THE SECRET WORLD OF A GREEN BERET - AS A MEMBER OF THE SPECIAL FORCES, LUKE THOMPSON WAS INVOLVED IN COVERT ACTIONS FROM LATIN AMERICA TO ASIA. THE HE WAS RECRUITED TO GO TO LIBYA TO HELP TRAIN TERRORISTS.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020035-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 16, 2011
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: July 4, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDP09SO0048ROO0100020035-3
Na&i
As a member of the Special Forces, Luke Thompson was involved in
covert actions from Latin America to Asia. Then he was recruited to go
to Libva to help train terrorists. Here he tells his story for the first time.
organizers of the mission, Edwin P.
18y Piaibap TcubtCa%
The first call came on a muggy July
evening in 1977: Luke Thompson, a
master sergeant in the Army Special
Forces, was at home in Fayetteville,
N.C. The caller identified himself as
Pat Loomis from Washington and
asked if., Thompson might be inter-
ested in recruiting a team of former
Green Berets for an overseas mission
that'would pay well. Loomis provided
no other information. Thompson
conditionally accepted the proposal,
not knowing that he was about to be-
come involved in one of the strangest
and most disturbing operations in the
annals of international espionage..
When the conversation with Loomis
ended, Thompson, who says he was
initially concerned that the 'offer
might be a trap by a hostile foreign in-
telligence service, phoned military in-
telligence officers at Fort Bragg in
Fayetteville, headquarters of the Spe-
cial Forces, to report the call and to
seek their guidance. Two officers
drove to his house, according to
Thompson, and the three men spent
the evening discussing the operation.
The next day, Loomis called again
leave by his commanding officers -
and three former Green Berets he had
recruited were in Libya. Their mis-
sion:,to train terrorists.
Five years later; the Libyan opera-
tion.remains a subject of mystery,
controversy and investigation: The
and told Thompson he wanted to ar-
range a meeting the following day in
Fayetteville. They agreed to meet at
the Sheraton Motor Inn. The day of
the meeting, Thompson. recalls, he
was informed by the military intelli-
gence officers that they had checked
the offer "to the top" and found it was
"legal. and aboveboard-."They told
him, "You can pursue ~t as you de-
sire," he says. Later, at the Sheraton,
Loomis identified himself as a covert
agent for the Central Intelligence
Agency. Less than a week later,
Thompson - who had been granted a
Wilson and Frank E. Terpil, both or-
mer American intelligence agents,
were indicted by a Federal grand jury
in 1980 on charges of illegally shipping
explosives to Libya as part of the ter-
rorist training operation. Wilson-was
recently caught in an international
trap set by the Justice Department
and he is now being held in the Wash-
ington area pending trial, with bail
set at $20 million. Terpil remains a
fugitive, at last report living in Bei-
rut. Shortly before his meeting with
Thompson, Pat Loomis had been dis-
missed by the C.I.A. for helping Wil
son; but because of administrative
procedures Loomis was still on the
agency's payroll when he contacted
Thompson. The Central Intelligence
Agency has repeatedly denied author-
iiing or supporting the operation, but
some sources suggest that senior
agency officials who were close to
Wilson may have given approval to
the Libyan scheme, perhaps..in the
hope it would produce valuable intelli-
gence information on Libyan terror-
ism. There is also a possibility, which
Federal prosecutors are exploring,
so accustomed w aLA.vJ'.s
unsavory assignments from
shadowy sources of authority
.that they saw nothing unusual
or suspicious in being sent by
the United States Government
to aid an anti-American dicta-
tor? And was. there something
about the organization of the
American intelligence system,
particularly the relationship be-
tween the C.I.A. and the Green
Berets, that encouraged agents to
operate without clear lines of au-
thority?
