Edwin P. Wilson, a former CIA operative who was branded a traitor and convicted of shipping arms to Libya but whose conviction was overturned after he served 22 years in prison, has died. He was 84.
Wilson died Sept. 10 in Seattle from complications from a heart valve replacement surgery, said Craig Emmick, a director at Columbia Funeral Home in Seattle.
Wilson who set up front companies abroad for the CIA and posed as a rich American businessman was convicted in 1983 for shipping 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya. At trial, he said he did it to ingratiate himself with the Libyan government at the CIA's request.
A federal judge threw out that conviction in 2003, saying the government failed to correct information about Wilson's service to the CIA that it admitted internally was false.
Joseph C. Goulden, the veteran journalist and author, wrote a book about Wilson called The Death Merchant.
You can read my Counterterrorism magazine interview with Joseph C. Goulden, in which he discusses Wilson, via the below links:
http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/JosephGouldenQandA.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/JGouldenQandA2.jpg
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