FRANK TERPIL PART 1

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000200970002-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2008
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 7, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200970002-0
RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
PROGRAM
Morning Edition
STATION
WAMU-FM
NPR Network
DATE
SUBJECT
November 7, 1983
Frank Terpil, Part I
7:40 A.M.
CITY
Washington,
D.C.
BOB EDWARDS: Today we begin a four-part series profil-
ing Frank Terpil, ex-CIA officer and international arms dealer.
Charged with a variety of crimes, including an assassination
conspiracy and running a terrorist training school, Terpil faces
a 53-year prison sentence. He's been a fugitive for the past
three years.
Three months ago, reporter Jim Hogan got a telephone
call from Terpil. He was still hiding and wanted to talk. The
two had met earlier when Hogan was working on a television
documentary about Terpil and his partner Edwin P. Wilson. But
right after the TV taping, Terpil disappeared. His wife said
he'd been kidnapped.
Terpil now spends his time in Eastern Europe and the
Caribbean. He arranged a meeting with Hogan, and these inter-
views appear in Penthouse magazine this month. The interviews
are also part of this report from Jim Hogan.
JIM HOGAN: Three years ago Frank Terpil, an arms dealer
and former CIA officer, was having coffee with clients in a New
York City hotel. Suddenly the doors burst open, the police
rushed in with shotguns, and his clients revealed themselves to
be undercover police. Terpil was indicted on charges of unlaw-
fully conspiring to sell ten thousand submachine guns and charged
with providing samples of his wares to undercover detectives.
While comfortable in dealing with Third World dictators,
such as Libya's Qaddafi and Uganda's Amin, Terpil feared the
`"?fe`? s~ppied Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200970002-0 1orexhbted
 . , ~` Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
judgment of 12 average citizens. Released on bail, he awaited
the trial for months, his nervousness mounting. Some three days
before the trial was to begin, he sought reassurance from his
attorneys.
FRANK TERPIL: Even my own lawyers told me, "Now we've
got a problem. Definitely, when you show up tomorrow," which was
September 5th, said, "show up on Monday, they're going to
incarcerate you. You are not going to be released on further
bail. And we're going to have to take it from there."
So it seemed to me it was a one-act play at that point.
HOGAN: Terpil fled the United States on a stolen
passport, leaving his wife, his children, his home, a small
office building, and a multimillion-dollar income tax lien
behind. Finding haven in Damascus and then in Beirut, he set
about rebuilding his life. He purchased a restaurant near the
American Embassy and was preparing for its grand opening when
Syrian intelligence agents put guns to his head and forced him
into a waiting Mercedes. The fugitive had been kidnapped, taken
back to Damascus. He found a dungeon awaiting him.
TERPIL: The initial accusation, of course, was that I
was a spy for the CIA. Then they thought I was a spy for Mosad.
Then they went back and they questioned me, or attempted to
question me about my travels in the Middle East, why I was always
there.
So, what they tried to do was really fabricate a case
that I was a CIA agent.
TERPIL: It's not true. But the more I denied it, the
more they were convinced that that had been the case.
HOGAN: While the prison conditions were harsh, and
Terpil claimed that he was tortured, he later joked that the most
upsetting thing of all was that his jailers had had the temerity
to confiscate his Rolex wristwatch.
TERPIL: That was my -- that was the heartbreaking
thing. They stripped me of my Rolex, which denied me -- because
of the conditions of the prison, I didn't know what time it was,
what day it was, how long I was there. I attempted to keep track
of time by counting the meals.
HOGAN: In fact, he had been in prison for exactly six
months when, as suddenly as he had been seized, he was released.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
Blindfolded, he was driven from Damascus and pushed out of a
moving car on the road to Beirut.
TERPIL: I probably looked like a thinner version of
Howard Hughes, but a filthier version at the point. Because at
that time, I had not had a shower since late December.
