Today is the birthday, in 1918, of Mitchell WerBell, a U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative, mercenary, paramilitary trainer, firearms engineer, and arms dealer.
WerBell was born in Philadelphia, the son of a Tsarist cavalry officer in the Imperial Army of Russia. In 1942 WerBell joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and served in China, Burma, and French Indochina. As a guerrilla operative during World War II, he carried out a secret mission for the OSS under the command of Paul Helliwell in China with E. Howard Hunt, Lucien Conein, John K. Singlaub and Ray Cline. He briefly owned a PR firm before he established another firm to design suppressors for US Army weapons.
In the 1950s, WerBell served as a security advisor to Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and to the Batista regime in Cuba. According to FBI archives, WerBell may have attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro. In 1965 WerBell allegedly played a large part in planning the US intervention in the Dominican Civil War, codenamed ‘Operation Power Pack’. The intervention was largely successful in restoring order on the island.
In 1971 he co-founded the Miami-based arms sales company Parabellum Corporation with his friend Gerry Patrick Hemming and the Cuban exile Anselmo Alliegro. In 1973, WerBell was asked to assist with a coup d’état against Omar Torrijos of Panama, according to CIA documents released in 1993. WerBell sought clearance from the CIA which denied getting involved in coups. The plan was not implemented. In 1977, at the suggestion of Roy Frankhouser, WerBell was hired by Lyndon LaRouche as his head of security.
WerBell and Mario Sandoval Alarcón’s associate Leonel Sisniega Otero plotted a coup in Guatemala that failed in 1982. WerBell developed a training center for counterterrorism in the 1970s. The courses lasted 11 weeks and students included members of the military, high-risk executives, CIA agents, and private individuals. WerBell concurrently ran Defense Systems International, an arms brokerage firm.
In 1988, Sheriff Sherman Block of Los Angeles announced that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt wrote WerBell a $1 million check in 1983 to kill Hugh Hefner (founder of Playboy), Bob Guccione (founder of Penthouse), Walter Annenberg (owner of Triangle Publications), and Frank Sinatra. Los Angeles television station KNBC displayed a photocopy of the check.
In the 1989 Cotton Club murder case of Roy Radin, Arthur Michael Pascal, then owner of a Beverly Hills security firm, testified that prosecution witness William Rider, Flynt’s former brother-in-law and private security agent, “told him of poisoning soldier of fortune Mitchell WerBell III in 1983 in order to take over WerBell’s counterterrorist school based in Atlanta. Pascal said that Rider and Flynt poured four to six ounces of a digoxin, a powerful heart relaxant, into WerBell’s drink during a cocktail party at Flynt’s Los Angeles mansion. WerBell, 65, a security consultant for Flynt, died of a heart attack at the UCLA medical facility in Los Angeles on December 16, a month after receiving the check.
Mitchell WerBell
age does not always equal wisdom…
When he tried to surprise me with a homemade dinner and put a frozen pizza in the oven with the cardboard still on it. The smoke alarm went off, the cat panicked, and he looked at me and said “i think it needs 5 more minutes.” I loved that man but he had exactly 2 brain cells and they were both fighting for third place.
Dated this guy briefly- we were getting steamy, and he asked if I was on the pill. I reminded him that I’d had a hysterectomy a few months before, he goes, “What is that?” I tell him I don’t have a uterus. “Ok, are you on the Pill, though?”
“I don’t like to put chemical in my body” when taking medicine, but yet drinks alcohol and soda. Eats processed foods.
He thought that Wind Chill Factor was “windshield factor”, somehow meaning that “that’s how cold it would feel if you were driving without a windshield”?
Met a girl who couldn’t wrap her head around why the English language option in the ATM in Europe would have a British flag on it rather than an American flag on it. When told about the chronological order of things in history of it all, doubled down with “that’s stupid, America’s stronger.”
She thought the sun and the moon were the same thing.
He laughed at me when I mentioned driving to Alaska. He thought it was an island….
She told us that her sister is pregnant and she can’t wait to find out if she’s gong to be an aunt or an uncle.
Ex husband was attempting to cook and asked me, “how can you tell when the water is boiling?”.
He was trying to say he didn’t like illegal people coming over and dating Americans and said he wouldn’t have dated me if he would’ve known I was half Hawaiian.
My ex thought if he had cheques left in his cheque book, there must be money in the account.
She asked where they kept all the fish on Noah’s Ark. Was convinced they had an aquarium in the bilge or someone.
My ex bought a MAGA hat.
Today is the birthday, in 1950, of American drummer John Hartman who was a co-founder and original drummer with The Doobie Brothers. They had the 1979 US No.1 single ‘What A Fool Believes’, and the 1993 UK No.7 single ‘Long Train Runnin’. The group has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide throughout its career. Hartman died on 29 December 2021, at the age of 71. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkytJLoxGmQ
