... these. ; CBS hired St. George ag asso: % ’ ciate producer and writer of . _ the invagion story. ; down yuyment, St. ‘Lo Wer Bell! Price Tag. Cited -._MeMiullen-was-also told, cording to. the report, that for ‘story. t a _ materialize: In the mix-up, ‘the.J car carrying. the weapons los- Lh es contact, with. the-CBS:film Hichell Wer Bell TIL, a mu: sultant for the invasion’ ‘story. Juallen, CSS produc. ° ce fey toe bivasion slory, wiAndeaw St George, a. wiaace wriler who lipped if CBS on the invasion plans d was hired by the network associate producer. and “breaks | Gown’ in” Macon, Gai! ‘and the driver has only $15 i in «ish, CBS pravidcs financial help anda. 1965, Mercury. sla. gon to Macon to | McMullen brought a a film* vorew to a Miami house. ‘Vanes Wilson, a CBS cam- : “Bman. who- informed federal : foc ph Lraphed ‘her c cand in cathe. ‘i in Abe Riu
ie 4 re o i a lant said, | was to be tn “poat. ' Wa | money WE | ing. Another $1, S20 was paid ; | for .a second yacht, which was | and later : ‘used. by St. Georee gat fire. " Q = i ‘ alleging that Mc distributed them to the men. ‘Afler his injury, Hermiila '  @harged, medical aid was de- | ae vlayed until CBS cameramen could photograph the incident. : “Hormilla later settled his- ‘suit with CBS for $15,000, the ‘Teport says. |. According to the report, Wer Bell, Masferrer and St. George ‘showed up at the Miami office of Haitian Consul Eugene - Maximilian -and offered io end ~preparations for the invasion if Duvalier put up $200,000. When no answer appeared to forthcoming, the staff re- port says the plotters offered” through ‘sam; intermediary: to tion ‘with Maximilian back to "the consul for $10,000. ; ue Mullen trans-! ported weenons to Keadell and ly from the United Stites. pe -of their conversa-* P& hat he wv Say fod raisinformation by Davai-| . FBI and to U.S. Cus. ier, to fot the invasion. a “ ~. . Schacter, meanwhile, in- / a forms | Ma sferrer } ae CES was not i mae Fa t: Magn diplomat re naker te Duvailer, Spay Tose] ay aid in, nor knew anyihing this lncidvat und Wer. 4 upproached = MeMuten Pare Teae Beli ~, ang said he had the-tape. "\MeMillen’ said, “Hell, 1 won't. touch it,’.” ” aces rding to - Salant’. a a p ple shift to Coco Plum Beach and begin’ a new countdown. On Jan. 2, U.S. Customs offi-"| clals take the “array”’ into. custody amd: seize its. arm A falling out then apy parently af courred belween Masle and St. George and the la tier goes to Stanley Schactor, the same Customs -official briefed. earlier’ by. Wilson: to ‘tell his: version ‘ of | the“invasion story. ' St. George; "says the Teport, now drops” out of (he picture's. He is’ hospitalized with bad: urns suffered in a yacht ace LTS ‘deat ‘and ‘MeMullen hires Wer Eell as -a. story” consultant at $360 a week. ; “another shift * now takes: - ve: Justice place. The Dominican Resub- Devarinest ‘drop ef: Wer (Be Hie is “uncooperative” over the . 38 8 defendant, and th cones use of iis tere abase  gressional’ investigators re- itory asa for the Haitian invasion so the plotisrs decide to strike direct- ported that ali attempts to get | ‘an explanation -irom. Justice Tailed. The other..defendants: i nd Appears a Scoop A CSS. crew is flown to Port-au-Prince, Haili, and the. . network hires its own flagship 2 for $2,506 to trail the rebel» Folia. we and ABC ‘were struggling to catch up we the story. but the_“‘scoop,”’ it peared, belonged to CBS: Nov. 20 is the day before the invasion. But that night, CBS : “Leonard, “CBS | iviee a esident, correspondent* Bert Quint, in-- rebuked. Wilson . for <notifyi “Taitl, reports "4 “battle ~ raging —the-govermmer $5 cin the streets “between rebels“? - ; and: forces loyal to Duvalier. *- There is reagon to believe, ° the congress sional staff report _, ranging fro ’ years. The: verdict is om appeal Attortiey see "thie Sims it took: in-connection: with, she] invasig ~ Commerce’: “tinues “te Shidy . the ‘need “for public hearings ‘
14-00000 share ” ee ee ee . a 7 a : APRIL ( / Pn f , fo, G20 Le? J eran cn aes os re bb ed i ee amt, eertiny oy ‘ : eT ne ated dened Nah : \ ulty, Aa For seven years, Our two invisible governments have been fighting for control of the small, impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti. The outcome is still in doubt BY ANDREW ST. GEORGE HLUSTRATED BY DAVID STONE MARTIN
14-00000 poy, a » The CIA equipped guerrillas, amphibious-landing parties, spies and terrorists—and even bombed the president's palace mericans who never thought of politics as any- &\ thing but visible—visible and audible, for that ““\4 matter—spent an unhappy time in the °60’s ad- justing to the discovery that the United States had an invisible government, too: in point of fact, two of them. There is, for one, the CIA, all over Washington: then, second, there is the national syndicate of or- ganized crime, all over everything else. But it has re- mained for the generation of the °70’s to discover that—perhaps inevitably—once these two shadow powers collided somewhere, the confrontation esca- lated into an invisible war. - Tt may well be the first full-scale secret war Ameri- cans have ever fought: its origins disguised, its battles unreported, its casualties anonymous, even its most obvious scars so blithely ignored that when a French reporter recently wrecked her car in one of its gaping homb craters, she complained of “potholes.” The battleground is the nearby Caribbean nation of Haiti and the immediate issue is simple: who will con- trol her Maryland-sized national territory and 4.5 million desperate people? But the real struggle is for far bigger stakes: primacy over the entire Caribbean and its vast potential wealth. And—in the ultimate upset to American tradition—the bad guys scem to he winning. It is not impossible that, as in Viet Nam, our ‘un- declared war in Haiti might flicker on and off until the °80’s arrive, but one of its most un-American. - aspects is bound to disappear by then: it-will no longer ~ be a secret. It. will be the much-debated public prop- erty of historians, policy scholars, social scientists— .the stuff of Sunday book supplements and John Wayne movie options. There is bound to appear a best seller by a White House insider—an Arthur Schlesinger III, so to speak
ASH. --who will publish the authoritative, firsthand account of President Jolin FL Rennedy’s 1965 decision to id- tempt to free Haiti from the cancerens dictatorship of Dr. Francois Duavalier. and explain why the President and the National Security Council, ignoring the then- recent Bay of Pigs disaster, decided to entrust the liberation of Haiti to our “intelligence community.” How the intelligence community—a joint operations vroup of the CIA, the Navy and the Pentagon’s huge Defense Intelligence Agency—fell down on ‘the job will probably be reviewed by an award-winning Wash- ington newsman in a hard-hitting book that will call for a Congressional investigation—and likely get one started, But a definitive hook on the whole Haiti mess would best come from the cautious, emotionless typewriter of a seasoned crime writer. An old hand at gangland wars, naineless corpses, syndicate power struggles and a Abie, "Prt g Matta ed nambered bank transactions would go to Haiti and find the seene familiar, He would poke his toe at the bomb crater in the presidential driveway aud never mistake it for a pothole. He would talk to President Duvalier himself and- understand why Washington thought. back in 1963, that Papa Doc was a freak and a pushover--this frumpy, fecble-sounding. frog- faced litte flimflam fuchrer without a friend in the world. tle would spot more than one CIA “spook” in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. But he would sce that the influential Americans who come and go in the palace, whe dance with slim, bronze bar girls in the new government guesthouses, who are passed through the menacing militia roadblocks with a nod, belong to a different secret socicty: the “syndicate.” And our connoisseur of crime would reflect with a moment's awe on the sheer genius of Duvalier’s successful sur-
14-00000 vival strategy: the discovery that if you are under at- tack from Washington’s spooks, you can find an ally in America’s other invisible government—organized crime—make a common front, and win. All this would~have-struck the generation: of the ~~ ‘OU's as startling news. It was news, as late as 1968, even to people touched by the war, like Jay W. Hum- _phrey, a plumbing contractor in Melbourne, Florida. One spring morning two men in-neat dark suits drove. up. to the Humphrey house in Melbourne and handed Jay a strange draft notice. They were friendly men with an easy way of getting down to first names (“I’m Bernie,” “I’m Raymond, just call me Ray”), and they had all the usual accoutrements: a basic Chevy with a clipboard on the dash; some. papers to sign; some money in an envelope; an air ticket to Miami. Eight weeks later Jay Humphrey, a six-foot-four, spectacularly muscled Air Force veteran and champion weight lifter who had flown combat in’ Korea, found himself back at the controls of a heavily laden attack bomber. Coming in on deck over the glittering Carib- bean, roaring rooftop level past the piers of Port-au- Prince, Humphrey banked sharply into a low-altitude bombing run on the triple-domed presidential palace of Doctor Duvalier. Dead ahead, the bomber crew saw the presidential guard’s gunnery crew scramble wildly for the four- barreled Oerlikon ack-ack cannon mounted on the palace roof, but Humphrey felt only elation. He had When dictator Duvalier couldn't get arms and ammo, the mob helped. Now the Mafia men are collecting their debt a- passion. for flying and for adventure. In a way, he was a volunteer. Years ago, when Double Chek Com: pany and Gibraltar Sieamship > and | the Mineral ‘Carry: ‘ing Corporation_and two or three other one-room out- fits—all of them thinly disguised fronts for the Cen- tral Intelligence Agency~—were combing Florida for combat pilots, Jay Humphrey had signed up to fly in an operation then called “Operation Pluto,” but now ‘better known as the Bay of Pigs. “If that do had lasted another week, I’d made first- line crew; 1 was on the list,” Jay later told a friend. ‘And although the Cuban invasion beachhead vanished in 48 hours, the list with Jay Humphrey’s name on it stayed on file in Washington. This time he was called to flight duty against another tropical tyrant. But how did Jay, a good ol’ boy from grits-and-gravy country, where he left a petite, pregnant, blonde wife named. Kathy and a baby son—how did he happen to find himself up here in the sultry, sinister tropical sky, aiming explosive eggs at the president of a nation legally
