HOT SHOTS FEEL THE HEAT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606230002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 14, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606230002-4
IV%*I I CIE A7FA
OR PAGE
Hot Shots Feel the Heat
In Texas, two arms merchants face heavy time
O ne defendant was a dour ex-cIA
agent with dark, glowering eyes and
a tight-lipped G. Gordon Liddy demean.
or. The other was a jovial Englishman
who smokes Cuban cigars, drives a
$60.000 custom-made Cadillac convert-
ible and cracks jokes about himself as a
"good ole boy" who "drills'a little oil
and raises a little beer' on his 2,000-acre
ranch near Dallas. Their personalities
may differ, but the two millionaires have
much in common. Both Edwin Wilson
and Ian Smalley were on trial in Texas, in
unrelated but remarkably comparable
cases, charged with masterminding elab-
orate arms-smuggling deals in the Mid-
dle East.
In Houston, Wilson, 54, was convict.
ed of shipping 20 tons of plastic explosives
from the city's Intercontinental Airport to
Tripoli in 1977. In Dallas, Smalley, 42,
was charged with conspiring to smuggle
100 tanks to Iran and 8,300 antitank mis-
siles to its foe Iraq. Both offered similaral.
ibis: they were motivated by patriotism
rather than profit and believed, their law-
yers claimed, that they were involved in
covert operations sanctioned by the U.S.
Government.
Wilson's trial ended Saturday when
the jury found him guilty on four smug.
gling-related charges. After the verdict
federal prosecutors asked that Wilson be
declared a "dangerous special offender,'"
claiming that he had "offered about-$1
million" to a fellow prisoner to kill nine
people, including Government attorneys
and witnesses who testified against him. If
U.S. District Judge Ross Sterling agrees,
that could add eight years to Wilson's pos-
sible sentence of 17 years in prison.
It was the second of four trials that
Wilson faced on charges that he ran an in-
ternational web of illegal arms deals and
terrorist activities between 1976 and 1979.
In November he was convicted by a fed-
eral jury in Alexandria. Va., of organizing
the export of rifles and handguns to Lib-
ya. As he did in the first trial, Wilson's
lawyer, Herald Price Fahringer, argued
that the defendant was a "de ,kzcw CIA
agent" working undercover to get secrets
for his former employer from Libyan Dic-
tator Muammar Gaddafi.
Prosecutors termed the shipment
from Houston to Libya the largest illegal
movement of explosives ever investigated
by the U.S. Jerome S: Brower, a Califor-
nia explosives manufacturer and distribu-
tor who is an unindicted co-conspirator,
testified that Wilson, who left the CIA is
1970, said he wanted "as much as I could
get" of cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, a
plastic explosive known as C-4. Brower
said he shipped 42,300 lbs. in 856 5-gal.
cans disguised as "drilling mud," a chemi,
cal lubricant used in oil-drilling rigs, from
California to Houston, where it was load-
ed aboard a leased DC-8.
ccording to the Government's in-
A dictment against Smalley, the Eng-
lishman conspired to ship 100 vintage
SO-ton tanks to Iran by using phony
"end user's certificates," which gave the
United Arab Emirates as the delivery
site. He allegedly planned to buy the
tanks from an Army depot in Anniston,
Ala. He is also charged with conspiring
to ship 8,300 antitank missiles to Iraq.
Smalley, against whom charges are
pending in Britain for the illegal sale of
60 tank engines to Iran, faces a maxi.
mum term of 70 years and a 561,000
fine if convicted on the U.S. charges. He
offered courtroom observers little more
than the traditional stiff upper lip. "I've
got confidence in the American justice
system to find me as innocent as I am."
he said. "I'm really not a Bluebeard." of
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606230002-4