Libya and the Strange Case of Edwin P. Wilson

[Octafish]

From the Department of Lost History and Blowback:



Mr. Edwin P. Wilson

Since Libya has been in the news quite a bit this week, I thought it was interesting to run across this Nightline broadcast from November 1981 where the question was asked "Is The U.S. Running A War In Libya?". Since one of the points of concern being made the past few days about this conflict in the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi regard the presence of mercenaries, acting on behalf of the Gaddafi regime who are actively engaged in sniping and gunning down civilians. Seems the tradition of mercenaries working in Libya has been going on for some time, as was evidenced by this broadcast from thirty years ago. Edwin Wilson, a former CIA agent turned arms dealer who still had dealings with the CIA in the 1980's, was actively recruiting, training mercenaries and shipping weapons and ammunition to the Libyan government during the Libyan invasion of Chad. Somewhere along the line, Wilson ran afoul of the agency and, even though details are murky and few, Wilson was convicted of various charges and sentenced to 52 years in prison for conspiracy in attempting various murder-for-hire schemes as well as selling a huge amount of armaments to the Libyans. During the time these revelations surfaced, there was no end to speculative reporting and charges and counter-charges being tossed around.

We often wonder just how entangled our relationships are with various regimes and governments. Regimes supposedly regarded as our enemies have often benefited from our military equipment and personnel. Afghanistan is another one that rings a bell, as did Iraq for a while.

We have that funny habit. That funny habit has a habit of biting us eventually.

CONTINUED w/video, etc: http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/taxonomy/term/11598,7189,7190

It's like an empire of evil or something.

[randr]

1. Empire=Evil for all involved

[Octafish]

4. Battlefield Photo Interpretation a la GOOGLE

Aozou, Chad, the present.

The place once was an oasis. While lacking in community services and skilled workers, today it is valued for its resources, including uranium.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Not "like an evil empire"....IS an evil empire.

difference being that in apparently on 1981, people were actually prosecuted and jailed for what he did, whereas today,
they get off scot free, ie: Blackwater and other homicidal contractors.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. They only went to jail if they crossed the Emperor.

Otherwise they not only went free, as today, but were celebrated as heroes of the Empire.

Like Ollie North and the whole Iran-Contra gang.

[Octafish]

6. War Inc. hearts Muammar Gaddafi

Take plastiques, please.

Ed Wilson got shafted

by Preston Peet
Disinfo.com
October 18, 2000

In 1977, Edwin P. Wilson sold Libyan dictator Moammar Quaddaffi, 42 000 pounds (20 tons) of C-4, one of the most powerful explosives around, and perfect for terror operations Libya was on the US list of nations sponsoring terrorists, and was therefore off limits to this kind of business. After a worldwide, 5-year operation to bring Wilson to "justice," prosecutors and investigators for the US government finally got him, and put him in prison for fifty-two years. They committed perjury to do it.

The US Department of Justice announced on April 14th, 2000 that it is going to open an investigation into federal prosecutors' misconduct in obtaining a conviction (February 5th, 1983) of Wilson for selling the C-4 to Quaddaffi. The disclosure came about as a response to Wilson's filing a motion to hold seventeen current and former CIA and 'Department of Justice' ('DoJ') officials in contempt of court for not informing his defense that the prosecution was knowingly using a false document in prosecuting Wilson.

"The allegations of this case have been referred to (the 'Office of Professional Responsibility'), which will conduct a thorough investigation," says a footnote at the end of the eight page motion filed by the government. The 'San Francisco Examiner' reported (April 14th, 2000) that 'DoJ' spokesperson Myron Marlin says that the 'DoJ' will not actually investigate the prosecutors' criminal use of false information during the trial until Wilson's appeal over his conviction is "settled."

SNIP...