Since the mid-1970's, the nation has
known that the Government has 'con-
ducted questionable operations over-
seas, including assassinations. But
the country never got to know any of
the men who carried them out, the de-
tails of what they did or the impact
their work had on them. Most of the
missions were highly classified: and
the men were instructed never to dis-
cuss them. Luke Thompson, now re-
tired and disillusioned, decided to
break that silence. This is the story of
his experiences, a story which opens a
window into the Byzantine, rarely
viewed world of modern espionage. It
is also a story which reduces certain
governmental policies to a human
scale on which the costs = for individ-
uals and society - can be better fa-
thomed.
all of what Thompson claims
can be checked against other sources
that the same senior C.I.A. officials might have been silent business part-
Hers of Wilson. Federal prosecutors in Washington, Houston, Denver and
severalgating various aspects of the case and
additional indictments are said to be likely this year.
Of the many riddles that arise from
these events, one of the most difficult
to solve may be this: Why did a group
of former Green Berets, men who
were trained to be America's elite
commando troops and who consider
themselves unwavering American
patriots, accept an offer to train ter-
rorists for a hostile foreign govern-
ment? The men themselves say the
reasons are not hard to comprehend.
The money was good (they say they
were promised $6,500 a month), the
action was appealing and, at least as
important, they claim that they were
firmly convinced that they were en-
listing in an officially sanctioned
American mission to infiltrate the
Libyan intelligence apparatus. But
was there something about these
men, the training, they had received
Philip Taubman, a Washington corre-
spondent for The New York Times,
frequently reports on intelligence
matters.
and the tasks they had carried out in
the past that discouraged them from
questioning what was clearly a ques-
tionable mission? Had they become
of information. The Government re-
fuses to discuss some of the missions
he describes. And his thoughts and
emotions are clearly his alone. But
most aspects of his story, including
the incidents involving larger units of
Green Berets, were witnessed by
others and many were recorded in
Government files. These sources, in-
cluding current and former Defense
Department officials, former intelli-
gence officials and published and un-
published Government records, con-
firm that his account is solidly
grounded in fact.
For the years that he wore a green
Right: A fade,
Thompson, hi,
the early 1960
badge issued
I
C.I.A. in The,
beret, from 1962 to 1978, Thompson in-
habited the dark corners of what
might have been a Graham Greene
novel. He was part of a secret Ameri-
can army of covert agents who han-
dled the dirty work of United States
foreign policy - often under the su-
pervision of the C.I.A. - all over the
world. For example, Thompson says
Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDPO9SO0048ROO0100020035-3
 he took part in a previously undis:
closed assassination plot in the Do-
minican Republic in 1965. He claims
his colleagues later went to Bolivia
where they helped Government sol-
diers hunt down and assassinate Er-
nesto Che Guevara, the Cuban revolu-
tionary leader. In Southeast Asia,
Thompso.. says he and his fellow
Green Berets assassinated province
chiefs, businessmen and political
leaders suspected of being Vietcong
sympathizers, made reconnaissance
missions into North Vietnam and car-
ried out secret attacks in Cambodia
months before the formal American
incursion in 1970.
His story raises questions that may
be difficult for the nation to answer.
Among them: How does one measure
the costs to a free and lawful society
of sending citizens .to assassinate for-
eign political leaders just because
they happen to be troublesome? Is
there not a line between unconven-
tional warfare and unacceptable war-
fare? Can men be trained as elite,
obedient commandos without de-
stroying their ability to make inde-
pendent judgments when necessary?
And what responsibility does the Gov-
ernment bear to help such men re-
adjust to civilian life? .
uke Floyd Thompson was.
born on March 13, 1934, in
Lewis County, Kentucky, the
seventh of 15 children; four of
his siblings died in infancy.
The area was so rural, he
says, that his home was lo-
cated in no specific town. His father,
Meredith, was a steelworker. His
mother, Verna Gillum, was a full-
time mother and housewife. When
Luke was 3, the Ohio River over-
flowed its banks and washed away the
Thompsons' house. The family moved to
Ashland, where his father, unable to find
Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDPO9SOOO48ROOO1OOO2OO35-3
II II 11 III JII II; ! , I 11.1
a mill job, went to work for the W.P.A.
The military was always an impor-
tant part of the Thompson family.
Luke's father served in the cavalry in
France during World War I. His six
brothers all enlisted in the military
when they became.old enough, and
four of them saw action during World
War II. ' Luke joined the National
Guard when he was 14 and enlisted in
the Army three years later.
Thompson was an "unruly" young-
ster, as he puts it. He recalls taking
part in the robbery of a bootlegger in
Kentucky. "We went into the Red Bud
Tavern, shot 'up the jukebox with a
.45, and robbed the guy of $75. We had
to park our getaway car on a hill
'cause that was the only way it would
start." An encounter with the police
the next day convinced Luke that he
was finished with what he calls "the
gangster business."
In 1955, however, he "started
becoming delinquent again," he says.
This time, that delinquency took the
form of going absent without leave
and other violations of military regu-
lations. Thompson was eventually
brought up before a court martial
hearing in 1956 and given a dishonora-
ble discharge as well as a year at Fort
Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. He
was told, however, that he could re-
store himself to active duty if he
served the time with' good behavior.-'
Even so, it took Thompson several
years after his release from prison to
persuade the Army to waive his dis-
honorable discharge and permit him
to re-enlist, which he did in 1959.
At the time Thompson was admit-
ted to Special Forces training in 1959,
the Green Berets were still a small,.
relatively untested group, established
by the Army in 1952 to provide the
United States with a unit capable of'
conducting unconventional warfare
operations, including commando and
or queers," but as time.; passed,
Thompson became intoxicated with
the healing arts.
After completing the initial phases
of medical training in 1961,.Thompson
joined the Seventh Special. Forces
Group based at Fort Bragg:.,He was
immediately assigned to an'A Team
(the basic Special Forces unit, com-
posed of 12 men) which was sent to
Vietnam to train civilian irregular
forces to fight the Vietcong.
Thompson's next major assignment
came in early April 1965. At that time,
he says, he was selected to serve on a
covert team sent to the Dominican
Republic, where Col. Francisco
Caamano Deii6, .was leading guerrilla
forces in an attempt to overthrow the
Government. The United States, in
that period, was ostensibly taking a
neutral position in the Dominican
civil war. In late April, however,
when violence escalated and the
rebels appeared to be, near seizing
power, President Johnson sent in the
Marines, claiming that American
lives were in danger. The Marines
helped prevent a left-wing takeover.
Whether Thompson's secret mis-
sion was organized by the C.I.A. is un-
clear. Some former agency officials
who asked not to be. named said such
an operation did take place. Other re-
tired C.I.A. officials who were in-
volved in the Dominican Republic at
the time denied that the. operation
was managed by the agency. Thomp-
son says it began when a team of
Green Berets was sent to the island
only to monitor the activities of
American civilians, including Peace
Corps workers, to help assure their
safety. When the Green Berets came
upon evidence that some of the
Americans were assisting guerrilla
forces however, their major objec-
tive shifted from protecting their fel-
low countrymen to spying on them.
The surveillance mission was
abruptly cut short when Thompson
and his colleagues were given orders
to link up with a team of United States
Navy unconventional-warfare spe-
cialists and develop a plan to assassi-
nate Caamano, he says. The joint
team decided to attack Caamano at a
building in Santa Domingo where he
often met with other guerrilla lead-
ers. They would approach from the
beach down two parallel streets and
carry explosives into the building by
hand. After laying the charges, the
Americans were supposed to fight
their way back out, carrying any
casualties with them to avoid detec-
tion of American larticipation. At the
last minute, he says, the mission was
cancelled. No reason was ever pro-
vided. Former intelligence officials
now say the plan was considered too
risky and might have harmed rather
than helped American interests by
making Caamano a martyr. .
Thompson never returned to Latin
America, but he reported that two
years later several of his fellow Green
Berets secretly took part in the cap-
ture and killing of Che Guevara.
Thompson's description of the opera-
tion in Bolivia was confirmed by an-
other former Green Beret who was a
participant, and by former Defense
Department and intelligence officials
wliowere involved. All of them asked
not to be identified.
intelligence activities. They accepted
for training only seasoned soldiers
prepared to endure several years,of
additional highly specialized and in-
tense training, followed by a ca-reer
on the cutting edge of American mili-
tary.activities around the world.
In the late 1950's, the C.I.A.. began
turning to the Special Forces to pro-
vide manpower for covert operations
around the world. The relationship
between the agency and the Green
Berets flourished in Southeast Asia
during the 1960's and 1970's, accord-
ing to Defense Department officials,
as hundreds of Special Forces troops
served in operations supervised by
the C.I.A. Such cooperation has con-
tinued, intelligence officials acknowl-
edge: Before the unsuccessful hos-
tage rescue mission in Iran in 1980, a
number, of Green Berets based in
West Germany entered Teheran pos-
ing as German businessmen to help
with rescue preparations.
Part of the mystique of the Green
Berets has always derived from their
training program. More than half the
men who take the rigorous course ei-
ther do not finish or are not consid-
ered qualified at the end for induction
into the Special Forces. Skill at killing
is required'of all Green Berets and
Thompson apparently learned his les-
sons well. "There are only two ways
to die," he says matter-of-factly. "If
you stop breathing or your heart stops
pumping blood. Everything else ?is-a
practical application."
After being inducted into the Spe-
cial Forces, Thompson was selected
to attend intelligence school, one of
several areas in which Green Berets
may specialize. But when he found
out there would be a six-week delay
before classes started, he opted for a
specialty in medical training instead.
At first, he recalls, he thought "all
medics were conscientious objectors
Thompson (driving) and another Green Beret returning from patrol with Vietnamese troops they had been training.
Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDPO9SO0048ROO0100020035-3
 I I III Il. LL II
Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020035-3
According to these accounts, a team
of 10 to 12 Green Berets from the
Eighth Special Forces Group based in
Panama was sent to Bolivia in late
1967 as part of a C.I.A.-sponsored plan
to train Bolivian forces in counterin-
surgency techniques and to help the
Bolivians stalk Guevara. In a camp
located at the outskirts of La Paz, the
Americans worked with 100 to 150
Bolivian special-forces troops. Dur-
ing the training program, Bolivian in-
telligence agents reported that
Guevara was in the mountains east of
La Paz. The Green Berets, according
to a participant, conducted their own
intelligence check and confirmed
Guevara's presence.
The next step was to formulate a
plan to capture him. The bulk of this
preparation was handled by the
Americans, and over the course of
several weeks a small team of Boliv-
ians was specially . selected and
trained for the operation. In the end,
the capture was relatively straight-
forward, with the Bolivians and their
American advisers tracking down
Guevara in a remote mountain vil-
lage where he was training guerril-
las. "He was caught and executed on
the spot," said a former Green Beret
who was there. "The Bolivians pulled
the trigger. They needed to get the
credit." Guevara's body was brought
back to the camp, where it was identi-
fied by two American intelligence
agents who had flown in from Panama.
ollowing the aborted assas-
sination scheme in the Do-
minican Republic, the
focus of Thompson's career
shifted back to Southeast
Asia. He returned to Viet-
nam for the first of several
tours of duty there and in Thailand,
with frequent missions into Laos,
Cambodia and even North Vietnam.
Thompson says. the purpose of the
missions into North Vietnam was to
collect strategic intelligence. He says
he went on four such missions him-
self, and knew of dozens of others.
Former Defense Department offi-
cials say. such missions involving
Americans were made during the
early years of the Vietnam War but
were reduced and eventually ended
by 1967-68. After that, they say, infil-
tration into North Vietnam was han-
dled by mercenary forces and was re-
stricted primarily to border areas.
Next, Thompson was ordered to join
a covert operation in Thailand run by
the Army and the C.I.A. Supervised
by the MACV-SOG (Military Assist-
ance Command, Vietnam-Special
Operations Group), the mission in-
volved the training of Thai special-
forces teams, followed by their de-
ployment with Green Berets to inter-
dict the Ho Chi Minh trail.
It was during this tour in Southeast
Asia that assassinations became al-
most routine for Thompson. He still
remembers the first vividly. "The
man was a Vietnamese interpreter. It
was proved to the satisfaction of our
intelligence sergeant that he was sup-
plying information to the Vietcong. I
was told, 'This one's yours.' ".A week
later Thompson and the interpreter
were sent on an operation together.
"We came, into contact with the Viet-
cong. As soon as we hit the ground, he
got wiped out. He was a few feet,
away. When the shooting. started, I
put a burst in him. He never knew it."
Although Thompson knew the man
and hadn't considered him an enemy,
he didn't dwell on the assassination.
"It was a mechanical thing." he says.
"It had to be done. It was a chore just
like brushing your teeth." Whenever
possible, he says, the Green. Berets
would try to disguise their involve-
ment and make it seem as if the kill-
ing had been done by the Vietcong or
either of the Vietnamese armies.
"You try to isolate the subject from
anyone or any situation that might
lead back to the true source of his
death by using 'sniper,' 'a firefight,'
or 'explosive device.' There are no
words. Just bang. You're not a tribu-
nal. You're just a machine."
Thompson says that assassination
targets included anyone considered a
Vietcong supporter or sympathizer.
The list included civilians such as dis-
trict chiefs, businessmen and politi-
1 cal leaders. Former Green Berets
and Defense Department, officials
confirm that such assassinations
were common. "We had the most
basic law: survival," Thompson
says. "When it became obvious that
someone was a threat to our efforts, it
was just a job. On reflection, it's not
something that I'm proud of ... I
hope I didn't kill innocent people.".
Thompson says he was troubled by
a killing only once. It was in combat.
He recalled the moment: "It was a
straightforward case of kill or be
killed. I was walking along a trail in
textbook style, alert for anything.
Suddenly, someone stepped around a
bend in !the trail with his weapon on
his shoulder. I killed him. Immedi-
ately after, it was the greatest thrill
in the world - I guess because I was
alive - but as the day wore on, I was
moved. to distraction thinking about
this guy. He seemed more like a
friend. He was doing exactly what he
was told to do, and we had come into
conflict and I had beat him. I didn't
have any sense of victory. Here's this
Joe Gook walking along and I'm G.I.
Joe. I didn't know his name. He was a
soul in the jungle, I was a soul in the
jungle. I had an affinity for the guy.
This was probably the worst any kill-
ing's dwelled on me."
During the same period that
Thompson, in the jargon of the Green
Berets, was "greasing" suspected
Vietcong, he was also busy tending to
wounded and sick Americans and
Vietnamese, , including Vietcong
forces. The contradiction never trou-
bled Thompson. "I'd go from curing
to killing," he said. "I'd take off my
scrub suit and put on my camouflage
fatigues and move out. I had no prob-
lem making the transition."
Thompson says he treated anyone
who came to his field clinic. "I had to
maintain a neutral posture. I might-
've treated a bunch of people who
killed my buddies but I had to help
gain the good will of the local popula-
tion.That's money in the bank for
everyone on the team."
13
Thompson's career in Southeast
Asia concluded with missions that
took him into Malaysia and Cambo-
dia. In late 1967, after serving briefly
Bolivian troops display the body of Ernesto Che Guevara to reporters.
Thompson charges that'.Green Berets were involved in his killing in 1967.
as a medical instructor back at Fort
Bragg, he: was sent . to. Thailand,
where he faced his biggest crisis as a
medic: an epidemic of typhoid fever.
He said that his primitive clinic had
six beds to handle more than 170 pa-
tients suffering from the disease.
Thompson lost only a dozen patients,
a far lower mortality rate than for
other medics in the area, and he re-
ceived commendations from the
Army Surgeon General's office equat-
ing his efforts with the feats of Walter
Reed, the famous Army surgeon. He
showed me copies of the commenda-
tions.
Thompson's penultimate tour
began in January 1968, when he was
assigned to a mobile strike force con-
ducting search-and-destroy missions
along the Vietnam-Cambodia border.
