Edwin P . Wilson Edwin Paul Wilson ( May 3 , 1928 - September 10 , 2012 ) is a former CIA officer who was convicted of illegally selling weapons to Libya . It was later found that the United States Department of Justice and the CIA had covered up evidence in the case . Early life . Wilson was born to a poor farming family in Nampa , Idaho . He worked as a merchant seaman , then earned a psychology degree from the University of Portland in 1953 . In 1953 , he joined the Marines and fought in the last days of the Korean War . He was impressive in the Marines and , when he was discharged in 1956 , went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency . CIA career . His main role for the CIA was setting up front companies , like Consultants International , used to covertly ship supplies around the world for the CIA . As director of these firms , which also conducted legitimate business , he amassed a great deal of money . In 1971 after 15 years with the CIA , he moved to Office of Naval Intelligence ( ONI ) and at the request of the ONI , offered the assistance of the front companies . He retired on paper from ONI in 1976 , continuing to run the businesses he had built under the guidance of the CIA , the largest of which was Consultants International . He amassed a fortune of 20 million dollars through these businesses , and continued to offer covert shipping services at the request of the CIA long after his official retirement . Arms for Libya controversy . In the 1970s , he became involved in dealings with Libya . Wilson claims that a high ranking CIA official Theodore " Blond Ghost " Shackley asked him to go to Libya to keep an eye on Carlos the Jackal , the infamous terrorist , who was living there . At the time , a strict sanctions regime was in place against Libya and the country was willing to pay a great deal for weapons and material . Wilson began conducting elaborate dealings and guns and military uniforms were smuggled into the country . Wilson also recruited a group of retired Green Berets – decorated Vietnam veteran Billy Waugh among them – to go to Libya and train its military and intelligence officers . The Libyans used Wilson ' s provisions to advance their interests around the world , including training terrorist cells to build explosive devices inside radios . One cell trained by Wilson ' s operatives was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command ( PFLF - GC ) under the command of Ahmad Jibril . Jibril was suspected of being behind the bombing of Pan Am 103 in Lockerbie , Scotland in 1988 . In 1979 , a gun that Wilson had arranged to be delivered to the Libyan embassy in Bonn was used to assassinate a prominent dissident . The next year , one of the Green Berets assassinated another dissident in Colorado . Wilson states that he regrets these incidents and had no prior knowledge of them . He states that he was still working for the CIA and his supplying of weapon to the Libyans was an attempt to get close to them and gain valuable intelligence . The most dramatic deal , and the one that brought Wilson to the attention from the U . S . government , was for some twenty tons of military grade C - 4 plastic explosives . This was a massive quantity that was equal to the entire US domestic stockpile . Most of Wilson ' s connections were still under the impression that he was working for the CIA and a wide network in the United States supported his actions . The explosives were presumed assembled by a California company and hidden in barrels of oil drilling mud . They were presumed flown to Libya aboard a chartered jet . Another scandal broke out around Wilson when a company he had formed to ship United States military aid to Egypt was convicted of overcharging the United States Department of Defense by $ 8 million . A partner with Edwin P . Wilson in this company was another former CIA officer , Thomas G . Clines . Wilson also maintained that Major General Richard V . Secord was also a " silent partner " in this company , though Secord denied this allegation . Nonetheless , Wilson , Clines and Theodore Shackley ( another former CIA officer ) were all working together with Secord in the summer of 1984 when Oliver North approached Secord to ask for help in buying arms for the " Contras " , a group of armed rebels then trying to overturn the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua . Investigation and conviction . After a lengthy investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol , Tobacco and Firearms ( then part of the US Department of the Treasury ) , Wilson was indicted by the US Justice Department for firearms and explosives violations . However , he was in Libya , which would not extradite him . Wilson was very unhappy in Libya , and the Libyans were suspicious of him and he feared for his safety . The prosecutors , led by Lawrence Barcella , knew this and they sent a con - man with links to the CIA named Ernest Keiser to convince Wilson that he would be safe in the Dominican Republic . Wilson flew to the Caribbean , but upon arrival was arrested and flown to New York . He was put on trial four separate times . He was found not guilty of trying to hire a group of Cubans to kill a Libyan dissident . He was found guilty of exporting guns , including the one used in the Bonn assassination , and of shipping the explosives and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the former and 17 years for the latter . While awaiting trial , he allegedly approached a fellow prisoner and attempted to hire him to kill the federal prosecutors . This prisoner was never questioned by anyone outside the CIA . The prisoner instead went to the authorities and they set Wilson up with an undercover agent . The agent taped Wilson hiring him to kill the prosecutors , six witnesses and his ex - wife . In a subsequent trial , he was sentenced to an added twenty - four years in jail for conspiracy to murder . The voice in the recording was never solidly identified as Wilson ' s . Legal defense . Wilson ' s defence to the Libyan charges was that he was working at the behest of the CIA . The CIA gave the DOJ an affidavit stating that after his retirement he had not been employed directly or indirectly by the agency . The CIA later informed the DOJ that it should not use the affidavit at trial , but the prosecutor Ted Greenberg decided to use it anyway . While in prison , Wilson campaigned vigorously for his innocence and repeatedly filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the government . Eventually he found information linked to the memo and hired a new lawyer . His lawyer was David Adler , a former CIA officer who had clearance to view classified documents . Adler spent long hours poring through thousands of files and eventually found eighty incidents where Wilson met on a professional basis with the CIA and proof that the CIA had indirectly used Wilson after his retirement . " His revenge for his framing came almost too late . In 2003 his conviction for the explosives - shipping was overturned because , wrote the judge , the government had lied . Far from no contacts with the CIA between 1971 and 1978 , there had been at least 80 . Several ran intriguingly ' parallel ' to the illegal acts he had been charged with . The next year he was released , white - haired at 76 , fighting fit and pumped up with his own righteousness , to spend the rest of his days trying to clear his name . " A federal judge ruled that the prosecution had acted improperly . In October 2003 , Wilson ' s conviction on the explosives charge was overturned . Wilson was released from prison on September 14 , 2004 , after being incarcerated for 22 years . Civil action . Wilson filed a civil suit against seven former federal prosecutors , two of whom are now federal judges , and a past executive director of the CIA . On 29 March 2007 , U . S . District Judge Lee Rosenthal dismissed his case on the ground that all eight had immunity covering their actions .