Ex-CIA Attorney Blasts Wilson Case Ruling
HOUSTON - A former attorney for the CIA (news - web sites) denied that the government knowingly presented false evidence in the case of a former operative who has spent 20 years in prison for selling arms to Libya.
A federal judge threw out the 1983 conviction against 75-year-old Edwin P. Wilson on Tuesday, saying the government failed to correct information about Wilson's service to the CIA that it admitted internally was false.
Retired U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin, who was CIA general counsel at the time of Wilson's trial, told the Houston Chronicle in Thursday's editions that officials did not intend to present a false affidavit.
"They are fine people," he said of the federal attorneys involved. "And there were differences — that was all. At the time it was written, I can assure you the people who prepared it thought it was a proper affidavit."
Wilson, who set up front companies abroad for the CIA and posed as a rich American businessman, is serving a 52-year prison sentence in a federal prison in Allenwood, Pa.
The decision could ultimately free him from prison. However, the ruling's immediate effect was not clear because Wilson received prison time for two other convictions — including one for conspiring to have prosecutors killed.
Wilson claimed he shipped 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya to ingratiate himself with the Libyan government at the CIA's request.
The CIA denied that at trial, and again on Wednesday.
"The CIA didn't authorize or play any role whatsoever in his decision to sell arms to Libya," agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said. "That decision was his and that is why he went to jail."
At his trial, prosecutors introduced a sworn statement from a top-ranking official saying Wilson did not do anything for the CIA after his retirement in 1971.
Days after his conviction, but before his sentencing, the CIA forwarded a memo to the U.S. attorney's office saying at least five projects Wilson had worked on for the CIA after 1971 had surfaced.
U.S. Judge Lynn N. Hughes said the government failed to inform Wilson's attorneys of the memo and upon his appeal, failed to acknowledge that the affidavit was false and suppressed other evidence that might have helped him.
The former head of the Justice Department (news - web sites)'s criminal division, D. Lowell Jensen, also denied a claim by the judge that he was involved in the prosecutors' discussions.
"I know that I would not have authorized the failure to disclose any information," Jensen said.