CATCHING A CIA RENEGADE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000201190011-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: April 29, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/16: CIA-RDP91-00587R000201190011-9
WASHINGTON TIMES
BOOK REVIEW/
Tom Diaz
Catching
a CIA
renegade
The director of the Central In-
telligence Agency, William
Casey, reportedly has ar-
gued forcefully in adminis-
tration councils of war that Libyan
strongman Muammar Qaddafi
should be given a thorough pasting.
Mr. Casey's zeal may be rooted in
part in an urge to make institutional
expiation. Because every time a
bomb planted by one of Col. Qad-
dafi's thugs goes off around the
world - blasting small children,
their mothers, and other living
things to glory - the CIA finds a tiny
bit of innocent blood on its own
hands.
The evidence has become compel-
ling "beyond peradventure of a
doubt;' as our lawyer friends like to
say, that the agency failed utterly in
its duty to oversee the actions of a
bizarre and dangerous creature it
created and set loose upon the world
- Edwin P. Wilson.
Wilson, now in federal prison
through no help of the agency, is the
former CIA agent - ostensibly rene-
gade - who sold Col. Qaddafi's re-
gime, among other things, 40,000
pounds of C-4 plastic explosive and
sophisticated miniature timing de-
vices with which to make terror
bombs.
That amount of C-4 is staggering.
The stuff looks innocent enough. It's
about the color and texture of chil-
dren's modeling clay. But a piece the
size of a small potato can quite effec-
tively devastate a room full of peo-
ple. The thought of several hundred
such explosive potatoes tucked in
various nooks and crannies about
the world leaves the mind reeling.
Here is what E. Lawrence Bar-
cella, the federal prosecutor who
eventually hounded down and put
Wilson behind bars, thought when
he first learned about the size of the
sale to Libya, according to Peter
Maas in Manhunt, his book about the
case:
"From that second on, whenever a
bomb went off - in a London depart-
ment store, in a delicatessen in
Paris, on a train in Italy - he would
wonder if it had come from that
huge cache sitting in Libya. C-4 was
practically indestructible. It could
be used in every climate, from arctic
to tropical. Under the most minimal
care, it had a life expectancy of at
least 20 years."
Quite simply speaking, Wilson be-
came filthy rich selling the means
and know-how of death to the devil
incarnate. He sold the mad dog of
Tripoli guns, explosives, and spare
parts for weapons. He arranged at
least one assassination attempt, per-
haps others, and recruited Amer-
ican experts - including Green Be-
rets - to teach the Libyans how to
use their deadly toys.
But Wilson couldn't have done it
without, at best, the negligence of
his former employer, the CIA, and, at
worst, the cooperation of several of
its highest-ranking officials.
The agency either didn't notice or
didn't care very much that - even
while he was intimately involved in
its activities - Wilson and his
friends were piling up big bucks and
living lives of glaring ostentation far
beyond the means of ordinary civil
servants.
Wilson was either booted out of
the agency or quit in mid-career
(accounts vary) in 1971. He had been
expert in setting up and running
front corporations for the agency's
world-wide operations.
But, drawing on his experience in
front operations, he continued to
have a hand in intelligence matters,
running a similar front for the Navy
between 1971 and 1976. That front
folded after Wilson made the big
mistake of trying to bribe Adm.
Bobby Ray Inman, who was then
running the Navy operation. (Adm.
Inman is one of the few characters
involved in Wilson's world who
comes off with dignity and honor -
not to mention common sense. He
wrote a memo on the incident to the
FBI, which promptly lost it.)
But almost until the moment
when the doors of the federal prison
slammed shut behind him, Wilson
continued to have extensive contacts
with high officials in the CIA and
other defense and intelligence agen-
cies. Their help, and the patina of
legitimacy they willingly lent Wil-
son at key points in his scheming,
made it possible for him to deal
boldly and profitably in the trade of
terror.
For example, according to Mr.
Maas, when Wilson first needed to
get his hands on miniature det-
onators, programmable to set off ex-
plosives at precise times, he turned
to friends in the CIA: William
Weisenburger, "the CIAs man for ex-
otic equipment," got a handful of the
devices for Wilson through an
agency supplier - making a tidy
profit for himself in the process -
and Wilson used these demonstra-
tors to clinch his first big deal with
the Libyans.
Wilson also used other top offi-
cials in the agency to carry his water
and cover his tracks for years. Some
appear to have been merely greedy,
others stupid, some a combination of
both.
What is worse, if Mr. Maas's
account is accurate, when the facts
of what Wilson was doing finally
penetrated the agency's dinosaurian
bulk and began to glimmer in its in-
stitutional brain, the CIA acted just
like any other Washington bu-
reaucracy - it closed ranks to pro-
tect itself.
When news of Wilson's high-level
CIA connections hit the press, Pres-
ident Reagan ordered the agency to
get to the bottom of the affair. Mr.
Casey sent orders down the line for
an inquiry, and a woman lawyer was
given the task of investigating the
matter.
"She did her job too energetically,"
Mr. Maas writes. "In six months, an
annoyed clandestine directorate
succeeded in having her replaced. It
wasn't about to let outsiders pry into
its affairs, no matter what the reason
for the inquiry or who ordered it.
CIA directors and general counsels
came and went, but the directorate
remained"
Mr. Maas's book is a good detec-
tive yarn, skillfully spinning out the
story of Mr. Barcella's pursuit and
eventual successful prosecution of
Wilson. It adds several interesting
nuggets to the earlier account, The
Death Merchant, written by Joseph
C. Goulden. Among them, the allega-
tion that Erich Fritz von Marbod, a
former top Defense Department of-
ficial, was involved in one of Wilson's
schemes.
The book is also an unflattering
portrait - rather like the dwarfs of
the Spanish court in Velazquez's
paintings - of the lust for wealth
and power that compels Washing-
ton's insiders to curry the favor of a
character like Wilson.
Finally, it raises profoundly trou-
bling questions about how the neces-
sarily secret operations of the CIA
can be protected, while the country
is itself protected from deviant mad-
men like Wilson who breed like toad-
stools in protected dark corners un-
der the cloak of secrecy.
Tom Diaz is assistant managing
editor of The Washington Times.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/16: CIA-RDP91-00587R000201190011-9
29 April 1986