HOGAN: It was late May 1982. No sooner had Terpil
settled into his apartment in Beirut than, as he explained with
tongue-in-cheek:
TERPIL: The hell-inspired Zionists who sought to
destroy world tranquillity broke my bubble in Beirut with their
artillery.
HOGAN: The Israeli invasion had a silver lining,
however. At least it did from Frank Terpil's point of view.
TERPIL: The initial reaction, believe it or not, was
one of relief, one of elation, because very few people leave
Syrian prisons alive, and those that do have a high morality rate
on the street. I had anticipated it would only be a matter of
time before the Syrians would come down with one of their
assassination squads and attempt to get me again.
The Syrians were busy trying to fight the Israelis, or
actually trying to preserve themselves. They weren't worried
about me at this time.
HOGAN: Hunted by more sides than one, the fugitive gun-
runner was caught in the crossfire between East and West Beirut.
Car-bombs exploded in the streets beneath his penthouse apart-
ment, while artillery shells demolished buildings nearby. It was
a vicious battle. And according to Terpil, it was also a cynical
experiment.
TERPIL: Beirut was a testing ground for live experi-
ments on the latest developments of U.S. ordnance. For instance,
the vacuum bomb, which they felt was a major breakthrough in
bombs.
I'll give you an example of what a vacuum bomb is. A
vacuum is an ordnance device dropped from an aircraft which
explodes above the target. The causing air rush implodes
--implodes the building or the target, causing no damage to the
surrounding area, but killing everything within that building.
They killed 283 people, mainly to prove that the vacuum
bomb was a feasible weapon.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
And now, what differentiates myself from the Pentagon
sales office, except they've got access to much more material
than I do? My material was basically on a one-to-one basis.
Their material was in mega-units
HOGAN: He had escaped from the U.S. and, he suspected,
from a Syrian assassination squad. But how did he escape the
Israelis in Beirut?
TERPIL: The PLO. I had the fighter's uniform. I had
my kaffiyeh, my uniform. I had my AK. I looked like a -- sun-
glasses, of course.
HOGAN: Had your Rolex?
TERPIL: My Rolex was -- I had my uniform buttoned down
over the Rolex. Not too man PLO were wearing Rolexes that day.
HOGAN: Blending into the ranks of the PLO, Terpil
managed his escape from Beirut under the eyes of the U.S.
Marines, taking a freighter from the port, and eventually finding
his way to a tranquil beach in the Caribbean. There, he talked
about his life as a fugitive and his need to carry a gun.
TERPIL: It's not really -- it's not a cowboy atmo-
sphere. I'm not a cowboy. But I'm not going back. I'm not
going back and negotiate a 53-year sentence.
HOGAN: In speaking with Terpil, it occurred to me that
the former CIA communications technician had finally become the
spook that he'd always imagined. In earlier years, he had prided
himself on his respectability, while at the same time devouring
the novels of Robert Ludlum and John LeCarre.
Today, Terpil is the central character in a real-life
pulp novel of his own making. And as he is the first to admit,
it's a dangerous book to be in.
EDWARDS: Tomorrow, a report on how Frank Terpil sold
the skills he learned as a CIA officer.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 ?,, ?,. Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
f~AD I O N P E PO f~TS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
r~R
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM
Morning Edition
STATION
WAMU-FM
NPR Network
SATE
November 8, 1983
7:30 AM
CITY
Washington, DC
Sue,1ECT
Frank Terpil
BOB EDWARDS: International arms dealer, Frank Terpil,
had everything -- real estate in Washington and London, a
Rolls, a Mercedes and enough cash in Swiss bank accounts to
live without working for the rest of his life.
His business, selling the skills he had learned while
working for the CIA in the early 70's.
But, in 1980, Terpil's business fell apart after
arranging to sell guns to two undercover police officers in New
York. He was arrested and indicted, but fled the country
before his trial. He's been a fugitive now for three years.