i satan pane at peace with his own? And how did Haiti gel to be the CIA's priority target? , For 18 months, True Magazine and this reporter have been asking precisely this question in one of the longest and most far-flang investigations ever under- taken by a publication, carrying the query from Paris to San Juan to Miami, Washington and New York: Just what is happening in Haiti? We found more distrust, deception and double-talk than on any foreign affairs investigation we have at- tempted. But gradually we also found some friends, und among the friends. in occasional moments of con fidence. or frustration, we hegan to encounter answers with the feel of truth. Our first clues came from Gen. Leon Cantave. Haiti's former chief of stalls his execu. ~ live officer, Col, Rene Leon; and from three Ameri- cans with tropical adventure in the hblood---lawyer- Livingston WerRell JE of Atlanta: and Torn a sky-diving swas nbuckling reporter long in terested in Haiti, who nowadays keeps out of trouble hy working for the Columbus, Georgia, Ledger-En- quirer, Take Jay Humphrey. for instance, plummeting in inidair toward his moment of truth with 1,000 pounds _ of high-velocity plastic-compound explosive, packed in five specially rigged aerial bombs, to blow out the life of an incumbent president whom Jay had never seen in person. We know now that Jay was litile more than in Marger of Mianii; anunitions merchant _ a cog in a formidable special-ewar machine. Ye was part of a small army including six American combat pilots (Larry DeGraff, Art Sims, Fred Harte, Clar- sp ence Bud” Miller, Howard Davis anid Hun | plirey himself), as well as a marine and transport detachment led by Willian G. Smith and Wes Mad- den; a demolition and bombardier croup under Larry Hunter; and an assault rifle company of 241 Haitians: ttained in Florida and the Bahamas by experienced U.S. unconventional-warfare instructors who were iustly veterans of the Special Forces (like 5/Set Edmund Kelby) or of the Marines (like M/Set. Bil Miller). The autonomous tactical strike force even had sone strategic support facilities: broadeast and psvcholagi- cal warfare units for stirring up the population of Haiti: its own matériel procurciment; and its own paymasier--the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, dis- bursing: money for the project jointly with the Defense Intelligence Agency from vouchered but confidential Class “A” funds audited only within the agency. The aerial assaul y_an intense radio _ was preceded h barrage aimed at undermining President Duvalier’s domestic support. Our investigation traced the tapes of these broadcasts to a New ‘York ‘radio studio then _ identified as WRUL, now called WNYW (Radio New. York Worldwide), which often handles CIA- propaganda “programs. They [Continued on page 79] A-spousored
: tear ta VS. VE Cra ic -niinwed from page 37] wae beamed to Haid through the fa- cilitics of Radio Americas. af 101 Ma- dears Avenue, Coral Gables. It is a whils- pered fact in Ehdtiav und Cuban exile echoes that Radio Americas is a CLA front. also used as a transmission facility for daily propaganda broadcasts to Guba, ba Caral Gables. Radio Aincricas, Inc., Maines au eninently inpeccable fa cade. Tis president of record as Roosevely ©. dbetiser, aoanember of the hound of fimectors of Miutai's piant First National Bark, and the secretary-treasuver is a prestigious Mini attorncy, Walter Rage ors. Bat others—mostly Cuban exiles -aétually tia Gisting activities of Radia ri ‘Coral Garbdes and on Swan island | Caribbean, where it maintains a tower well within shortwave and mediumwave_ rauge of both Caba and Hai. ‘Che CIA, agent in charge ef programmiiy | is known to be an expericuced psychologi: cal warfare specialist, identified a ob ent J. Wilkinson, Jay Humphrey missed killing President Doavalier because three of his five bombs failed to explode—and the two that did lauded slighty off-target. One left the spectacular crater that sill makes a tedhe hazard under Papa Doe's oalfice balcouy. Piniphrey now suspects sabo- tage or possibie betrayal: the commando force Landed by three U.S. pilots at near- by Cap Haitien  simultancously with Tumpbrey’s attack on the palace found Belfounder fae from one of Duvalier's coastguard vessels suspiciously standing offshore just where the iavaders struck. _ All of these incredible special-warfare activities were aimed at the most ineredi- ble dictator ever to emerge on the jnter- American scene. Dr. Francois Duvalier, Papa Doc, President for Life, Protector of the People, Maximum Chief of the Revolution, Apostle of National Unity, Electvifier of Souls, Grand Patron of -Gononerce and Industry. Benefactor of the Poor has been, for more than 12 years, the absolute ruler of Haiti. He has shown himself a more darable despot than Hither: more murderously cunning than Stalin: more (cared than Mussolini; and a good bit richer than all three departed dictators put together. hk is estimated that fully hall of Haiti's $28 million national budget goes directly into Duvalier’s pocket. His secret bank hoklings in the U.S. and Europe were sail do be in excess of $22 million in 1965, at a time when Haiti's national hank reserves were down to $700,000. Part of this wealth is explained simply by Papa Doc's reluctance to spend. Not Jong ago, an American businessman try- ing to reach Arthur Bonhomme, Haiti's ambassador in Washington, found that the embassy phone had heen discon- nected for nonpayment. Hut most of it stems from Papa Doc's unique vision of stitesmanship. Considering himself a liv. ing incarnavon of the Haitian flag and “nauonal spirit,” he views all public revenues as his personal assets. Yet while Papa Doc has grown fat in . ing cool taste is the reason for \. Amphora’s world-wide fame. Try a pouch of Amphora and ... discover how pleasing a pipe tobacco can be. Amphora - , i g nn & - é : AV DO oY Ba dM a Niet id bee bean : 6 BPP tem cement we cern te na nme : ah oth to ew dal, can, ete” brad OB : AMEE SR" BI sp hye i . 4 { 2 ' an cS) S bd i 4 i tte Mh hi a Mord a Lt ae i \ fo : From the Azores to Zanzibar, and in every | * / American city in between, pipe smokers ; occas who demand the finest. light up with ” “, yom Amphora. Extra mild, slow-burn- power, his country has starved as no re- public of the Americas cver starved in modern history. In the arid, rocky, road- less backcountry, babies with a birth de- fect are drowned by their desperatc ar ents like unwanted cats; and healdhy children are offered for sale like cattle. Corrosive famine has eaten away the basic bonds of humanity; in 1962 Wash- - ington began receiving reports—aldhough it has long been reluctant to discuss them in public—that for the first time since pre-Columbian days cannibalism has in- filtvated the western hemisphere in Haiti. In 1962—after the biter May of Pigs was over and done with—Adolf A. Berle, one of the Kennedy Administration's ad- visers on Caribbean affairs, published a startling article in The Reporter, known to reveal dhe President’s thinking. Jt be- gan with these words: “Phe current Caribbean crisis in Haiti may prove bigger and more dangerous than Cuba. Bigger, because it builds on the already perileus Guban) situation. “More dangerous, because it prescnis the possibility of a race war.” Quly 50 miles froin Cuba across the crucial Windward Passage (and 600 miles from the U.S.), Haiti thus became a high-priority problem. Throughout 1062, Washington—frst the Sate Depart- ment, them State aod the Defense De- partment, then State and Defense and the CIA, finally even the White House foreign-policy shop—pulled and hauled at all the customary strings used to make Caribbean caciques change their ways. But, much like Castro, Duvalier refused to jump. .. the great tobacco the Dutch ship here pWwith pride. AMPHOAA BROWS BLUE Meld Aromatic AMP HORA Re Regular | AMPHORA | ie) Full Aromatic. Hie seat dhe US aaulstssrcdas. Robert Newbegin, packing, duiew oat the Yar ican military mission, expelled auy U.S aid officiaLheard raising his voice ia ve moustration, aad dater-—lest de appes acglectfal of the spirituel side of uhings-. had the Jong-resideat Episcopal bislop al Haiti, a gentle midwesterner named Ab fred Vocgeli, carted tu.the airport with a ‘pistol at his head and dhumped abound te Fest plane out. ; Burt Fidel Castro was one thiag: Castro. as President Kennedy came to realise had unmistakable political genius and powerful allies in the vast Eastern bloc. Davalier, on the other luni, with his uncontrollable behavior, “first struck Washington as demenerl At the sugges. tion of his baffled advisers, President hon nedy decided to pive Papa Doc a siniep litious saniuy checkup. Late i 1962 a distinguished US. ps chiatrist experienced in desling with die cccentricities of executives was suminaned to Washington and cnulisted ina cloak- andabiguer stratagem to diagnose Papa Doc. ‘To provide the psychiatrist with a safe cover and access to the unpredict. able Haitian dictator, he was ostensibly appointed to a senior position with the U.S. embassy in Haiti. ‘he embassy. on White House orders, arranged a privaic dinner with Doctor Duvalier and saw to it that the visiting doctor was seated sira- tcgically opposite the unsuspecting pres ident-—where he could engage both in observation and conversation with Papa Doc. Nawt dhe Veveduss erenahorad obit cee
14-00000 oe sees Uipaentue tua Ob uuty in tS. Forcign Service annals, the psvehiatrist flow back to Washington. He retuned Leis diplomatic passport to a tich Winte House adviser with the re- port that, “Duvalier is a psychopath— there aie unmistakable symptoms of para- noid mecalontuia, He isa very sick man. Hic weeds to be relieved from the pres- sures af the presidency, and competent ircatment and a Jong rest.” To sce to it that Papa Doc was re- lieved from the burdens of the presidency now became, on President Kennedy's or- ders, the responsibility of the ULS, intel- ligence and security establishment. ‘Phe’ last warning, however, was ta be deliv- cred by tradiion through the Siate De- partincae,. On May 25. 1963. U.S. Ambassador Raymond “Uhurston (who liad suececded Ainbussader Newbegin), flanked by every scoioy ULS. military officer not yet kicked eutod fiaitt, drove up to the palace with ihe Stars and Stripes flying and strode ado President Duvaler's private office. What happened next dias been a closely counted it to a European visitor recently: aN . mbassador Thurston appeared one evening to tell me plainly that | oust go. Tie came and said that the country wis in revolt and my cnemics about to seize power, but that the United States would belp save me personaly provided, of course, that P gave no crouble and went qpuictly, Well, Do owas seated at this very desk and ihe ambassador exactly where you arc sitting now. P knew that the Aincrican {lect was in our coustal waters, hat when the ambassador finished, 1 looked at that clock there and then | sak: ‘Tt is you who must go. | give you 24 hours to leave our country. And now, get out of my_ presence.’ "Lhurston_left Port-au-Prince, and, you know, nothing . GC pres Wee HO revolution, no real attempt to overthrow me, none of the things Washington ex- pected in order to beein landing tts Mariucs ever came to puss.” But Papa Doc was far woo modest. We know now chat if the Americin ainbassa- dor’s threats failed to materialize. it was not for want of Washingion’s wying—and trying, trying again—to-wipe the Duavalicr regime off the map. But whit no one has been able to find out until now is just how Papa Doc has managed to resist seven years of border invasions. amphibious commando landings, assassination —at- tempts and Special Forces-trained guer rilla infilurators. Last year. for the first time, the CIA and athe U.S. Justice Department came into “hard” infermation indicating chat in ocarly 1GS. just as his troubles with Washington were beginning to boil, Papa Doc was visited by a plenipotentiary cn- voy of U.S. organized crime: Joseph “Joc Bananas” Bonanna. then boss of New Vork’s biggest and poientintly most powerful Mlahia family. Joe Bananas had not come to Porta Prince looking to fight anyone: he came looking for the casino concession, and after some private talks with Papa Doc. he got it. As peacefully as if he were franchising a My. Softee ice-crean stand, Joe Bananas installed Vito de Filippo, one of his veteran ca porveduds, ta landle the Portau-Prince gambling setup, and returned to New York—head-ou into a shooting war. Gaba ly was a murderous. intra-Mailie power struggle, now known as the Banana War. After several months—and a toll of 14 corpses—Joe Bananas had to retreat. He decided to move to [laiti. Now he came to see Papa Doc in the bone-white palace, not as a visiting businessman, but as_an_ ally in search of a confederate. TRUG bor ia Fall year, re foo Dinianas in Paw “rence. Vibes the aging gang bos. wept rimiing iis wonbling concessions. iis whereabouts romiined a well-kept secret. Balled spec- ulation everywhere leaned toward the conclusion that old ananas iad gore to sea in concrete evershocs, And when Joc Bananas finally reappeared in the U.S. sound and suntanned, the Mafia was, Jor once, genuinely awed. A tropical. tour: isty Hittle country ike that, where CLA and FRE and “Freasury and other federal apenis were excluded as archenemies, had obvious potenual of its own. Para Doc, for his part. had also dis- covered the special advantages of a mu- tual assistance pact with the svudicate. He discovered them when—luird pressed by clandestine cnemy landings on lis long coustline—he went to Washington to buy same badly needed patrol craft. ‘The specifications on the procurement list Haiti submitted to the U.S. State Department in ate 1963 looked harmless chong: fPoVen PY bows. 95 to 125 feet in length with metal bulls and diesel en- pines. armed with multiple cannon and machine-gun mounts 2 ‘Three small LCS’s (Landing Crafi, Support) ; 3 Five LOVP's (Landing Graft Veli cles-Personnel) 4.One small metalhulled tughbac 5 One small buey-ieoder vessel ‘Vhese were inoffensive  coust-yaund- type craft, never denicd any totcommnia: Wist ation. But ie the special case of Papa Doc, the State Department took a single look at the shopping Jist aid firmiy wpswered, “No. Nevertheless by 1905 Papa Doe's litte sea squadron acquired about half the vessels Washingion never intended it to lave. (Lhe requiremeis for LOVP*’s was scratched.) Where did they come fram? U.S. intelligence points to a shadowy man, Max Tnirattor—and the syndicate. - - Intvatior, ao short. rotuad, chaining European known as a Hrndert passier— ie. aman whose origins are lost among the hundred diferent passports be uses— was aa important syndicate specialist when the Lansky mob controlled gum- bling in pre-Castro Thavana: a money mover. In mob hierarchy, a moucy mover ranks very near the top, a trusted execu- tive skillful in exactly what the name implics—safekeeping, hiding, smuggling. exchanging, depositing, investing and paying out moncy without ever revealing the real owner or causing him trouble with tax authorities. ly Havana, after Castro's takeover, Max Tntrattor became a moncy mover with a front-line command, so to speak. It was his job to prevent the Maxinnint Chief of the Revolution from getting his hands on the roomfuls of moncy belong: ing to the Maximum Chief of the Syn- dicate, Meyer Lansky. This “involved” exchanging all of it into U.S. currency—modcrate-<denomina- tion, unlisted dollar bills—a job Tateat- tor accomplished with marvelous speed, paying two, three, four pesos to the dol- tar thoearerbarit TORQ: a clrescel niece
‘e Save money on firewood with your own —- ~ 3. Send for this free book, full of Castro canceled the currency in favor of a new issue, and anyoue caught hold- ing more than a hundred Cuban pesos lost if. Max Intratterwas obviously ready for bigper things. _ In 1064 Max appeared in Rome with auaval shopping list. lt showed no wear or daar Bom having been crumpled and ~tliscurded by-¢he 48. State deparanent.— Lhey-could -not-very-well -Le—lought_in—_yuns_and shu ln fact. it looked like a different shop--- -.- ping list. What Max was looking for was the sort of small, surplus, inoffensive lit- Ue offshore boat the Eurdpean shipyards will produce at surprisingly low cost {rom converted U.S. subchasers, old PT boat hulls or steel-hulled Mosquito boats. Papa Doc learned there is no need to © truckle to Washington for naval craft; the U.S. Navy has sold hundreds as sur- plus in recent years, and all you need to find the right ships with the right gun mounts is the right connections. And in ltuly. the mob had connections—far, far better connections than the stuffed-shirt Stuie Depurtment, for insiance. “Although we knew that Haiti needed coust-guard craft, the: buyers were so crafty that it took us a year to realize those Italian patrol boats had gone to Duvalier.” a U.S. agent said recently in Washington. “They were first routed to Helgium, then to Montreal, then to a lot of dummy Bahamian consignees—no Haitian government had ever used that sort of quadruple shuffle before.” Washington docs know, however, that Duvaliecr’s dreadnougiits were in ‘service APRIL 1970 information on how te choose the right chain saw for you. 3 . 3 $3 a“ + & conaag Homelite, 1.0404 Riverdale Ave., Port Chester, N.Y. afextron) pivision e ry woe! ae wet 7 = - j e .. saa i atin) to wa ed (f- SA fo. teeter iad + . s _ 4 by the end of 1965. As recently us 19u8. _ one of them, equipped with US. 50-cali- ber machine guns and a 20mum. auto- matic cannon, -helped {rusurate_a CIA- Low-cus . many beneliis oi owning your own Homelite chain saw. You can prune and limb, clear storm damage, fell trees up to 3 feet thick, even make rustic shelters and garden furniture. A light pull on the starter cord is all it takes to get siarted, The Homelite E-Z is so lightweight, well balanced and easy _ te use that you'll find you're a natural woodsman after only a few minutes practice. . Drop in at your Homelite dealer; he's in the Yellow Pages. Test cut with a new E-Z or other models in this world famous line - You'll take home a Homelite. NOY yen le =~ lomelits nuanced; and in still others, the syndicate’s iole was to snuggle guns past the US. embargo and deliver them to Port-aw- sponsored commande Janding at Cap-_ Haitien. Machine gus, canson, villes, amino— these wee cqually burning proleleis. laly, because Haiti's existing.stock piles were all U.$..made. Duvalier turned ta the syndicate. “Je was dike Castro turning to the Russians,” says Edwin Marger, a Miami lawyer-pilot who is one of the top ex- $ on munitions law in the U.S. “Re- | meraber, Duvalier was under a war en bargo, too-except this one was secret. The fact is, Haiti could not clear a BB gun through Washington Lberween 1963 and 1965; U.S. Customs would confiscate ‘he shotgun shells in your suitcase if they learned you were emplaniug for Haiti. So the Haitians went to the only people around who could help thei, Meyer . Lansky's crowd. And Lansky—when you get south of Jacksonville, weil, there is Nixon and Agnew, and in the British and French islands there's the Queen and de Gaulle, but when you say ‘Boss’ you mean only one man, all over the lue water—Lansky. So when Lansky’s crowd decided to help Haiti, the Wash- - ington crowd was in trouble.” Im some cases, Marger acknowledged, the mob helped Papa Doc locate hard-ta- find munitions in the gunrunning mar- ket; in others, actual purchases were fi- Prince. ee ee _ “Do you mean to say.’ Marger was asked, “thar while the” CA wai buyine, ships, guns and planes to overthrew Due valics, the syndicate was giving bin the pSto.stand_off the. spooks” .. “And planes, too.” Marger grinned: he had served as defense counsel for more than one gunrunner caught skating suull to Haiti, and warmed to the possibilities of the question. “If you want more ex- pertise, ask Wally Shandley.” Supervising Gustoms Agent Wallace7. Shandley is one of the U.S. government's inmost prestigious Caribbean experts. Posted ju Miami during the ‘60's, he hits been in charge of more guorunning in vestigations than any other single federel agent. He never talks to reporters, We finally met at dinner—Marger, Shandley and Charles Mevs. a towering. stolid Haitidi businessman who had once been a clandestine gun shopper hhimself for Papa Dec Duvalier—and while Agent Shandley will not declare himself for -the record on anything traceable to Washington's invisible government, he has no similar communications block on syndicate activities: “There is no doubt.” he said slowly, a tall, lanky man staring into his drink, “that organized crime is responsible for supplying prohibited mil itary equipment to the Haitian ruven ment.” - . &
14-00000 Asked about the planes mentioned by Marger, Shandley nodded: . “Miltary aircraft have been repeatedly smuggled to Haiti from the U.S.," he said. “Dake the 7-28 all-purpose fighter- bomber training plane, Washington spe- cifically put them on embargo, but Du- valier got some anyway, and it was a criminal tramsection.” The mysterious case of the contraband T-28's threw a sharp instant’s light on the hidden workings of secret wars. Two of the smuggled warplanes purchased from private ~dealers were traced to Randall Lee Ethridge, a Palin Beach pilot Known as a busy friend of Haiti; beyond Ethridge, the trail led to Vito de Fihppo, the Cosa Nostra viceroy in Port- au-Prince. ee : , The T-28 case demonstrates the fal- lacy of trying to wage undeclared war in a democracy,” says a distinguished Washington observer familiar with Ca- vibbean affairs. “Those aircraft were smuggled to Haiti ‘baredeck’—that is, Duvalier needed an expert air-craft ar- morer to install gun mounts and can- non and automated bomb bays and rocket struts. It's a tricky job. ‘The mob found Papa Doc an armorer in Miami / aud hired him at $200 per diem, and sent / him: secretly to Port-au-Prince via Luca- yan Beach and Kingston. The trouble was that this happened to be the best free-lance armorer between Atiarfia and Key Largo, so naturally he was also the CIA’s occasional contract armorer—he'd tlone quite a few quiet jobs for the spooks. Eventually Customs heard about the “I-28 caper. When the armorer came back to Miami—job ail done, money in the bank in Nassau—he was arrested and interrogated. Customs was rubbing its hands and working up indictments against a whole ne of mobsters from New York to Haiti that it turned ous that their key informant, the aermorer, on could not be produced in court without the danger of revealing the same sort of shady secrets about the CIA. Finally the government just dropped the case.” Wherever the military equipment came from, Papa Doc needed it desperately, for throughout the "60's Washington's invis- ible government pressed its attack on the detested dictator. In 1963 Gen. Leon Camtave, the white-haired, widely respected former chief of stalf of Haiti's army and a self- exile from Duvalier’s dictatorship, was secretly offered funds and facilitics by a White House adviser for a commando in- vasion of Haiti across the Dominican fronticr. The funds subsequently came from the joint CIA-DIA_ opcrations group. When money proved insullicient, General Cantave’s little -anti-Duvalicr army was provided with weapons, am- munition and other war supplies via di- rect night drops into the Dominican mountains from an unmarked U.S. Navy lane, much as U.S. units on the firing ine would be resupplied. There were, however, some necessi- ties—training and discipline, for instance —that could not be supplied by direct airdrop. When Cantave’s campaign failed for want of such essentials, the CIA-DIA task force began to train anti-Duvalicr activists directly, first in a sceret camp near Fort Holabird, Maryland, then at the JFK Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In 1964 and 1965 two U.S.