Thompson says that the Green Berets
commanded three battalions of
mercenary troops composed pri-
marily of Cambodians. "We were in
and out of Cambodia all the time," he
says. These raids into Cambodia took
place two . years before President
Nixon announced that American and
South Vietnamese forces were mov-
ing into Cambodia to attack North
Vietnamese command headquarters
and military stockpiles.
Smaller raids, which Thompson and
other former Green Berets say began
in 1967, also predated the secret
American bombing of ' Cambodia
begun by the Nixon Administration in
1969. Thompson says that he and his
colleagues were told the operations in
Cambodia: were highly classified and
that they were instructed not to dis-
cuss them with anyone. The British
journalist William Shawcross de-
scribed the operations in "Sideshow,"
his book about the secret American
war in Cambodia.
Thompson's final assignment in
Southeast. Asia took place in 1972,
when he was sent to Thailand to train
mercenaries, for operations in Laos.
The training program, he says, was
run by the C.I.A. Former intelligence
officials confirmed that such an
operation was mounted in Thailand at
the time, but said they did not know
whether Thompson was involved.
By the time Thompson,left South-
east Asia for the last time, late in
1972, he was exhausted and more than
a little bitter. "I could have been a
killer when I got out,".he says. "I
would just walk up to a man and
swing at him. Long hair, anything
would set me off. If the U.S. decided
to have a civil war, I would have
fought on either. side, as long as Jane
Fonda and George McGovern were on
the other side."
Fortunately, Thompson says, "I
had time to straighten out my head."
During a leave in Japan after his last
mission in Vietnam, Thompson mar-
ried a Japanese tour guide he had met
at Expo '70 in Osaka. The Thompsons
spent several months at a Special
Forces base in Okinawa before going.
to Fort Bragg. The marriage and the
interval in Okinawa gave him time,
he says, to shed some of'the violent in-
stincts he had developed.
From 1972 to 1977, Thompson spent
most of his time on training missions
in the United States.. Twice during
those years, he traveled to Taiwan to
help train Taiwanese special forces,
and he spent several weeks in Zaire
helping to train commando forces
there. None of these operations, he
says, were clandestine.
Throughout all of this, Thompson
remained an obedient soldier. "I per-
sonally can't say that the Govern-
ment ever asked me to do something
improper," he says. "Maybe you or
others would consider it wrong, but I
Linked to Libyan terrorism, Edwin
P. Wilson was recently arrested and
is now awaiting trial in Washington.
TNC MIW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE /JULY 4. 1982 21
Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020035-3
 think I've never been asked to do
something wrong by my superiors."
The man who, in the summer of
1977, proposed that Thompson recruit
a team of former Green Berets to
train Libyan commando troops was
Patry E. Loomis, a former-Green
Beret himself and a covert agent for
the C.I.A., according to Federal in-
vestigators and former intelligence
officials who again declined to be
named. He described the work when
he talked to Thompson but he did not
reveal that he had been dismissed
several weeks earlier because he had
assisted the former agents Wilson and
Terpil in obtaining explosive timers
for shipment to Libya. Wilson and
Terpil, it was later discovered, had
signed an agreement with Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi to help train
terrorists. Wilson had served for 20
years as a covert agent for the C.I.A.
and for a secret naval intelligence
group called Task Force 157. He left
Government employment in 1976, the
same year he and Terpil reached
their agreement with Libya. Terpil
worked as a communications techni-
cian for the C.I.A. before he was
forced to resign in 1971 following vari-
ous violations of C.I.A. regulations.
He went on to become an interna-
tional arms salesman and a key sup-
plier of military equipment to the then
Uganda strongman Idi Amin.
Thompson's assumption that the
Libyan operation was legitimate was
partly conditioned by his background.