A few months ago, reporter Jim Hogan got a call from
Terpil. They had met before. Terpil wanted to talk. They
spoke together in Eastern Europe and again on an island in the
Caribbean. Those interviews appear in this month's Penthouse
magazine, and are heard this week in our series on Terpil.
Here's Part II, prepared by Jim Hogan.
FRANK TERPIL: I think my lifestyle had been on a con-
temporary basis with an up and coming young Washington million-
aire with all the assets and all the fine things that go with
it -- a big house, the right cars, the right address, office
buildings, all the respectable amenities that go with the life-
style in the Washington area.
Material supplied by Radio N Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. IT may not be reproduced, sold or publicly tlemonsirated or exhibited.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 .. Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
JIM HOGAN: Even before Frank Terpil became a fugi-
tive, he was a man in motion. He moved with the movers and
shook with the shakers because in the end he loved making
deals. Deal were what he had instead of values, and they
rewarded him with sick veneer of respectability, whether the
deal involved a Libyan assassination contract, combat boots and
basketballs for Uganda, or florescent saddles for camels in
Saudi Arabia, the deal was the same.
What is so shocking about Terpil is not so much the
deals that he made as the thoughts that lay behind them.
For example, when upwards of a thousand people com-
mitted suicide in Jonestown, most Americans reacted with
horror, but not Frank Terpil. When he learned from a friend in
the State Department that the U.S. Government intended to bring
the Jonestown victims home for burial, Terpil saw a unique
business opportunity, the possibility for he and his friend at
State to make a quick killing in the casket business.
While that deal fell through, other deals were made,
and they often depended upon who Terpil knew, a pal in the CIA,
a crooked congressman, a manufacturer of exotic explosives, or
a demolitions expert in the Army who wanted to make a few ex-
tra bucks and didn't care how whe did it.
The same could be said of Terpil's partner, former CIA
officers Edwin T. Wilson. Wilson's huge estate in the Virginia
countryside was, until the indictments came raining down
against him, a magnet for U.S. Senators and high-ranking CIA
and Pentagon officials. Today, the Wilson is the subject of a
grand jury investigation into the alleged corruption of public
officials.
According to Terpil, more than one politician was
bribed in an effort to procure lucrative defense contracts and
other favors.
Whatever one may say about Frank Terpil, and there is
much to be said, all of it obvious, the fact is that he could
not have prospered without the help of friends in high places.
Unlike the fugitives, they remain in business.
TERPIL: American politics is so [bleeped] it's un-
believable. When they shake their finger at somebody else,
they really should be looking in their own backyard.
HOGAN: It wasn't just money that was at stake. It
was countries and armies.
In one case, Terpil says Libya was able to purchase
the order of battle for Chad. That is to say, a complete
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 . Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
description of the country's defense forces. Libya was able to
do so with the help of Ed Wilson and his contacts in the intel-
ligence community. The result: a bloody invasion that saw an
American enemy attack an American ally using the best intelli-
gence the U.S. taxpayers dollars could provide. Without the
order of battle, the invasion might never have taken place.
I'm Jim Hogan, for National Public Radio.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 . , - Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
Morning Edition STATION WAMU-FM
NPR Network
SATE November 9, 1983 7:40 AM aTV Washington, DC
Frank Terpil
BOB EDWARDS: To protect the national security of the
United States, the Central Intelligence Agency relies on
secrecy.
So, the CIA is compartmentalized. Operations are on a
need-to-know basis. The agency also relies on a variety of
businesses, or commercial covers, to accomplish its missions.
A agent must have a job when he arrives in the country he's
been assigned to watch.
Frank Terpil and Edwin Wilson knew that that was the
way the agency operated. They were CIA officers in the early
70's when they went into business together to sell the skills
they'd learned while working for the agency. Both men became
wealthy.
But, in 1980, Terpil made a deal to sell guns to two
undercover agents in New York. He was indicted and arrested,
but fled the country rather than face a 53-year jail sentence
for that and other crimes. Terpil's been a fugitive ever
since.