-trained Haitian commando groups, organized like the basic Special Forces “A” team, in 13-man units, went ashore in southers Haiti, ‘The first one was a spearhead force, intended to set up a resupply drop zone and to provide leadership for local insurgents. Six months later, the second team—a smaller unit of eight men, four of them Amricane—went briefly ashore on a simpler mission: to check the area around Jeremie and find out firsthand cREESTE “The the vaoae tea. as at tanned ou ered crad chewed up oto tae Let une iy Davalier’s butcher-bind militia, the Low ton Macoutes. . The invisible government in Washing ton became convinced that overthrowing Papa Dec and taking charge of Haiti called for American leadership. bo 1o0b, when Father Jean-Baptiste Georges. 4 Catholic priest who hid been Haiti's Minister of Education, began to organise a major commande expedition in Florida, a U.S. Special Forces captain named Rob. ert kh. Brown suddenly appeared among the recruits. . A Miami journalist with intimate CLA commections arranged a secret mecting in his Coral Gables hame between the ti tre be tian exile Jeader and the U.S. oflicer. At. this meeting Captain Brown, a wiry, commanding figure in his Viet Nam com bat fatigues, squatted on the living-room rug with a sheet of paper and showed Father Georges how a commando opera- tion against Duvalier’s stronghold should be planned. The captain was ready to lead the assault in person, provided he was piven operational command of Father Georges’ litle $00-man army, Unexpectedly the secretive, stubborn Haitian Jeader de- cided against handing command to an unfamiliar American; a few weeks later, his entire “invasion force” and all their arsenal were seized by U.S. Customs. Al- though Father Georges had been repest-— edly arrested in Florida for similar violations of the U.S. Neutrality Act, but somchow never indicted, this time he was hauled into federal court and given a prison scntence. In 1968 another major anti-Duvalicr air-sea assault, spearicaded by fav Humphrey, was launched from Florida by. a group of Haitian exiles. U.S. pilots, instructors, boatmen and demolition e¢x- perts handled all key operational assign- ments. Most of the financing came fram the seeret funds of Washington’s invis- ible government. But by far the heaviest toll was paid by the men—and their wives and children —who became involved in Washington's anti-Duvalier campaign. One of the young Haitian militants who participated was Bernard _Sansaticy,. 29, a graduate of the Bordentown Mil: tary Institute, who riskéd bis life repeat- edly to liberate his country. A recent con- fidential report of the Organization of Avcrican States on the destruction of human rights in Haiti lists the name of Sansaricg a dozen times, iucluding dirce children under seven and a pregnant imoulier. Every onc of these men, women and children was put to death by the ‘Tonton . Macoutes in retaliation for Bernard San- saricg’s enlistment in the Haitian secret war. The women were raped, time and again, wail they shricked for death: it came, in some cases, with the slavering assault of a sadistic torturer known as “Ti Fer” (Iron Uncle), who tore his vic- tims apart with a spiky iron collar at- tached to his genitals. ‘There are also reports of sraall girls sexually abused and impaled with battle. meee ee mm RA Ht
hag on et tlsbe ' “unpses, bistins shuttered apcaiase the wall betwee their mothers’ eyes, To this ant-Davatier cainpaign, the CLA, incredibly, often was forced to stand hy helplessly while its trainees were Suu htcread, Gorakdine Cirro is a slim, sophisticaiced Lfonde. an Anieri¢an nugazine writer who iis been familiar with the Haitian frecdom fight for years: she has given it tine and eflort. and finally she gave her fiancee. toa: “What happened was the CLA picked up oiny fined Max Arinand, along with vane S0athers, ook Thenrall to Maryland ww two covered trucks for training,” Miss. tastes doddd “VRee recently. “Phev were Somes tice from fine Piaition lamilies— tues culled tbemseives the Jeune Haite froap. “They got cight weeks’ Special Forces thai, ending in same sort of jeugle drainiog exercise. And they got snue rear—fArcarnis, communications and amphibious equipment, whatever they uceded. They were supposed to begin openizing the opposition, serve as a spearhead. - a” When the first team landed in the sath of Fait, Max was secoml-in- com- mand. After the first few days, they ren into Devalier’s milida all around Jovemic, and there were fire fights almost every day and they began taking casual- ties, “Then their radio conked ont— braken or lost, we don't know; we just toulda't comnmanicate with dem. “He gradually became obvious that un- less something was done these boys were cooked. And we ticd—listen, the CIA really wicd—to get some help to the boys or somehow save what was left of them. Awl we couldn't do a thing. Washing. ion just shut down on us: it was like running into a stone wall—nothing. All the—beys-were-killed. -My- fiancé, too. I have since found out-hew. he died, but.- UP don't think 1 can talk about it. Any- how, the CLA: guys—the people who trained and equipped the boys—were ter- Filically bireer, and said someone was pulling strings behind their backs uw de- Mrov the expedition. ‘The only thing they could do was chip in, just like an office collection, and pay fora Requiem Mass, a memorial service for the dead. lt was right here in New York, on )4th Stueet. IT went too. All the CIA guys and families and girls of the dead boys weve there; the aisle was a river of tears." Tu all this sad scene—Washington's in- visible government praying for the heroic tea it had trained but could not sup port—the significant sentence cancerns the “pulling of strings” behind the CIA's hack. Even in Washington, where the local industries are lobbying, fixing, influence peddling and public relations, this must have been a difficult feat. Whoever went to bat for Duvalier confronted the vast Washington forcign-alfairs bureaucracy— the State Departmene, the intelligence establishment, the angry Organization of American States, some of whose mem ber states were privately urging the U.S.. to forget about diplomatic niceties and send in the Marines. mo Our investigation encountered virtual consensus that only one statesman of or- oT? ot? Byte ot deer df a, : po. i 4 ‘ ' ‘ 1 - rly t . ‘ . = yO . — t a 3 , . é - ' Lifstime ‘ Service i “~- Guarantee ee 7 if f - i . i é ~ a. -_ f ij aT: wo sfepoteaiey: sete ness sete nore we Send 25¢ today for ganized crime could have turned the trick: Meyer Lansky, mighty Meyer, eapo di capi re, boss of bosses, the world’s most influential money mover and corrupter. “We know that when Papa Doc's time of troubles began, mysterious go-betweens procured him a very influential Washing- ton ally—Bobby Gene Baker, who was then secretary to the” Schate” Majority and had been righthand man to Vice Presideat Lyndon Jolson. Bobby Buker had a rare galaxy of gilts: he was an ine flucntial figure among clected officials, a close friend of LB]. and a natural-horn fixer with a quick mind, Baker was taken to the mountainto and shown the promise of Haiti by a pair of Meyer Lansky's Washington lobbyists: Ben Sigelbaum—2 senior mob money mover—and “Fl Levinson. who came to Lansky and Haiti by way of Las Vegas and Miami, Quicker than you cin say “raked,” Baker found binnell plugged into a sctup which paid hime a penny tribute on every pound of meat slangh- tered and exported from Haiti~animal meat, not human flesh. Magically, meat exports began to soar. Bobby Baker's butcher bonus; was, however, merely a beachhead for Duvya- Hier's and Lansky’s combined forces. Lansky’s vision of the Caribbean as a lush blue-water empire of gambling, tour- ism, covert banking and real-estate ma- nipulation came to include Haiti in a central position by the mid-’60's. This statesmanlike concept from the dean of US. organized crime in turn permeated every nook and cranny of the many busi- VU detaey) fa ‘ < cart Re Lod Oo LT atectettinn dome emits nts AO Momus mem sme 4s Bt cok ance aa your copy of the NEW colorfully illustrated, 32-page Fisherman’s Handbock. ness organizations under his influence. In Miami, Lansky money helped sec np a far-flung outfit known as Interpationa! Airport Hotel Systems, whose associates came to include some Tifluential Wasi ington figures, most prominently Mins well M. Rabb, who served as SCCTCLEPY ba the Cabinet tiider President Kisenhower, By 1965 Tnternational Airpoit Herel Systems developed au unmistakable in terest in Haiti, Lansky money tou in way into another promotion-minded aut fit with strong Washington connections Bobby Gene Raker's Serv-U) Cor por tion. Serv-U was basically just a vending machine company, but in the mid-G0's i: found itself with some new associates. Ed Tavinson, Dino Celliniand forme Nevada Lt, Gov Chtt Joncs—all of when: had, as if by coincidence, served brie! tours of duty in [haiti tending some chore or other connected with wounbling. Nata rly cnough, they were all enthusiast: Davatier boosters. Clift Jones—whe. thous with Cellini, has been long considered hy U.S. suthorities as a front for Lansky. - proved an indefatigable lobbyist for Haiti and its many potential pleasures. la 1964 Bobby Baker and Ben Sized baum became involved in helping te charter a new bank in Washington. ‘The . banking venture attracted influential people—one of ‘them a powerful Con- fressional activist in Caribbean aibeirs. Kecoming involved with banking ai-:- Have Baker an idea of another way Yo help Papa Doc—by giving dhim wore. The giant international banks besa te
. ° and ho top. cea lore aid and loan funds to imaedicr—at a time when the *huvisthle Bovermiment” was sending men fo thei deaths trying to overthrow him. Another key area in which Washing: tons “invisible government” proved pow- ciloss was the assiguing of U.S. ambassa- dors. Here. the Senate and the White Hlease “kitchen cabinet’ had the deci- sive influcuce. What developed gradually was a mys- enious “the-cagle-has-two-heads" policy with macubre results: feeavly 101, just as the CLA began to seul olf aati-Duwalier recruits io train at secaey ULS. camps, the White House sent olf as new US. ambassador to Haiti. The new envey Beason 1. Tinnnoms TL was Weck. qnaimeable, Goman Whe seemed preparcd to coexist with Papa Doc ati any yh tec. Mareover, although Divalier could not prvi a penny out of Washington through Tod. by 1964 the fohuson Administra: ror American Development Bank told Papa Doc to pick up a $2.6 million loan; the Haitians did so hastily, for under the exceplionilly generous terms set by the bank. it was an outright gift in all but name, ‘The Alliance for Progress also smiled on Duvalier and granted him a St million funding guarantee for a new petroleum refinery. C7 wo ee ee s : U.S. prey on sian pic ever mace sel-contradictory. Fiom Washington and New York, the CLEA inaugurated thiily radio broadcasts beamed ta Haiti fam Station WRUL and Radio Americas, then olicially kuown as the Vanguard Service, Lerporation. urging the people to over- throw the “bloody despot” Duvalier. But other sources in Washington and New York. some clase to the White House kitchen cabinet. began to urge a revi- val of U.S. tourism in Haiti, Vraygicomi- cally. the U.S. Navy—deeply invelved he- hind the scenes in attempts to get rid of Duvalier—was tokl to. prime the pump for tourism by reactivating Port-au-Prince asa deave port for sailors. As his syndicate support solidified, Papa Doc grew bolder. Fo prove that he could ourspook abe CLA anywhere. even on its own home grounds, his secret agents in New York infilirated the studios of WRUL one night and switched the recorded tapes being processed for ship- ment to Swan Island. What went on the aira few days huter, insiead of the pro- grammed hall-hour anti-Duvalier broad. cast, was a song.of praise for Papa Doc. The spooks struck back by instigating a customs investigation of the Haitian consul general in Miami, Eugene Maxi- milien, who was suspected of abusing his dhty-free diplomatic privileges in the im- REF “Who are you? Why didn’t Neil and Buzz come back?" eROEGE Cat rat portation of Scotch wae taxable goods. As the invisible war comtinued, no one was sale. After the Jay Humphrey bomb ing raid on Duvalier’s palace. the youny U.S. foreign service officer suspecicd of being the CIA station chief in’ Haiti. Thomas _H. Carter—ollicially accredited ‘as the third secretary of the U.S. embassv —was beaten bloody by a Tontow Ma. coute thug. Duvalier sent him back to Washington on a stretcher, along with an “apology” for the “incident.” Oddly enough, while hundreds of poo: ple died in the invisible war, and mil- lions of dollars went down the drain. it remained a secret. The Haitians, Cubais amd Asnericans cnlisted by the CE could not reveal their rage iat Washing. ton’s “double shuffle” without campro- mnising the intelligence cstablishmens— their single source of support. This held true even when the casual- ties were Americans. It is largely forgot- ion now that the first diplomatic crisis beuwcen Washington and the newborn —Duvalicr regime occurred over the 1057 murder of an American citizen. Shiblev ‘Talamas, by the Port-au-Prince polic Duvalier sent the widow $100,000 in cish. and the matter was considered. sealed. Kut there were ne indemmitics last year when a machine gunner named Gerald Smith died ia the course of a “Seco bombing raid on Papa Doc's palace, led hy veicran tropical combat fer Howard Davis, who bas flown for the CIA both in Guba and View Nam. As for the syndicate, sounding off would have been unthinkable. Ib wouhd have, for one thing, violated the iron code of amerta, the tradition of silence. a tradition deeper in the underworld than in the imielligence establishinent. Aud the syndiciue’s prize would have been 4 _ worthless unless it remained a secret. _ “Ever since organized crime became an invisible empire of sorts,” a Justice D:- peranent oficial told “Trur, “People like Lansky have Jooked for the perfect seuup —a completely controlled province. free of intruders of every sort, free of US. agents, tax snoops, unlercover invest igt tors, local politicians hustling payotls— free of all the intrusions that make gan. bling fundamentally a dicey proposi- tion.” The U.S. official explained that in such a controlled setup gambling could. for once, be fixed “as it should be” in the professional gambler’s dvcam—scicntih- cally, invisibly, permanently and pre. cisely, so as not to scave away the suckers. “Suppose,” he said, “that this perfect gambling haven comes with its own treas ury system; that is. a wholly autonomous trading cnclave, a free port, where money can be collected, exchanged, transferred er converted—into gold, for instance— once aguin, without snooping or hassling. Now suppose that the big boss whe has had the strength and patience to build up this perfect property, investing mil- Jions over a long period when the propo- ‘sition looked like just another rathole—as Lansky has done in Haiti—suppose this boss of bosses also has an exclusive option on thousands of acres of beach. [Continued an page 37\ + me eee + erenitemitetehneteetetetemteee ss ee
’ eo» e « front dand that as bound to become valiusble as the result of his scheme? What sort of winnings would that make? Well, on Grand Tahama, Wallace Groves, a petty ex-convict. whose one stroke of renius may well have been finding a con- acciion fo Meyer Lansky, not long ago bougin 2UE square miles of land at the avertye price of 82.80 per acre. Not quite three dollars, ch? Now the same hind sells to American suckers at prices up to 830.000 per acre. This sort of option is known simply as a license to. print money.” ‘Tree has scen hitherto unpublished evidence unat this’ lush Lanskyland in the heart of Haiti is no utopia but a working blueprint. Some of the evidence was turned up by the U.S. Justice De- pariment's organized crime strike force created by Attorney General Ramsey Clark during his recent tenure.. On January 8. 1969, at Miami Inter- national Airport, a strike force under Justice Department attorncys William Karle and Wallace Johnson, seized a chartered Super-Constellation wand its . plancload of luge crates consigned to Port-au-Prince. Inside’ the crates were the very latest electronically rigged, practi- cally detection-proof gambling gear, re- mately controlled to cheat a tourist out of a single C-note or his life savings. It took FBI technicians a month to assem- ble chem. , “Ie was worth the effort,” an experi- enced investigator told Trug in Miami, ““Phese clectromagnetically controlled dice and roulette tables are fantastic. They are not just another gimmick; they open up a whole new era in which the ‘house’—the professional gamblers—will never have to gamble again.” ‘Tror obtained official FBI color pho- iogaphs of the crooked casino equip- ment, revealing that wnder the green felt all the tables contained invisible elec- tromagnets. These magnets remain inert —that is to say, impossible to detect— until a “juice man” activates diem with a tiny remote-control. device known as a “grip.” Then all it takes is a quick clec- tronic signa] (transmitted to the tables via a hidden amplifier) for the juice man to control the rell of any dice or wheel in the casino. The pitmen and croupiers and other identifiable casino employees can keep their hands in sight with per- fect innocence; {hey don’t have to do a thing. A second Taiti-hound planeload of rick casino furniture was seized at the same airport somewhat later. The crooked tables were connected by federal investigators to Sid Jacobs, Dino Cellini, Joe Napolitano and Joseph Krikorian— all longtime Lansky mei “Remember that when we grabbed these ‘juice tables’ a million-dollar toux- ist campaign was starting up to lure American suckers to Haiti,” says a fed- eral investigator, “Both Pan American and Trans Caribbean Airways were eag- erly promoting travel there. Their leaf- lets and ads emphasized that in Haiti the casinos were “Happy to take care of vaunr wambling needs.” It was true—but ae * VACUUM ‘ “\ . “. 4 Pec \ iy Ay ~“, ‘McDONOUGH Financial sources with an interest in Iaiti are certain that che contretemps of the casino fixtures has not sidetracked the syndicate’s plans for a killing in Hai- tian real estate. The executive vice-presi- dent of a Caribbean development cor- poration based in Montreal 1s so firmly convinced of this that he had_ recently acquired a chauffeur for his Alla-Romeo sports car, along with a shotgun to be kept under the chauffeur’s seat. ; “J never dreamed I'd need a bady- guard,” the executive told True recently, “Rut we are under increasing pressure from hoodlums to relinquish our heach- front land options near Portiu-Prince and on Goniive Island to some ‘very good people’ in Florida. Relinquish them, mind you, for token payment. Of course, we have stockholders to think of We can't sell off land options if we know they are about to appreciate: and chiat's what will happen if a new gambling and tour- ist boom starts up in Haiti. But we are really feeling the mob pressure to sell out.” Moreover, as 1970 began, a new figure appeared in Port-au-Prince. Immaculate and dapper as ever, Smiling Mike Me:. Laney radiated charm and the promise of casy riches as he made ready to reopen the International Casino. In the 50's, when Meyer Lansky ruled gambling in Cuba, Mike McLaney man- aged Havana's foremost casino, the glit- tering Nacional. In the ‘60's, when Lan- sky's trail turned to the Bahamas, so did McLaney’s. As Hank Messick, the patient {BRA O No other mower is so useful! WHILE MOWING TO PERFECTION .. Collects clippings, leaves, pine straw, etc. in the extra large, center mounted LB on. - cee eeta FOAL POWER EQUIPMENT, McDONOUGH, GEORGIA 30253 emery es encom ete “_ GEEGRE YOU BUY ANY MONWZA .. SD Van H RI es ; 7d _ / ‘f— . ati tfl ° “Sy : oe epee ie wie neon ate #9 me ate “ERA cre wee ee ae : VCE PRAM NTT ' ‘ i S ot. bwin a & : . : ° ° . . j Nosy © No other mower is built like if} ~ 4 S - © No other mower performs like it! CLEANS YOUR LAW... bag. Trims close on either side. A JOY to use... year ‘round. Hand or Self-Propclicd ay" Priced as low as *OOG CR OS uk wl’ Plus freigh? and toxes *Suggested list price. See your dealer (check Yellow Pages) or write for free brochure and dealer name. ENC, Lee UU [rs foe TAY | THREE Are epee ep Nett ent comes pee | noted in dhis connection: “Where orgs nized crime is concerned, history has 4 way of repeating itself.” It does, indeed. For the ‘70's open with Mike McLaney, still the most-caol aial polished casino manager west of Aone Carlo, preparing to bring liule orphin Haiti her first real scason of big-tine gambling. Win it work? Jn recent months, the Nixon Administration has begun to press indicuments of Haitian angi-Duvalict militants who, in carlier years. cajoyed strong GEA support. Washington is kare to have decided to live with Papa De.. It is now entirely possible uhit Thai will blossom into the El Dorado of crave piers, casino operators, hoodlums, rain makers, promoters, real-estate shials numbered-account brokers, and hen whores cnvisioncd as the caw achievement of Meyer Latsky’s Cari bean empire-building. Bat ie will vena a land of beggars, blood and bestiality for Haitians so long as Papa Doc is alive. “And maybe that is Mr. Lansky’s ov -miscalculation—an actuarial error.” s+ Bernard Sansaricy. the sad-eyed, sel. spoken young anieDuvalicr leader whose entire family has vanished into the pal ace’s torture chambers. “Mister Laaishy is smart, but he has scen so much killin: he is hard to surprise, no? Maybe we will surprise him soon with just onc killin: And when we kill Duvaher, we will bow with him every single Uhing ever toucacs by Mr. Lansky and his invisible gove.r ° bi Varner Ga Oo asees
