CIA RENEGADE ASKED U.S. HELP FOR TERROR CAMP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150006-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 29, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: December 20, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST"T
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150006-2
CIA Renegade
Asked T.S. Help
For Terror Camp
The taxpayers came close to fund-
ing a terrorist-training camp in Vir-
ginia five years ago. They were
spared the expense only because the
ex-CIA agent who planned the stunt
wasn't getting along with his wife.
This is just one of the startling
revelations that turned up during an
exhaustive closed-door investigation
of CIA renegade Edwin Wilson by
the House Intelligence Committee.
Wilson recently was convicted of il-
legally supplying weapons to agents
of Libyan dictator Muammar Qad-
dafi.
Investigators for the House com-
mittee interviewed more than 100
witnesses. All of them were assured
anonymity and warned not to speak
to the press.
The committee's staff director,
Thomas Latimer, seemed especially
determined to keep my associate
Dale Van Atta from finding out
what the witnesses were telling the
committee. Van Atta has been inves-
tigating the Wilson episode for more
than two years.
To one witness, Latimer said: "I'll
tell you our experience with [Van
WASHINGTON POST
20 DECEMBER 1982
Attal, and I have never talked with
[him], but people in the press will
'call up and they will he to you and
they will say, well, I know you are
doing such-and-such and I know
somebody you can talk to, and they
are just fishing .... "
On one of his recent "fishing" ex-
peditions, Van Atta hooked the com-
mittee's secret transcripts, from
which the above quotes were taken.
The transcripts are replete with al-
legations against Wilson never before
disclosed.
Wilson has been charged. with
supplying and helping to run a
school for-:terrorists in Libya. Ac-
cording to federal investigators, the
"supplies" provided to Qaddafi in-
cluded explosives concealed in com-
mon 'householcritems like ashtrays.
Such terrorist organizations as Italy's
Red Brigade, the Irish Republican
Army, Japan's Red Army and rad-
ical Palestinian groups are also be-
lieved to have enjoyed access to Wil-
son's "materials."
According to the committee tran-
script, Wilson almost got the Justice
Department's now-defunct Law En-
forcement Assistance Administration
to put up the seed money for train-
ing terrorists at his 3,000-acre, $5-
million farm in Virginia's horse
country.
Although the LEAA was set up to
provide federal grants for improving
law enforcement in this country, one
witness told the committee that Wil-
son's idea was "to have people
trained here and then shipped to
Libya."
Wilson's training camp would cost
money, perhaps as much as $20 mil-
lion. But he was sure he could get at
least part of it from Uncle Sam. One
witness told the committee that Wil-
son "had his own people over there
at LEAA."
Wilson met with his chief LEAA
contact in mid-June, 1977, according
to a committee witness who partic-
ipated in the session. The witness
said Wilson asked for a grant of at
least $850,000, and the LEAA -offi-
cial "assured both of us that he
would walk it through; he would
make sure that it goes through."
This witness said the negotiations
reached a "very advanced stage" and
he "never did find out why it fell
through."
. The scheme collapsed when Wil-
son and his wife had a falling-out
and he decided against locating the
training camp at his home in Virgin-
ia, knowledgable sources told my as-
sociates Van Atta and Indy Badh-
war.
When an active-duty CIA agent
was able to recruit Green Berets in
Fayetteville, N.C., to fly to Libya to
do the training there, Wilson opened
his school in Tripoli. His wife stayed
home on the farm.
Footnote: Through his attorney,
Wilson denied having attempted_ to
set up a terrorist-training camp. - - _
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150006-2