Other Green Berets, including
Thompson's commanding officer at
the time, told me that the operation
was no more bizarre than many they
knew about which were sanctioned by
the intelligence agency. The go-ahead
Thompson says he received from
military intelligence officials also al-
leviated his doubts. How military in-
telligence officials got the impression
that the operation was approved by
-the Government remains one of the
major unresolved mysteries of the af-
fair. Thompson is unable to recall the
names of the two men who he says
came to his home after Loomis first
called. Two other Army intelligence
officers at Fort Bragg gave contra-
dictory accounts of what happened in
interviews and were unable to recall
the specific steps they took after
Thompson first notified military in-
telligence following the call from Loo-
mis. The two men declined to be
named. A third figure, Carl H. Oel-
schig, who was a senior intelligence
officer at Special Forces headquar-
ters in 1977, said in an interview that
he first learned about the Libyan
operation only after Thompson re-
turned from Libya. "I almost fell out
of my chair when Luke told me what
he had been doing," he recalled.
Oelschig said he instructed Thomp-
son to report to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and talk to other mili-
tary intelligence officers at Fort
Bragg. Meanwhile, Oelschig in-
formed his superiors and recom-
mended that a 'check be run through a
more senior intelligence unit sta-
tioned at Fort Meade, Md. He said he
never learned what results, if any,
were sent back to Fort Bragg. "I car-
ried it as far as I could," he said, "and
assumed it was being handled cor-
rectly." Federal investigators be-
Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020035-3
lieve that senior officials at the C.I.A.
who worked closely with Wilson while
he was at the agency may have inter-
cepted the inquiries from Fort Bragg.
Others speculate that Wilson, who
had friends at the Defense Depart-
ment, might have somehow been able
to get them to reach into the military
intelligence system and persuade key
officials that the Libyan operation
was sanctioned. Finally, there is the
possibility that Thompson, in an ef-
fort to justify his actions, did not get
the approval he claims he received.
He says, however, that he is certain
about these recollections.
Another still-murky question is why
Thompson's superiors at Fort Bragg
granted him a leave of absence.
Thompson assumed his request for a
leave was approved because his com-
manding officers had received orders
from-their superiors in Washington to
allow him to participate in the Libyan
mission. The record, however, is not
clear. Col. Robert A. Mountel, who
was Thompson's commanding officer
at the time, says he never received or-
ders from anyone about the Libyan
operation. He says that Thompson's
leave was approved because Green
Beret officers thought Thompson
wanted. to check out a possible civil-
ian job opportunity.
Others say that it was fairly com-
mon for veteran Green Beret troops
to receive leaves so they could par-
ticipate in official - and unofficial -
overseas missions. Some Federal in-
vestigators suggest that senior Spe-
cial Forces officers permitted
Thompson to go to Libya, even though
they did not know whether the opera-
tion had Government approval, be-
cause they thought it might develop
into a productive intelligence ven-
ture. If so, they overstepped their au-
thority, Army officials say. Intelli-
gence operations involving the Green
Berets are supposed to be cleared and
approved by senior Pentagon officials
with formal orders issued by the staff
of the Joint Chiefs and passed down
through the Army chain of command
to Special Forces commanders. No
such orders were issued in the
Thompson case, according to Army
officials.
Whatever the explanation, any
doubts that Thompson may have had
vanished when he and three recruits
who accompanied him met Wilson in
the international zone of the Zurich
airport in August 1977 to receive final
instructions. "Ed Wilson is the most
remarkable man I've ever met,"
Thompson says. "Professionalism
came out of every pore ... He was
aces."
According to Thompson, Wilson told
the men that, once in Libya, they
should make themselves "indispensa.
ble," that they should do nothing that
would endanger United States se-
curity and that they would receive the
best hospital care in the world should
they be injured. He closed by adding
that he would kill them if they double-
crossed him, just as he would expect
them to kill him if he backed out of the .
deal.
Thompson and the other former
Green Berets flew on to the Libyan
capital of Tripoli carrying with them
small arms and other military equip-
ment in a 400-pound locker, plus sev-
eral bags (Continued on Page 24)
Continued from Page 22
filled with technical manuals
and blueprints of advanced
electronic equipment. Fol-
lowing an initial round of
meetings with Libyan col-
leagues, the Americans were
taken to a palace outside
Tripoli where they were
shown an explosives labora-
tory. A group of American
ordnance experts, most of
them military veterans who
had been recruited by Wil-
son's associates, were al-
ready there, instructing Liby-
ans how to manufacture ter-
rorist bombs, according to
Thompson. At this point, he
recalls becoming troubled by
the direct link with terrorism.
