Two facing trial this month in $1.6 million Navy suppressor scandal

A former Navy employee and the owner of a machine shop will have their day in court later this month over 349 homemade silencers made for $8,000 then sold to the military for $1.6 million.

The case involves a strange web of intermediaries that include an obscure civilian intelligence directorate of the Navy, a hot rod shop in California and an undisclosed “special access program.” Charged are Mark Landersman, owner of Advanced Machining and Engineering (AME) for manufacturing, selling and shipping the unmarked silencers without a federal firearms license, and Lee Hall, a civilian Department of the Navy employee of the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight, and Integration who bought the suppressors in a no-bid contract without authorization.

Landersman’s brother, David W. Landersman, was the senior director for intelligence in the Navy directorate who ordered the suppressors. It is alleged in court documents that before the shop owner was given the funds, his brother had sent him several emails about how to make silencers, including a website with do-it-yourself instructions.

While, according to Washington Post reports, security officials incinerated potentially relevant documents last year just after reading about the case in the paper, those expected in court maintain the operation was authorized.

Landersman, who owned a custom car shop in Temecula, California, contends the sterile suppressors were intended to be mounted on a cache of AK-47s seized overseas and warehoused in Pennsylvania that have since been destroyed.

It was also alleged that the suppressors were meant for SEAL Team 6, although representatives for the counter-terrorist unit had denied this.

It is alleged that the directorate involved, which numbers just 10 employees in an oversight capacity, has been dabbling in secret missions and even attempting to gain authorization to carry firearms in DOD buildings stateside although they do not have a law enforcement function. Some have termed the group, “wanna-be spook-cops.”

“By design, that office is supposed to do a little more than policy and programmatic oversight,” a former defense official told the Post. “But something happened and it lost its way. It became a case of the fox guarding the henhouse, and I suspect deeper issues might be in play.”

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