Reply #23: Court throws out former CIA officer's conviction after 20 years in prison

[struggle4progress]

October 29, 2003 11:09 AM

The Associated Press

HOUSTON - A federal judge threw out the conviction of a former CIA operative who has spent 20 years in prison for selling arms to Libya, saying the government knowingly used false evidence against him.

Edwin P. Wilson, 75, was convicted in 1983 of shipping 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya - something he said he did to ingratiate himself with the Libyan government at the CIA's request.

In a scathing opinion released Tuesday, U.S. Judge Lynn N. Hughes said the federal government failed to correct information about Wilson's service to the CIA that it admitted internally was false ..

Adler said the Reagan-era officials who pushed the case had been embarrassed by revelations they were trading arms for information and made Wilson a scapegoat ..

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-10292003-187178.html


International Man of Mystery
The Ex-CIA Agent And Current Convict Has Many Stories To Tell. Some May Even Be True.
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page C01

WHITE DEER, Pa.

.. But the fun ended in 1982, when Wilson was lured out of Libya in a sting operation and arrested in the Dominican Republic. In three highly publicized trials, he was convicted of gunrunning, selling 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya, and conspiring to kill his prosecutors. By early 1984, at age 55, he was sentenced to 52 years in prison and his many enemies figured he'd never get out.

Wilson swore he'd been framed, that he was working for the CIA all along. Few people paid attention. Half the cons in prison grumble about being framed by somebody.

But Wilson spent 12 years prying documents out of the CIA and the Justice Department with endless Freedom of Information Act requests. Last October, his efforts paid off: Citing those documents, a Houston federal judge threw out Wilson's conviction in the C-4 explosives case, ruling that the prosecutors had "deliberately deceived the court" about Wilson's continuing CIA contacts, thus "double-crossing a part-time informal government agent." ...

By 1996, he'd uncovered a Justice Department memo titled "Duty to Disclose Possibly False Testimony. " It described the CIA's Briggs affidavit -- which had helped persuade the Houston jury to convict Wilson -- as "inaccurate." Wilson filed a motion to overturn the Houston conviction, attaching the memo as evidence ..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59212-2004Jun21.html