Frankhouser to be a valuable intelligence contact, and took his links to racist and anti-Semitic groups to be a cover for his intelligence work. Frankhouser played into these expectations, misrepresenting himself as a conduit for communications to LaRouche from "Mr. Ed", an alleged CIA contact, who did not exist. Frankhouser was convicted in 1975 of conspiring to sell half a ton of dynamite in connection with a school bus bombing that left one man dead, and had marched on Fifth Avenue in New York wearing a Gestapo uniform. LaRouche had organized his defense campaign regarding the dynamite charges. Frankhouser asserted he was working for the government and was sentenced to five years of probation instead of the decades in prison he could have received. Frankhouser warned LaRouche in 1977 that, according to his claimed CIA contact "Mr. Ed", he was being considered for assassination, and introduced him to Mitchell WerBell III, a noted Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, mercenary, operator of a counterterrorism school, accused drug trafficker, firearms engineer, and arms dealer who said he had an ongoing connection to the CIA. LaRouche developed close ties with WerBell, hiring him as a security consultant for protection against the assumed assassination threat and to train his security staff. It was WerBell who arranged for LaRouche movement members to undergo anti-terrorist training. John George and Laird Wilcox say WerBell learned that the way to keep "LaRouche on the hook was to feed his monstrous ego while jerking his paranoia chain". Frankhouser cultivated a contact with a media source in New York, enabling him to tip off LaRouche about upcoming stories before they became public. In 1979, Frankhouser was also placed on the payroll as a security consultant, having convinced LaRouche that he was actively connected to U.S. intelligence agencies. A government official later said that Frankhouser was one of the few people who could call LaRouche directly. Forrest Lee Fick, an associate of Frankhouser from the KKK, was added as a consultant in 1982. Fick helped Frankhouser, who was not a competent writer, to compose the memos from "Mr. Ed"; they appeared so authentic that when news about them began to leak out via defectors from LaRouche's security organization, journalists began to speculate about the identity of "Mr. Ed". Frankhouser and Fick later testified that, to justify their $700-per-week paychecks, they had invented their connections to