Several months ago, Frank Terpil arranged a meeting
with journalist Jim Hogan. The two had met before, and Terpil
wanted to talk. These exclusive interviews took place in a
hotel room in Eastern Europe, and on a beach in the Caribbean.
In Part III of our series profiling Frank Terpil,
Hogan explains how Terpil made his deals.
Material supplied by Radio N Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
JIM HOGAN: Secrecy, duplicity, and the emergency of
an old boys network of former agents has created a commercial
twilight zone, an area where the public and private sectors --
one governed by profits and the other by patriotism -- clash in
a fog of uncertainty. It's an area that former intelligence
officers, such as Ed Wilson and Frank Terpil, exploit with
ease, selling arms, explosives, poisons, and secret information
to the highest bidders.
Recently, I spoke with Terpil about his involvement
with the government of Libya and his efforts and those of his
partner, Wilson, to acquire classified documents for Mu'ammar
Qadhafi.
FRANK TERPIL: We wanted country profiles -- political
and military profiles on countries' capabilities -- various
countries.
HOGAN: The information that Terpil and Wilson re-
quired was available only from U.S. intelligence agencies. It
included national security secrets, and to get them Terpil and
Wilson relied upon their pals in the Defense Intelligence
Agency and the CIA. In at least one case, Terpil told me, a
highly placed CIA official was put on retainer to obtain the
data that was being sought.
TERPIL: We knew the source he was going to go. Ob-
viously, it was going to be the agency.
HOGAN: Who put him on a retainer, Wilson?
TERPIL: Wilson, yeah.
The concept was that we would have current intelli-
gence value, or current intelligence data, on the capabilities
of another country. Now, the Libyans predicated their timing
on the invasion of Chad to one of these reports.
HOGAN: One of the men on Wilson's payroll was Waldo
Duberstein, a top level analyst for the DIA. Duberstein's in-
volvement, according to Terpil, was anything but passive. On
one ocassion at least, Duberstein personally delviered the
secret information, the take, to Qadhafi's representatives in
Libya.
TERPIL: Duberstein actually made a trip over to Libya
with take, the information.
HOGAN: Indicted for his role in the Libyan affair,
Duberstein never came to trial. He was killed with a shotgun
in what Terpil describes as a hunting accident in the laundry
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 . .~ Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
room of his girl friend's apartment. The police pronounced the
death an apparent suicide.
Just how much Duberstein knew is uncertain. While he
was well-paid for his services, he may actually have thought
that he was serving his country. Many of those charged in the
Wilson case -- men such as Douglas Schlachter, convicted of
training terrorists for Libya -- were convinced that both
Terpil and Wilson were working for the CIA.
TERPIL: This is why Schlachter contends in his
defense he was working for the "Company." And mentally, maybe
he thought he was.
HOGAN: Weapons and information were not the only
things that Terpil sold. He also traded in lives. Among the
charges outstanding against him is that he sought to hire
assassins to murder Libyan dissident, Omar Mehesshi. The con-
tract was worth a million dollars, and the men he picked for
the job, Terpil says, were professional hit men who worked on
contract to the CIA.
TERPIL: I asked. That's how we got them. They told
us that they performed hits for the CIA, and it was verified.
I met them through an active duty CIA agent. She was the one
that brought them to Washington to Wilson and myself. Now, the
verification that these people should be ok came from an active
duty CIA agent. She brings them to me, introduces them to me
-- there was no question about what they should have done, and
there's no question about what the job was. The job was very
plain as to what it would be.
HOGAN: Not only were the hit men's bonafides certi-
fied by the old boys network at the agency, but that same net-
work helped Terpil to procure the lethal materiel that he
later sold to Qadhafi.
TERPIL: The same laboratory that developed remote
detonation equipment for the CIA, I used. They thought they
were doing it for the CIA. Now, the only difference -- the
only difference was I sold mine to Qadhafi. The CIA was giving
theirs away to the other countries that were, let's say, more
friendly. But the exact use -- the use was the same thing.
