Edwin P. Wilson

On 10 September 2012, Wilson died of complications from heart valve replacement surgery, survived by his sons Karl and Erik, sister Leora Pinkston and girlfriend Cate Callahan.

Wilson filed a civil suit against seven former federal prosecutors, two of whom are now federal judges, and a past executive director of the CIA. On March 29, 2007, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal dismissed his case on the ground that all eight had immunity covering their actions.

In October 2003, by U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, overturning his conviction on the explosives charge, found that U.S. Justice Department prosecutors knew Wilson had worked for the CIA. Wilson was released from prison on September 14, 2004, after being incarcerated for 22 years. Over 12 of those years were in solitary confinement.

After his 2004 release from prison, Wilson moved north of Seattle to live with his brother.

While in prison, Wilson campaigned vigorously for his innocence and repeatedly filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the government. Eventually, he found information linked to the memo and hired a new lawyer. His lawyer was David Adler, a former CIA officer who had clearance to view classified documents. Adler spent long hours poring through thousands of files and eventually found 80 incidents where Wilson met on a professional basis with the CIA and proof that the CIA had indirectly used Wilson after his retirement. "His revenge for his framing came almost too late. In 2003 his conviction for the explosives-shipping was overturned because, wrote the judge, the government had lied. Far from no contacts with the CIA between 1971 and 1978, there had been at least 80. Several ran intriguingly 'parallel' to the illegal acts he had been charged with. The next year he was released, white-haired at 76, fighting fit and pumped up with his own righteousness, to spend the rest of his days trying to clear his name."

Another scandal broke out around Wilson when a company he had formed to ship United States military aid to Egypt was convicted of overcharging the United States Department of Defense by $8 million. A partner with Edwin P. Wilson in this company was another former CIA officer, Thomas G. Clines. Wilson also maintained that Major General Richard V. Secord was also a "silent partner" in this company, though Secord denied this allegation. Nonetheless, Wilson, Clines and Theodore Shackley (another former CIA officer) were all working together with Secord in the summer of 1984 when Oliver North approached Secord to ask for help in buying arms for the Contras, a group of armed rebels then trying to overturn the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

In 1971, with the CIA's knowledge and approval, Wilson moved to the Office of Naval Intelligence, where he worked full-time for a secret intelligence unit called the Naval Field Operations Support Group (NFOSG) or Task Force 157. Between its inception in 1966 and its termination in 1977, the focus was on acquiring intelligence on Soviet naval activity. However, the unit's remit was wider and later described as “the U.S. military's only network of undercover agents and spies operating abroad using commercial and business 'cover' for their espionage." At this time, Wilson set up another front company—World Marine, Inc.—to assist with his logistics work. Wilson then retired from the ONI in 1976 after events that have been disputed. After a change in commanders, Wilson reportedly appealed to Admiral Bobby Inman, the Director of Naval Intelligence, offering his influence in Congress to the ONI's budget troubles if he, Wilson, could be made chief of Task Force 157. Allegedly outraged, Inman shut down Task Force 157 altogether and reported Wilson to the FBI. However, other calculations may have been in play.

In the 1970s, he became involved in dealings with Libya. Wilson claims that a high-ranking CIA official Theodore "Blond Ghost" Shackley asked him to go to Libya to keep an eye on Carlos the Jackal, the infamous terrorist, who was living there. At the time, a strict sanctions regime was in place against Libya and the country was willing to pay a great deal for weapons and material. Wilson began conducting elaborate dealings, and guns and military uniforms were smuggled into the country. Wilson also recruited a group of retired Green Berets—decorated Vietnam veteran Billy Waugh among them—to go to Libya and train its military and intelligence officers. The Libyans used Wilson's provisions to advance their interests around the world, including training terrorist cells to build explosive devices inside radios. One cell trained by Wilson's operatives was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) under the command of Ahmad Jibril. Jibril was suspected of being behind the bombing of Pan Am 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. In 1979, a gun that Wilson had arranged to be delivered to the Libyan embassy in Bonn was used to assassinate a prominent dissident. The next year, one of the Green Berets attempted to assassinate another dissident in Colorado. Wilson states that he regrets these incidents and had no prior knowledge of them. He states that he was still working for the CIA and his supplying of weapon to the Libyans was an attempt to get close to them and gain valuable intelligence. This included attempts at gathering information on the Libyan nuclear program.

However, Wilson's most valuable time for the CIA was in Special Operations Division (SOD) setting up front companies like Maritime Consulting Associates (1964) and Consultants International (1965), which were used to covertly ship supplies around the world. For example, cargoes included disassembled boats sent to central Africa where they were welded together on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and used to intercept Soviet arms being ferried across the lake to rebels in the Congo; arms to Angola; crowd-control gear to Chile, Brazil and Venezuela; all kinds of equipment for intelligence-gathering facilities in Iran; supplies for a group of dissident army officers planning a coup in Indonesia; and barges sent to Vietnam. As director of these firms, which were conducted as legitimate businesses, Wilson began to amass a lot of money, but as a contractor, not an employee. He invested in property around the world. In 1971, after 15 years with the CIA, events that have been disputed ended Wilson's official career there. He nevertheless received a year's pay and acquired ownership of some of his front companies.

Wilson's first assignments were for the Office of Security; this included a stint in 1956 guarding U-2 spy planes in Turkey. In 1960, the Agency sent him to Cornell University for graduate studies in labor relations. He put this and his knowledge of psychology to use in the Agency's International Organizations Division (IOD) tackling communism in trade unions around the world. Wilson was involved in attempts to destabilize European labor unions, for example, by using methods as diverse as involving Corsican mobsters and using plagues of cockroaches.

Edwin Paul Wilson (May 3, 1928 – September 10, 2012) was a former CIA and Office of Naval Intelligence officer who was convicted in 1983 of illegally selling weapons to Libya. It was later found that the United States Department of Justice and the CIA had covered up evidence in the case. Wilson's convictions were overturned in 2003 and he was freed the following year.

Edwin P. Wilson was born to a poor farming family in Nampa, Idaho, in 1928. He first worked as a merchant seaman. In 1953, Wilson earned a psychology degree from the University of Portland. That same year, Wilson joined the Marines and fought in the last days of the Korean War. He was said to have been impressive during his military service and, when he was discharged in 1956 for a knee injury, went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency.