Mitchell Livingston WerBell III (March 18, 1918 – December 17, 1983) was a U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative, mercenary, paramilitary trainer, firearms engineer, and arms dealer.
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.
[2][3][4][5][1] Following World War II, WerBell briefly worked as the director of advertising and public relations for Rich's, a department store in Atlanta, Georgia; he left after a year to open his own PR firm.
WerBell helped plan an invasion of Haiti by Cuban and Haitian exiles against "Papa Doc" François Duvalier in 1966 called Project Nassau (but internally referred to as Operation Istanbul).
The mission, which, according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Special Subcommittee on Investigations of the House Commerce Committee, was financially subsidized, and to be filmed by CBS News, was aborted when the participants were arrested by the FBI.
[10] In a 1979 20/20 interview WerBell claimed that Coca-Cola had hired him for $1 million to take care of kidnapping threats against its Argentine executives during an urban terrorist wave in 1973.
[6][11] In a 1981 interview, WerBell revealed he was about to break with the U.S. Labor Party, whose security staff he had been training at his Powder Springs, Georgia estate.
[13] WerBell claimed he was given the billet of Major General in the US Army to allow him to travel freely in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War to demonstrate and sell his silenced submachineguns and sound suppressors.
[16][17] In the 1989 Cotton Club murder case of Roy Radin, Arthur Michael Pascal, then owner of a Beverly Hills security firm,[18] testified that prosecution witness William Rider, Flynt's former brother-in-law and private security agent,[18] "told him of poisoning soldier of fortune Mitchell WerBell III in 1983 in order to take over WerBell's counterterrorist school based in Atlanta.