14-00000 e coma in 6 ot aeemeenaenene cree ee NNER GERSTNER mene: ate ne st ee an 4 a +* . “ , athe oft Re bs ~ 8 ’ : - aad aS +e Po ah Bale ~ JON STERN Bane a a ta me Oe Bo See ee a memo and as a paramilitary “adviser.” He is a compulsive warrior, an armed cru- sader fighting against what Gov. Les- ter Maddox calls “ungodly Common- ism.” WerBell is not alone in this oc- cupation, but he practices it in a from one little war to the next, brawt- ing and boozing their way through a tough and financially unrewarding life. - ad WerBell, by contrast, is a business- man who dabbles in military adven- ture only when and as far as it suits him. If combat didn’t titillate him, he wouldn't partake of it. His business is supplying weapons, not using them in anger. He specializes in the weapons and techniques of “counter-insur- gency,” which may be roughly de- -fined as the forceful suppression. of _ coups d'état, rebellions and the like. The way WerBell operates, this means defending established regimes, some of them dictatorships, against armed revolt. This political posture not only docs not trouble WerBell, it ‘ pleases him. “I have no objection to dictatorship if it serves the interests of ~ the country,” he says. Particularly if the threat to those interests is from the left: “Communism has no place in the Western hemisphere—or in any 48 AUGUST: ATLANTA ee eed ufliqoe manner. Most soldiers of for-—- tune are nothing else; and they-live | powcr mee fe eee JON STERN t | hemisphere. J] am totally opposed to it, and to thé spread of ideological germs and filth that it brings.” Now and again, WerBell'’s name pops into the news, bringing Powder. Springs a certain national attention. = “a-noted journal- ist-adventurer, a few years ago wrote pieces for True and London’s Daily Telegraph Magazine on arms brokers and sprinkled them liberally with tales and pictures of WerBeil’s exploits. The first issue of the new muckraking magazine, Scaglan’s, carried an -ex- haustive story on CBS’ involvement i an abortive invasion of Haiti in 1966 and WerBell was credited with major, if uncertain, role in the opera tion. (WerBell was arrested and i dicted after the fiasco, but charges against him were dropped, while six others arrested were brought to trial. Asked by a friend for an explanation, WerBell replied jauntily, “Whenvou.' work for the company, ghey take care of You. I'll never Foal another word about it.” So far he hasn't; he main- tains.) Last December, WerBell hit the front page of The Atlanta Constitu- tion when a shipment of captured enemy weapons bound from Vietnam was detained at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. A national columnist conjec- nie nance 6 ermeeemtaaaie i wat A 9 ome ~ va ® Le ee ae See eet et ee ee ee P \ u ‘ 8 so tured that WerBell or his friends meant to distribute the weapons to right-wing extremist groups in the U.S. WerBell angrily denies that. They were souvenir weapons given to him by friendly forces in Vietnam, he said, and they were shipped to the States for display in military mu- seums, -Not surprisingly, WerBell has often been called an operative of the Cen- tral . Intelligence Agency (CIA), a arge that angers him only when it is leveled too vehemently. It is not that he has anything against the CIA. He just doesn’t, he says, happen to be one of its boys. His paramilitary work, which consists of advising and sometimes directly assisting foreign governments, is done in the employ of what he calls “an independent group of well-intentioned, patriotic Ameri- cans.” The Birch Society? The Min- utemen? A bunch of far-right Texas millionaries? WerBell won't say, other than to insist that it is not the CIA. It hardly matters, for according to WerBell it is all in the service not only of freedom and anti-Communism but of the U.S. government; he does not supply or advise or fight for re- gimes not bearing the State Depart- ment seal of approval. A heavy per- centage of his merchandise goes di-— 2. eo Fee Pam ae cam Soe
7400000 TOWN THE DRIVEWAY that snakes through the country estate came two tcen-aged boys. They were clean-cut and handsome in the traditional col- lege fashion, and they looked at home in ihe quiet, ieaiy setting, But one wore. a camouflage suit and carried a large pistol in each hand; the other had an M-3 “grease gun” tucked under one arm and a silencer- equipped sniper rifle under the other. Behind them, propelling himself vig- orously in a wheelchair, came their father, Mitchell Livingston WerBell Hil of Powder Springs, Georgia—sol-- dier of fortune, militant anti-Com- munist and one of the nation’s leading - developers of military weapons and accessories. Mitch IV and Geoff chatted lightly about the weapons they. were-carry-- ~ing--Their father, temporarily immo=-- bilized by a fractured heel, punctured the conversation with brief bursts of information about the sniper rifle, one of his most choice products. “This weapon has killed nineteen hundred V.C. [Viet Cong] in six months,” he said proudly. “Those V.C. took only One-point-three rounds per kill. Twenty-seven cents apiece they cost Uncle Sam. That’s the greatest cost effectiveness the Army’s ever known. LEFT: Mitchel WerBall and son, Mitchell WerGell, Iv. Raad (HD, M Fon os (si P.. Beirut, Lebanon), Amos 8. Noure (M.P., Kenya). John 0. Ward, Cw2 M Gordon). Geott Werfell and Gordon Ingram. designe: And there hasn’t been a single Ameri- can casualty.” Moments later, as WerBcll and I stood closer than I like to an operat- ing firearm, young Mitch and Geoff pumped round after round from the weapons into the bullet-shattered hulk of an automobile that serves as the primary target on the WerPell fisiig range. While the boys were loading, I was struck by the incongrvity of the setting. The 60-acre Powder Springs estate, designed to fulfill the hunting and fishing desires of its first owner, Talmadge Dobbs of ihe Life Insucauce Company of Georgia, was now being used for the design and testing of deadly weapons. Dobbs, I thought, would spin in his grave. My little reverie was interrupted by ‘the BANG of young Mitch firing one pistol-a ‘standard Army 45. The gun jerked upward, and the noise echoed across the fields and treetops. He then picked up a strange, smoothly rectan- gular handgun, an Ingram Model 11, equipped with a “flash and muzzle suppressor,” and began firing it. The muzzle barely moved, and the only sound was a metallic click, followed by the zing of the bullet and the pop as it hit the target. The effect was eerie, almost chilling, especially when BELOW: Mitchell WerBell, Sr. ¢ oftha M lon “11. (Listing from left to right’, Ks a er young Mitch put the gun on full auto- matic and whipped off 15 clicking rounds in one second. Geoff provided the same kind of demonstration with the grease gun. a standard military submachine gun and the sniper rifle, which WerBell calls the XM-21 and which is also-equipped with a sup- pressor. On the way back to the house, WerBell explained why the suppres- sor, commonly called a silencer, is so effective a firearm accessory. “It hides the muzzle flash and reduces the firing sound to just metal on metal. You can’t silence the bolt noise with- out an elaborate system, and it’s not worth it. You can’t hear the bolt noise anyway in a combat situation, so for all practical purposes the firing is soundless, Often, the loudest noise is “when the bullet hits home. If it hits a human, it makes a peculiar, thunking sound, like hitting a watermelon.” Mitch WerBell sounds completely matter-of-fact when he talks about firearms and death, and with reason. He has been in the military hardware business for years, and he has either heard or produced—or both—the thunking watermelon sound many times—in Latin America and South- east Asia, in the U.S. armed forces eated) explains the Ingram M-11 submachine gun to Maj. Sedek C. Lutz. Sgt. Smith K. Kamaka (al-of Caminal Investigancn, Exner 3
JON STERN oo oe. ; we af ' an : : woe : pee . ae . é 4 \ . rn . a a . a mus jl. 2 - foe 7 - : nn t ; a gD 7 ° ° Cote Fe PF wN nee to yen . . ae ' ir vf a oop, - -« Aa she. - 7 re: ~ “ oe. ry i o% f fe. ~ _s ‘ ; . ® Me ay a oy “te 1 t LAS . t . ni e. : a : my : et é ‘ . ae cle \ eo at we ene oe tere Bea me Foe ee Nace eee ln ee wee ne ee rectly to the U.S. government, which distributes it to its own forces that need silent or exotic weapons. The balance is sold to friendly govern- ments, either directly or through the good offices of the “independent group.” He says he does not sell to in- dividuals, not even if they're certified anti-Communists. WerBell takes pains to point out that he is no ordinary arms broker. That is, he is not one of those shad- owy figures who sell weapons to both sides at exerbitant prices or who take possession of contraband shipments on the high seas. “We do represent certain producers other than our- selves, and we can get a tank or a de- stroyer or an airplane for customers who want them. But we've never been in the surplus business, and we’ve never supplied both sides. We've always adhered to a basic policy: There is only one friend of the U.S. in a given area, and we deal only with that friend.” What does WerBell peddle? A range of firearms from machine guns to desk-sized cannons, from the meancst-looking weapons to innocent- looking swagger sticks that fire a bul- let or even a small rocket; an array of techniques——“systems,” he calls them -——that will help an American soldier or a foreign army hold off insurgent . forces; and, occasionally, his personal services. These services presenj WerBell at his most shadowy. Serving as a combatant in the armed forces of a foreign nation is against U.S. law, and WerBell is understandably reluc- tant to admit having done so. He de- scribes himself in such terms as “par-__ amilitary” and “adviser,” but ac- quaintances suspect he has been in the thick of the fighting a number of times. He may even have zapped an insurgent or two.. For one thing, he loves a fight. “Mitch is afraid of nothing,” says a long-time Atlanta friend. “I remem- ber he used to get into fights in bars. One time he got into a hassle at the railroad station. He was seeing some friends off, after having a few drinks, and he decided he didn’t want the train to leave just then. He wound up getting arrested, charges, resisting arrest and all that, kept stressing ‘profanity’ at the tag _ end of each charge. He was a wild one, all right.” The WerBell of today still likes his whiskey and savors a good round of counter-insurgency, but the urge to fight for the hell of it is waning. He is, after all, primarily a businessman, a designer, developer, and peddler of special purpose weapons. The pur- called Military Armaments Company. > and the list of ¢fnc., and because he is in. Powde tt em ne emis at ne ? Paria entero cesta Sutin nNOAD Eater intetreatemsseedtics. Bu 49 th + a v4 a f a ‘ . ve -aochan etch! cere nctterecttnenienNAIE «BF alte 40. tal's a seset ltd Naat mee ee me ae tee ee eee ie ome ch oe poses are almost as varied as the weapons themselves: from mowing down a line of combat troops to si- lently picking off a lone Y.-C. to cut- ting short a would-be assassin to turn- ing the tables on the bad guys by as- sassinating them. The headquarters for this work, the former Dobbs estate, is on Highway 360 just outside of Powder Springs in a remote section of Cobb County. Ac- tually, corporate headqyarters_is_in. Washingt Cin nvironmentai_ Tndustr _ neat euphemism for.a donipany dedi-. cated to killing people. Enviroamental Industries, WerBell says, is . bank--. rolled by some_of the East's most. prominent investment houses; he is its _ director of international operations. _ He is also president of a subsidia s, Inca be prings, Military Armaments is there, too. (Behind Envirogmental” Indus-—] tries, WerBell_ says, is “a third ~ shadow, of which EI. is a subsidiary” ~ —another tantalizing hint "of “the ~ CIA.) - Military Armaments may well be a unique American enterprise. Nobody else, WerBell says, is in the business of designing special purpose weapons “ 3 / continued on page 58 * AUGUST: ATLANTA 49
