Robert Bethell

First appeared in Punisher Vol. 7 #1 in 2004 and was created by Garth Ennis and Lewis LaRosa. Robert Bethell was a corrupt CIA officer who oversaw a black ops unit charged with assassinations. Initially, the group does not possess the funding or legal room to recruit the kind of operatives Bethell had in mind. To solve this problem, Bethell resorted to gaining his funding from drug trafficking in which he imported heroin from Afghanistan through the body bags of dead soldiers; corrupt cops from police departments all across America would then sell it on the streets. Bethell was interested in recruiting operatives of questionable character - among them that held Bethell's interest was Frank Castle, the Punisher.