The use was for remote detonation, clandestine explosives for
assassination. Now, how do you differenntiate which was bad
and which was good? I mean, is there such a things as a good
assassination?
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 . .~ Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
.. .. . `.
HOGAN: I reminded Terpil that while CIA agents had
plotted in the past to assassinate foreign leaders, Fidel
Castro, for example, a Senate investigation of the matter
failed to prove that the agency had ever succeeded in any such
attempt.
TERPIL: What the agency has used -- if you want to
use double-talk -- they say themselves that we have not as-
sassinated or attempted to assassinate a foreign leader. They
don't clarify the statement that they were not responsible for
the attack or the assassination of a foreign leader. Which
means that -- normally Americans do not go into a place like
Kenshasha and try to assassinate Patrice Lamumba; they hire
locals.
HOGAN: The Wilson-Terpil case is a shocking one, but
the questions that it raises go beyond the who shot whom of
particular indictments. The real question: can an open so-
ciety co-exist with a secret service with the inevitable
corruption of men such as Frank Terpil and Ed Wilson?
For National Public Radio, I'm Jim Hogan.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
RADIO N R E PO RTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
Morning Edition
STATION WAMU-FM
NPR Network
SATE November 10, 1983 7:45 A.M. CIS' Washington, D.C.
Frank Terpil
BOB EDWARDS: Frank Terpil worked for the Central
Intelligence Agency for many years. But in the early 1970s,
Terpil left the agency to work for himself. Among other things,
he sold eavesdropping equipment to Uganda's dictator Idi Amin,
hired assassins on behalf of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and
provided terrorist training to several factions in the Middle
East. It was, he admits, a nasty and often corrupt business, but
Terpil says he did not have a monopoly on such affairs. He says
his biggest competitor was the CIA.
Teppil has been a fugitive for three years now. But in
this exclusive interview with Jim Hogan, Terpil explains why he
doesn't want to return to the United States.
Here's Hogan's report.
JIM HOGAN: Frank Terpil is an angry man with nothing to
lose and a great deal to say. That he has nothing to lose is
owing to the fact that he's a man on the run, a fugitive in
flight from a 53-year sentence, Interpol, and the intelligence
services of at least three countries, including his own. He's
lost everything: his business, his home and his family. But
what makes him angry, he says, is that it was all taken from him
without a fair trial. According to Terpil, he and his cohort,
Gary Korkola (?), had no choice but to become fugitives. A trial
in absentia and a harsh sentence were inevitable because they
couldn't afford to plea-bargain. Any sentence would have been
too long.
FRANK TERPIL: We had already been told that we'll be
dead, no matter if we received one year or two years. We would
be dead, we would be taken, we'd be finished, we'd be killed.
Material supplied by Radio N Reports. Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
And this was a prime factor in our leaving.
HOGAN: Terpil believed that he'd be killed in prison
because he knew too much. And one of the things that he knew too
much about, he says, was an alleged U.S. intelligence operation
in which flights were made to the Golden Triangle, a remote area
on the border between Burma and Thailand.
TERPIL: What was on the plane? Gold. Ten million
bucks at a time in gold. It was going to the Golden Triangle to
pay off the warlords, the drug lords. What the idea was, they
could not -- in the Golden Triangle, you could not buy people.
Money meant nothing because they were making more money on the
drugs. You had to buy warlords. How'd you do it? You gave them
more money than their product -- for their product.
Now what do you do with all the opium? You reinvest it
in your own operations. Now...
HOGAN: Wait a minute. You don't reinvest opium. You
have to sell it.
HOGAN: The ostensible purpose of the operation was to
remove large quantities of opium from-the world marketplace. In
reality, Terpil says, the opium was diverted, resold, and the
profit laundered through a consortium of banks in the Far East.