14-00000 Contempora colors the fall fashion scene with beautiful subtlety, in grey . with beige. Costuming like this, designed by Belle Sounders for Abe Schrader, will see you around the world. Textured wool knit, 165.00 at lord & Taylor, Phipps Piaza, Peachtree Road between Wieuca and Lenox Roads, Atlanta. 68  aveusr: artata WerBell from page 49 on such a scale. A good deal of its de- signing and manufacturing is done under federal license. Silencers. for example, are outlawed by the Wa- tional Firearms Act, along with sawed-off shotguns, submachine guns, and other vestiges of Prohibition Era gangland wars. To manufacture his suppressors, WerBell must pay a spe- cial tax of $500 2 year, collected by the U.S. Treasury Department. The T-men also check periodically to see that his awesome collection of fire- arms—over 200 individual pieces—is properly registered. Apparently the market for suppressors is not very large, because according to WerBell, his firm is the only one authorized to manufacture them. WerBell will not discuss the sales or profits of Military Armaments ex- | cept to say that, after two years of ex- tensive research and development {re- sulting in “a tax loss of a half million dollars”), the company is now doing very well. It has about 12 employees, - wearing vice-president of Engineering whp has charge of the design opera- tion. Ingram’s name is on the Model 11 submachine gun that young Mitch demonstrated for me on the firing range. Ingram works in a_ well- equipped machine shop-lab attached to the main house on the estate, which WerBell likes to call “the farm.” WerBell’s office is next door to the shop. Its walls are so loaded with weapons, -it is -a-wonder they do not collapse. There are knives and spear guns and pistols and rifles and ma- < chine guns, dozens and dozens ot them, some purchased, some won in combat, some presented by the appre- ciative recipients of WerBell’s counter-insurgency techniques. WerBell, who has a sense of humor, calls his enterprise a “cottage industry” and likens himself to “a country doctor. . . . I can fall out of the living area upstairs right down to the office.” Upstairs is the domain of his German-born wife Hildegard, a pleasant, gray-haired woman who has bore WerBell six children and put up with his rather unusual way of life. (When he left for the Far East in 1968, he said he’d be gone for a year or more, and he was.) WerBell’s only upstairs sanctuary is the “arms room,” a small room containing wide assortment of weapons, some 0 (aN
14-00000 Lugene is a boutique for eye fashion . . . After a few days your physician’s prescription is ac- curately transposed into fine and attractive looking eve: wear. Sunglasses, eyeglasses or funglasses are designed and made in our own shop by duplicating carefully your own lenses... in Palm Beach, New York and now Atlanta, Lugene is a guild optician. Phipps Plaza 3500 Peachtree Road 10 to 6 and Thursday nights/Our telephone is 261-2670 | _ Traveled with any - top brass lately? If not, shouldn’t you start now? That tinny stuff some luggage makers use for hardware can hurt your image. And it won’t stand . up to stress in the long run, the way top brass does. You see, proper hardware— locks, rivets, buckles, studs ~should be made of solid forged brass. Never inferior metals . . 7 val a J oe % » at 3 a can | a at . . 8, qe “4 2 “i a os en ee i a © oe ears fete . ' ‘ +e 227.2 ay 4 rf . wiecttn AB cca wt ee ne ee Porn plated to look like brass. At Mark Cross, when we plate brass, we use only gold—as we’ve done for over a century. We believe you should travel first class, no matter what your ticket reads. MARKCROSS/The place for luggage New York/San Francisco/Beverly Hills/Atlanta/Detroit/Bal Harbour, Fla. Br renee cee ee them valuable antiques. There is 2 Mongolian beheading sword, a pair of 1,000-ycar-old Japanese short swords with laminated steel blades, and a Chinese-inade Mauser carbine “worth from three to five thousand dollars.” Mitchell WerBell is a short, wiry man of 52, quick with a quip and quite sensible until he begins talking about Communism or other social is- Sues. Tie has ihe face and Ucaning of a Prussian officer, an image he culti- vated by wearing a mustache and oc- casionally a monocle. (Actually, seme people think he looks like comedian Jerry Colonna with his musiache, a comparison he definitely would not find flattering. No matter. Both mus- tache and monocle are gone now, lost to his effort to promote a “lower pro- file’ for himself.) He often dresses around the office in military clothing of indeterminate origin, and he em- bellishes the image by talking in slightly clipped sentences peppered. with military phrases. There is nath- ing phony in this. WerBell has a strong attachment to weapons and to warfare, and he has been around them so long that the ideas and styles they foster are an ingrained part of his personality. He comes by both his militarism and his anti-Communism honestly. His father was an officer in the Rus- Sian Imperial army, even was born in the United States. “It was _a tricky situation,” says. Mitch. “He was a Citizen of both the U.S. and Russia. In those days you could do that.” The elder: WerBell fought against the. Bolsheviks, but before the ’ collapse of the czarist regime he wisely secured an appointment as liai- son officer between the Russian and American forces—stationed in the U.S. He lived in this country for the rest of his life, putting his early medi- cal training to use in cancer research while living the good life. “My father was a man of means,” Mitch says. “He traveled a lot, did a lot of big game hunting, things like that.” Father came by that honestly too. For generations, the WerBells have been men of means. Mitch traces the family to 13th-century France, where the name was spelled “Vertbelle.” At least one branch of the family emi- grated to Russia, where the French name became Russianized, with the final “e” dropped and the “Vv” changed to “W.” It is impossible to , know just how strongly Mitch was in (2) fluenced by his father’s battle against“~’
14-00000 A the Botshoxisé, but certainly the influ- .ence was considerable; the White Russians and their descendants have long been among the uncompromising anti-Communists. Another legacy from father js Mitch’s barely disguised aristocratic sympathies. He has been quoted as saying, “Communism is a substitution of a peasant dictatorship over the ar- istocracy-—T nrefer the aristacraoy, ” He scoffs at such statements as “I kid about being a constitutional monarch- ist, but only if I’m the monarch”, yet i¢ is without question an elitist. Not surprisingly, his elite is comprised of Superpatriots and military men, who would be given powerful roles in any nation’s affairs. Mitchell WerBell was born in Pennsylvania, shortly after his Rus- sian-American father and his Scottish-born mother arrived in the U.S. at the end of World War I. His parents traveled a good deal, here and abroad, and Mitch traveled with them, picking up his education as he went. He got a degree in journalism from the University of Pennsylvania in World War I, he joined the O. “sort of cloal: “and-dapecr Green Beret operation. He served with an OSS unit behind Japanese lines in China, rising to the rank of captain and ac- quiring a taste for guerilla-type war- fare he would never Jose. WerBell came to Atlanta shortly after the war and went to work for Rich’s advertising department. Tt was a small department in those days, and WerBell proved himself a capable ad man. Soon he was head of the depart- ment, and soon after that he went on his own. He formed Mitchell WerBell Advertising, which later became WerBell, Seklemian and North. Vet- eran Atlanta advertising men recall WerBell as being aggressive and im- aginative, a good addition to the busi- ness, “He did some first-rate work,” says one, “and he handled some big accounts, Barwick Mills, for in- _ Stance.” In the mid-fifties, WerBell pulled out of his agency (there are dark sto- ries about how he was done in by as- sociates), and the agency collapsed not long afterward. He then formed his own public relations firm, and here the story line gets fuzzy—be- cause it begins to involve interna- tional military intrigue. “I'd already been drifting into international p.r.,” WerBell says, “using my family back- ground. I had wemendous contacts in poe eee — a pee = ~°* x eee a, a are } - ~ ee 72 £7 _ oa os \ 7f- ae v4 = tf . PP L. Niiliex. The shoe with t the glorious past a erers now leads you to an exciting fashion future. at the I. Miller Salon, Phipps Plaza, 3900 Peachtree Rd., N. E., Atlanta. “AUGUST: ATLANTA speci anton
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14-00000 rd } Europe, and I moved into the Far Fast, too.” How much of this moving in was military, WerBell won't say, but his business took on more and more of what he calls a “geopolitical” flavor. Before long, he was dabbling in Latin American dictatorships. “Be- fore Fidel took over in Cuba, we were working closely with Batista.” He adds with a grin, “Our function was te keep Batista in power, aithouch the U.S. government was looking favora- bly on Fidel at that point.” From all this, even WerBell doesn’t know exactly how, came a passionate concern about Communism. “I de- ' cided to devote whatever time I could to anti-Communist activities,” he says. “At first it was sort of a hobby, but then it became my main drive in life. What I'm doing now”—here he gestures at the arsenal of his office walls—‘affords me a damned good living. But the living is not why I do Se 3 Bland Terry THE SOUTHS FinesTy COLLECTION OF IMPORTED SHOES FOR MEN sy BALLY OF SWITZERLAND A BOOT OF A SHOE, ankie-bone high and soft to the touch as a fine wollet. Cleverly molded into shape with sleek overlaps, it cradles your foot in solid comfort, gentled by the hand of o Bally crafismon. Genuine colf in antique brown or mellow black, 47.00. In 1948, while anti-Communism was still a hobby, albeit a paying |” right one is Gittings, America’s all the excitement, ever SO elegantly. . When Gittings does your formal wedding colour portrait, engagement . J and wedding glossies for the newspapers are complimentary. And, of course you'll want Gittings colour candids; complete coverage of your wedding and reception to re-live happily ever afterward. An idea of price: Formal wedding colour portraits start as low as two for $85. Exciting colour candids begin at just $7. each with duplicates even less. Send your name, address and home address for free bridal portrait brochure with full details: Write Gittings - Bridal Secretary/Phipps Plaza, Atlanta, Georgia 30305 Studios in Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, and in Neiman-Marcus/ Dallas-Ft. Worth. Bridal Portraits /Candids _ Gittings NOW OPEN MON. & THURS. NIGHT UNTIL 9 ~|~ jeading bridal photographer, to capture. hobby, WerBell purchased the Dobbs estate. He installed rudimentary de- sign facilities and began experiment- ing with weapons of counter- insurgency, Weapons he believed had the best chance of preventing Coni- munist takeovers in the small, under- developed nations of Asia and Latin America. “I realized that in counter- insurgency, the primary problem was a lack of depth in weaponry. People say, “Win the hearts of the enemy, and you'll win the fight.’ That’s a Jot of bull, The best way to get their hearts, if ‘they're the enemy, -js to shoot ’em and cut the hearts out.” While he experimented with weap- ons—quietly, to avoid problems with ‘the federals—WerBell proceeded with his personal brand of geopolitics. He made himself available to anti- Communist regimes that wanted help in fighting off one band of insurgents or another. In the process, he became friendly with a number of Latin America’s political strongmen. They were delighted to discover a norle- americano who felt as they did about the need for stable, anti-Communist regimes, especially their regimes, and who had both the savvy and the guts to help preserve them. WerBell, oper- ating out of Powder Springs, fashioned a nice little career for himself as a paramilitary adviser. He seldom passed an opportunity to plug the weapons he was developing ack home in the shop. His first major par- C