Due to the Judge in the 1983 case ruling that a CIA agent could not testify using a pseudonym, therefore opening him to cross-examination by Wilson, the prosecution had a problem. They needed someone that could convince the jury they had been able to see all relevant documents in CIA files on Wilson. Wilson was claiming that he had been working for the CIA when he sold the C-4 to Quaddaffi. The prosecution was charging he was a rogue using his contacts from former service in both CIA and the 'Office of Naval Intelligence'. Wilson had been able to show that he'd had more than 80 "non-social contacts" with the CIA since his retirement in 1971, leaving the prosecution's case in turmoil. Then Charles A. Briggs came to the rescue. Third ranking CIA officer, Briggs signed a declaration on February 3rd, 1983, that on November 8th, 1982, he had authorized a search of CIA records "for any material that in any way pertains to Edwin P. Wilson, or the various allegations concerning his activities after February 28th, 1971, when he retired from the CIA." The Briggs Declaration states that with one exception in 1972, Wilson did not work "directly or indirectly" for the CIA since retiring.

CONTINUED...

When it comes to making big money off Uncle Sam's C-4, or modern colonial slaveholdings for empire, it really is a small world.

[Octafish]

5. What is it they say about money and root causes?

There once was a bank outta Australia that helped the connected class move money and other stuff around this "small world."

Details about Nugan-Hand Bank (and later BCCI) from SourceWatch:

Nugan Hand Bank

From SourceWatch

The Nugan Hand Bank developed in that grey area of the intelligence community involving alumni, assets, allies, and affiliated companies that handle much of the CIA's covert work. Although not a propriety of the agency like the Castle Bank and Trust of Nassau, Bahamas, Nugan Hand was started by and filled up with CIA alumni and personnel. Frank Nugan, a drunk, mediocre lawyer from Australia with a wildly exaggerated resume teamed up with ex CIA operative and Green Beret Michael Jon Hand who had experience in Vietnam and with the Hmong guerrillas of Laos. The third major player in the beginning and direction of the bank was a mysterious expatriate from Texas named Bernie Houghton who was much alive in intelligence community. Many of the actions involved with the bank are shrouded by destroyed records and sudden deaths, but two things remain certain: 1) The bank employed many retired CIA operatives 2) They were heavily involved with drug trafficking.

Unable to secure all the money needed to wage covert wars around the world, the CIA has maintained front companies, banks, and illegal trades to supply the needed revenue. Connections and leverage in the outland world of drugs and weapons allows for factions within the agency and like minded interests to act outside the confines of laws to influence the futures of countries in the process of defining themselves.

The Nugan Hand Limited was established in 1973 with $80 in the company's bank account and $5 in paid up capital. Frank Nugan went ahead and wrote the company a $980,000 check out of his personal account to purchase $490,000 in shares of its stocks. Since he did not have $980,000 in his personal account, he wrote himself a check from the bank's account to cover it, claiming at the same time the company's paid up capital was a million dollars. This is not advanced accounting fraud, however it worked, and the bank continued to bring funds in through crude methods of deception.

SNIP...

The connections sewing the fabric of the bank could not continue. The bank had never made a real profit, rather it ripped people off, laundered drug money coming out of the Golden Triangle (Australia experienced their first heroin epidemic in over fifty years at the height of the bank's activities), and blocked investigations through its connections. Due to increased obviousness, the fabric rotted, Frank Nugan was found dead in his car by apparent suicide, Michael Hand escaped Australia with the help of Thomas Cline and ex-Green Beret James O. Spencer, only after months of pulling funds out and declaring the bank insolvent.

Despite the fantastic abuse of position and connections, and the immediate criminality of funneling drug money to support arm transfers to places determined to be Cold War conflicts by people who were not in a legal position to make that determination, this story was reported in the U.S. almost only by Jonathan Kwitney, a Wall Street Journal reporter who made the front page three days in a row with it, and then it was buried. Kwitney went on to write The Crimes of Patriots, a True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA; New York: W.W. Norton, 1987 ISBN# 0-393-02387-7 which is one of only a few studies of the Nugan Hand disaster. Alfred McCoy adds it in the second edition of his The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade New York: Harpers and Row, Publishers Inc.,1972, 1991 ISBN# 1-55652-125-1, but it is not in the later revised edition with the ISBN# 1-55652-483-8. The story was covered extensively in the then National Times of Australia, but still remains on the fringe of common knowledge in the U.S. with other bank scandals like Savings and Loan and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International ringing the memory bells.

SOURCE w Links: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nugan_Hand_Bank

Money really does make people do the most antisocial things.