TERPIL: And what you did is now you've got an accele-
rated fund. And all of a subject it became a project that was in
a tailspin. You were getting more money than you knew what to
hell to do with.
HOGAN: Most of the money, Tepril insists, was rein-
vested and used to fund covert intelligence operations in
Indochina and elsewhere. A key role in the scheme was played by
the Nugen-Hand (?) Bank, an Australian-based financial institu-
tion whose top executives included many former high-ranking
military and CIA officials. The founders of that bank, Frank
Nugen and Michael Hand, have since met unhappy ends. Nugen was
found shot to death in the Australian Outback three years ago.
While former U.S. intelligence operative Mike Hand has disp-
-geared entirely, as indeed have many of the bank's records.
Some of those records probably concerned Frank Terpil's
sometime partner Edwin P. Wilson, an important client of the
bank's. According to Terpil, Wilson used the bank to finance the
purchase of classified military hardware. Himself a former CIA
agent, Wilson represented Libya in a meeting with the American
manufacturer of that equipment.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
TERPIL: Who was the buyer? Wilson. Where did they
meet? Moscow. Where does the money came from? Singapore.
Where does it go through? Nugen-Hand.
HOGAN: While the Nugen-Hand Bank has since collapsed,
Terpil says that nothing has changed but he center of operations.
Action central is now Miami.
TERPIL: That's the base. The whole goddam thing has
moved down there. Where did they come from? Laos. Where was it
before? Golden Triangle. Where did the money come from?
Nugen-Hand.
HOGAN: To understand Frank Terpil is no easy task. To
the courts, he's a criminal. To his friends and family, he seems
almost a martyr. And to the intelligence community, he's just a
rogue. They see his association with Idi Amin and Qaddafi as
repugnant, his arms sales deplorable. He exports violence, they
say, and does so for profit.
But Terpil says that he is neither guiltier nor more
innocent than the military establishment as a whole. He points
to Pentagon arms sales to Latin America, to CIA operations in
Indochina, and to U.S. support for strongmen such as Ferdinand
Marcos and madmen such as Pol Pot. It's a view with which his
Third World hosts would seem to agree.
TERPIL: Leaders of various countries do not consider my
-- or they may consider my case more of a martyr case. They
don't consider that I've really done anything criminal or
violent, any more so than their people. So I do enjoy sympathies
of what you might consider some of the Third World countries.
While they don't consider me a hero, they don't consider a
criminal, either.
EDWARDS: Jim Hogan's interview with Frank Terpil appear
in this month's issue of Penthouse magazine.
Terpil's former associate, Edwin Wilson, was sentenced
yesterday in U.S. district court to 25 years in prison for trying
to kill two prosecutors, five government witnesses, and a
business associate. Wilson already is serving long prison terms
for shipping arms to Libya.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
RADIO TV R E PO f~TS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
Morning Edition
November 11, 1983 7:45 AM
Why Terpil Called Jim Hogan
STATION WAMU-FM
NPR Network
Washington, DC
BOB EDWARDS: This week, we've heard a series of
reports on Frank Terpil, and ex-CIA officer and international
arms dealer.
In the early 1970's, Terpil left the Central Intelli-
gence Agency to work for himself. He sold arms and explosives
to terrorists and set up a terrorist training school in Turkey.
Three years ago, Terpil fled the United States to
avoid prosecution. He's been on the run ever since. A few
months ago, Terpil telephone reporter Jim Hogan. The two men
met for a series of talks. I asked Hogan why Terpil agreed to
be interviewed.
JIM HOGAN: Terpil has no good reason to speak with me
or anyone else for publication or anything else, and his mo-
tives for doing so are totally obscure. I think he's lonely.
I think that's one of the aspects of being a fugitive, and I'm
one of the few journalists who interviewed him before he be-
came a fugitive. So, he wanted to talked to somebody and he
had my phone number.
And I think he's got some gripes, too.