64 if ~_M atthe a _. Payee, rar) ‘ uit at iad Pare Vee eet Was PO POOL aS No one has been up the altar more times than we have. The Gingiss Guide for Grooms is a handy 48-page booklet thet tells what to do ebout getting masied.. Questions like what to wear. And when. Who marches with whom. Who gives what to whom. All sorts of important matters— and some trivial ones. Any youne couple getting matried should have it, it's Free. Stop in and see us and check out the latest in men’s formalwear. Everything from double-breasted Edwardian to morning costs with striped pants. We make sure it will fit perfectly. No one has more experience in the sales and sental of men’s formalwear than we do. Alter all, we've been getting ready for your big day since we started in 1934. e r) gingiss Men’s Formalwear Center Phipps Plaza. Atlanta 261-0743 3320 Memorial Dr ,.NE Decatur 284-8366 AUGUST: ATLANTA “ ‘ x, amilitary operation was in the Domin ican Republic, during the 1965 revolt. He was, of course, on the side of the govermnent, which was fending off al- legedly Communist insurgents; the United States was on its side too. WerRell wound up in the midst of the fighting. He was the second Domini- can government man to reach the Ozama River, scene of the major bat- tle. Ellsworth Bunker, then U.S. am- bussador to inc Organization of American States, becaine highly excr- cised over WerBell’s activitics and his hawkish views on the conflict (Wer- Bell opposed a cessation of hostilities and establishment of a coalition gov- ernment). Bunker considered trying to toss WerBell out of the DomRep, as old Caribbean hands cali the coun- ‘try, bet nothing came of it. WerBcli’s “independent group"—-CIA, Texas millionaires or whatever—saw to that. WerBell was already active in the anti-Casiro movement, and he brought to it a sense of dash and dis- cipline that the ragtag, bickering bunch of Cuban exiles had seldom seen. Perhaps his majer anti-Castro exploit was a spcedboat foray into Camarioca, on Cuba's southern coast. The mission was to drop a swimmer, apparently « spy, offshore, Sand to pick up the family of an exile leader. The boat, flying the Confederate flag on the radio antenna, foundered in high seas, and the raiding party was captured. The Cubans, the story goes, did not know what to make of the brash WerBell, and he and his pals wound up stealing a Castro boat and spiriting some 16 anti-Castroites out of the country before they themselves returned to the US. In the late °60s, WerBell turned his attention to Southeast Asia. He is, of course, a superhawk on Vietnam, and would be happy if the U.S. were also fighting Communism in all its neigh- boring countries. He was in Thailand. “working closely with the Supreme Command,” for months, promoting the sales of his weapons and systems. “I showed them things like surveil- lance equipment and night vision equipment, stuff that lets you surprise the hell out of the bastards” (the enemy). Did he do any fighting him- self? WerBell chuckles. “I ain't sup-— posed to be shooting the stuff, just demonstrating how to shoot it.” Three years ago, WerBell’s weap- ons business became promising enough for him to go into it full time. He organized a firm called Sionics wv SCARLET OHARA ...arezi coll one of many from the Madame Alexander Doll Collection... ‘Prices start at $5.95 Unusual gifis and toys frorn all over the world Phipps Piaza. 3500 Peachtree Rd, NE os er meee ete ihe se os tes enestind ze om c “ & 46, ra were Sherle Wagner sculpts a seashell basin and stand, carved from a single, solid piece of onyx, $995. Matching fixtures of onyx and 24 kt. gold plate, from $195. Available in eleven other rare stones. Builders and decorators inquiries welcome. be un Phipos Plaza, 3500 Peachtree R4., NE. 261-9785 Algo located at Gat ardour Shoss, Sat Marzour. Fla. ! Cr 4). EE TE S35 ae IMPORTED, e eo
14-00000 -@ (ior Studies in, Operational Negation of Insurgency and Counter- Subversion”), tied in with Environ- menial Industries, and began in earn- est to devziop a line of military hard- ware. fons Mitch IV and Gcoff be- came integral parts of the firm. Mitch IV was already a bona fide counter- insurgent. As a 15-year-old, he had spent considerable time with Dad in ihe Domiuican Repubiic, speciaiizing in underwater probing for safe land- ing sites. Geoff, two years younger, barely missed out on a Cuban foray; his father took him to Miami a few years ago, but the plans fell through. Under the company reorgenization that took place in May, both of the boys have responsible _ positions: Mitch 1V, now 21, is a vice-president in charge of sales for Military Arma- ments, the successor to Sionics; Geoff, 18, is assistant director of Interna- tional Operations. Each of them also attends college—Mitch IV, Georgia State University, and Geoff, Kenne- saw Junior College—and they drive off to night classes after a day in the lab or on the firing range. (WerBell suspects one of Geoff's teachers is a Communist because he has been say- ing some favorable things about stu- dent protesters. Generally, however, the old man is pleased that the boys are getting a college education. It will better equip them for the job of run- _ning Military Armaments later.) ... One day I sat in WerBell’s office as Geoff displayed a number of Military Armaments” most unusual weapons. (Mitch IV was in Washington, dis- playing some of the same to Pentagon officials.) Geoff brought out “the tinger,” a cigar-shaped tube three inches long, weighing two-and-one- half ounces, that fires a .22 cartridge. Nothing visible suggests a gun, and the bullet, on its way out, dislodges a thin plug that disguises the hole at the end of the tiny barrel. WerBell com- mends the Stinger to secret agents who get caught with the goods and must take “the last resort,” that is, shoot themselves. In the same exotic category is the swagger stick, bound in leather, with silver studs. By pushing between two studs, one can fire a .22 or, with a special model, a small rocket. The bodyguard of Dominican strongman General. Antonio Imbert used the rocket model to blast would-be assas- sins a few years ago. Then there is a small, brass-fitted cannon. It makes a handsome knicknack for a soldier- ee <p en Pe EEE A Erementar ftnnempe oe Ln ay rn ala a | ag ae Dr ae u Arete AD a =P any, ree Tere fe hod HiieSsidues: Bfcinns Sialens
{ féesé elie ning ime, sirloee Straspfard-aio-fucn Two 18-hole golf courses (1 championship, 1 lighted execu- tive) > gourmet wining and din- ing * luxurious guest rooms meeting fecilities « Scottish be- ronial atmosphere * open year ‘round * near airports and artc- rial expressways. Write for bro- chure: Ralph McEntyre, General Manager, Miami Lakes Inn & Country Club, Paimetio Express- way & N.W. 154th Street, J Miami Lakes, Florida 33014. Or call Miami a 821-1150, tee peer Le ales Fezsa & COUNTRY CLUB | efiectively on the wicked can soldiers; if that happens, the fi- nancial success of Military Arma- ments will presumably be assured. _| According to data published by the firm, the. Ingram models are shorter, lighter and capable of delivering more firepower than anything on the mar- ket. They are also, WerBell says, ; ideal for secret agents; they fit snugly - a @ my politician's desk. hi fires, with o: simple finger movement, a bullet that will quiet an unruly visitor. More tra- ditionally military is WerBell’s ‘“‘spe- cial long-range knocker outer,” a redesigned Remington nine-millimeter rifle that “will plug ‘em in the eye at 200 meters.” The bulk of WerBell's business is in sound suppressors and Ingram Model submachine guns. Suppressors cau be used on jarge as weil as smaii weapons, and in fact have been used -looking Vul- can machine guns mounted on Ameri- can helicopters in Vicingm. The Aus- tralian Army Journal ran a story call- ing the Sionics suppressor “superior te anything previously uscd . . [with it] it is now possible for the sniper to fire fron relatively short ranges, especially when using sub- sonic projectiles.” WerBell is so enthusiastic about the Ingram Model submachine guns (there are two models, taking differ- ent sized cartridges) that he predicts they will eventually make “obsolete every individual weapon in the world.” The U.S. Army, he says, is now looking carefully at the Ingram models with an eye toward making them standard equipment for Ameri- into a dispatch case (Military Arma- ments makes the.case, too), complete with suppressor and six magazines. Does WerBell feel a twinge of con- science about providing the world with such deadly and efficient weap- ons? No. “I see no reason to be con- cerned,” he says. “We're supplying a certain product that is unfortunately a part of the civilized world. As long as people exist, there’s going to be an arms business. I don’t see much dif- ference between our supplying arms to combatants and a surgical supply house supplying gauze to bind up the wounds inflicted.” There is his anti- Communist argument, too. WerBell is fighting the Communist menace; it is a fight that must be won and weapons are needed to win it. Contrary to cynical opinion, Powder Springs was not named in honor of WerBell and his enterprise. . there, WerBell, in fact, stays as aloof fron, the loca] community as possibie. His house is so well-stocked, it is practi- cally self-sufficient save fur occasional trips to the grocery and liquor stores. (‘The only disadvantage of liv'ng out hire,” he says, “is that you have iv drive into Fulton County to get whis- key.”) There has been, from time co time, ami-WerBell feeling in Powder Springs. Hildegard WerBell helps hoid n down by regular attendance at the McEachern Memorial Methodist Church. As for the resi of the feeling. WerBell declares, “The hell with it. Who cares? I tell °em I’m prepared to purchase their property if they don’t like the area.’ WerBell also sees little of his old advertising buddies around Atlanta. “We just don’i have much in common any mors,” he explains, in a resound- ing understatement. He does not suf- fer froin loneliness, however. There is a steady stream of visitors and cus-— tomers, foreigners as well as Ameri- cans. A few weeks ago WerBell’s son-in-law, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, flew in from Ohio, mainly to see what was new around the shop; he hadn't been by in several months. he said, “and things change awfully quickly around here.” The day I was the colonel and WerBell swapped ideas on ridding the State Department of no-win policy makers and on bringing the enemy to its knees, or its grave, in Vietnam. WerBell recalls with relish one par- ticular visitor. He came from the State Department a few years back, and ac- cording to WerBell, he said, “The functions of the foreign policies of the United States are the business of the State Department in Washington, net of Mitchell WerBell in Powder Springs, Georgia.” WerBell’s reply? “You can’t print it. It was all in An- glo-Saxon words.” But that was the old, swashbuckling WerBell. The new, low profile WerBell says with a grin, “My present policy is that I agree with that theory completely. Pe- riod.” If actions to the contrary speak too loudly, they, like WerBell’s weapons, can always be suppressed by the man himself. Meanwhile, Mitch and his “independent group” march on. WY