CIA agent's conviction tossed after two decades

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, US District 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.

"Confronted with its own internal memoranda, the government now says that, well, it might have misstated the truth, but that it was Wilson's fault, it did not really matter, and it did not know what it was doing," the judge wrote in a 24-page ruling.

Defense attorney David Adler said the judge's decision ultimately could free Wilson 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.

"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." The Justice Department will review the decision and study its options, spokesman Bryan Sierra said. "Beyond that, there's not much that we would comment on at this point," he said.

At his 1983 trial in Texas, prosecutors introduced a sworn statement from a top-ranking official that Wilson did nothing for the CIA after his retirement in 1971.

"It was just a flat-out lie. He did a lot," Adler said Tuesday.

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

"For over 20 years he's been claiming he was not some kind of rogue CIA officer and he did not get a fair trial and, of course, it turns out he was right," Adler said.

Days after his conviction, but before his sentencing, the CIA forwarded a memo to the US attorney's office saying at least five projects Wilson had worked on for the CIA after 1971 had surfaced -- including a planned trip to Iran with the CIA's deputy director.

Hughes said officials failed to inform Wilson's attorneys of the memo and that in his appeal, the government failed to acknowledge that the affidavit was false and suppressed other evidence that might have helped him.

With the sentence thrown out, Wilson could be eligible for parole this year or next year based on time already served in the other cases, Adler said. Wilson also could seek to have the Virginia case overturned, he said. If successful in that effort, Wilson would probably be eligible for immediate release, he said.