HOGAN: Well, at the criminal justice system, at the
CIA, State Department, military defense establishment, his
ex-wife, and so on and so forth.
Material supplied by Radio N Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstraTed or exhibited:
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
EDWARDS: And he laid out a magnificent confession,
really, to be used against him.
HOGAN: Yes. If they ever catch him. He does not
believe that, in fact, he will be caught, and everything he
does is predicated on that. It's kind of strange because you
think of Frank Terpil as some sort of super spook, the only one
in the crowd that's still at large, false passports, disguises,
and so on and so forth. It's not like that.
His idea of a false passport is to carry something
identifying him as Yokio Tomoto of Japan, you know, and he
fakes it.
EDWARDS: [Laughs].
HOGAN: He's a spy.
EDWARDS: What's the credibility of a man like that?
I mean, why should we believe him?
HOGAN: Well, I don't think he has any reason to lie.
In a sense, he's beyond lying. Now whether Terpil exaggerates
things, whether he conjectures and tries to put things to-
gether, I'm not sure. Certainly, he's trying to understand his
own life. He's got a lot of time for reflection. That's all
he's got is time, and he's trying to understand what it was
that he did and what part he played in this larger puzzle, this
larger problem.
EDWARDS: We know what Terpil and his pal, Ed Wilson,
did with their skills that they learned in the CIA, and yet you
say that it's not uncommon for CIA agents to go into business
after they've left the service. To what legitimate business
can one put his or her skills as a CIA agent?
HOGAN: Well, these guys are trained in a lot of
things. They're trained in some kinds of political analysis.
They're trained in security measures. They're skilled at
foreign languages, and so on and so forth.
They'd be hired by Fortune 500 firms, such as Ford, to
deal with -- perhaps deal with labor strikes, McDonalds
Corporation has hired them. What you're dealing with is....
EDWARDS: The spy and burger king?
HOGAN: Exactly. [Laughs]. What you're dealing with
is thousands of people in the intelligence community. I think
the number is something like 140,000 who work for the Federal
Government in some intelligence aspect and, naturally, they
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 - ~ Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
retire, and some of them are in their 40's; they've spent 20
years in the government; where do they go? They set up shop on
their own. Most of them very legitimately.
EDWARDS: How many would do what Terpil and Wilson
HOGAN: I don't think you can put a number on it. It
would just be a guess.
EDWARDS: What can we do about it? What can Congress
do, for example, to put checks on what's really a secret agency
to make certain that you don't have future Terpils and Wilsons?
HOGAN: Well, I think -- I think they can do absolute-
ly nothing. I've thought about it a lot, and one can come up
with motions for legislation and say that there should be more
rigid guidelines for hiring people, and so on and so forth, but
I think the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency do their best
to vet these people -- the people that they hire. But, inevi-
tably, they're going to get -- they're going to hire people --
a few people inadvertently whose characters are subject to
exorelaxation, or whatever you want to call.
EDWARDS: You have journalistic responsibility that
protects your sources, but Terpil's a bad number. Terpil's
been involved with murder. But don't you have a higher re-
sponsibility to turn him in?
EDWARDS: Why not?
HOGAN: Well, I don't see my job as that of a cop.
Secondly, I don't see myself as an informer. I see myself as
an investigative reporter.
EDWARDS: So there he is, out to do whatever mayhem he
wants to do.
HOGAN: Well, it's a practical matter, too. He's
traveling around the Mideast and parts of the Caribbean,
Central Europe. It's impractical. I mean, if INTERPOL can't
get, if the CIA can't get him, how can anyone else? How can
individual? And why should he? That would represent, also, I
think, betrayal.
A reporter is, I think, what? He's not an active
participant, or shouldn't be an active participant in the
things he reports on.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
 Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0
EDWARDS: Jim Hogan. His interviews with Frank Terpil
also appear in this months's "Penthouse" magazine.
Approved For Release 2008/07/25: CIA-RDP88-010708000200970002-0