After several weeks of
training Libyan forces in
commando tactics, Thomp-
son says he decided he could
not adjust to working in
Libya's terrorist organiza-
tion. Claiming that he needed
to return to the United States
for personal reasons, Thomp-
son was issued a ticket to Fort
Bragg via London and Wash-
ington. Back home, he re-
ported to military intelli-
gence officials, apparently in-
cluding Oelschig, and was
told to talk to the F.B.I.,
which by then had begun in-
vestigating the Libyan opera-
tion.
Despite middle-of-the-night
phone calls threatening his
safety if he cooperated with
Federal prosecutors, Thomp-
son did testify before a grand
jury and, as a result, was not
indicted. But it quickly be-
came clear to him that his
military career was at an
Solutions to
Last Week's
Puzzles
end. In July 1978, he retired
from the Green Berets. He
says no Green Beret repre-
sentative has contacted him
since.
The transition to civilian
life has not been easy. In 1978,
Thompson moved to Hawaii
in search of solitude and an
escape from the turmoil that
followed the Libyan mission.
For three years, he worked as
a safety officer on oil rigs off
the coast of Newfoundland
and in the Gulf of Mexico,
commuting for the two-week
shifts from Hawaii. Thomp-
son quit that job last Decem-
ber after relations with the
company soured in the wake
of publicity about his involve-
ment in Libya. He is now
training-to become a regis-
tered nurse, working the
night shift at a hospital in
Honolulu. His wife and three
children, ages 5, 7 and 9, have
made friends and settled into
their neighborhood. Thomp-
son says he has not. "I don't
have any friends," he once
told me. "You're the first per-
son I've confided in."
Almost every day, he re-
treats to his sailboat. Its
Japanese name is Sayochido-
ri, which Thompson trans-
lates as "Nightbird." With no
formal training in sailing but
lots of self-taught skill, he
navigates around Kaneohe
Bay, reefing the sails when
the trade winds become brisk
or rain squalls blow in from
the Pacific. "I know I'm run-
ning away from something,
or to something," he says of
his time on the boat. "I'm
transported. If you asked me,
though, it would be difficult
for me to tell you what I think
about. " ^
C
R A V A
T
R
EHA
B
A F F
A I R
C H
I N E S
E
A
RUB
A
C L O
U D E D
H O
L D T
T T
I G E
R
T E S
S E R A
O K
I E E
0 T
E S
TR
EES
H O N
S E
N
S
O L
S H
EA
DS
S T U D
E D
G Y E
T T
E
H O
R S
S
P I T E
O O Z
E S
R E N
E E
S L
I C E R
F
A N N E
R
P
ALE
D V
I O
L A
HI
NDER
D
A
ILY
GA
ZEL
LES
A N
C E S
O
W
N S S
O L
E S
T V A
P A I
M
N Y
A N K
E E
S T
I G
E N E
A R
I E
S
N O I
R
B R
I N G
D E N
I Z E
S
A
G E R
S
L A
N E
T
RUS
T
S M
E L T
C
R U Z
T A M
E R S
P
OO
L
H
E E
I N A
N E
E
MU
S C
HE
W S
A S H
A R
E F
R E
E R
F R
O M
P 0 E
E L I
A L
E R
T
C L E
R I
C A
P I S
R E N
A E
1 N
D I A
N S
U M M
E R S
C E
N T E
D
M I
X E S
T
R A I
N E E
T R
Y S T
S
E L
I S E
S
E E
E
ADD A N?A B
Ic Iii Tel
=S 1 1 1 0 0 1
o ^ A A T I N G S W A I N H E R E
I N Y Y L O C E R A $
Y L A C H E R R Y pot
U T off R E C A P I, l
WE c r CALLA C O O
A A E DOT I E R S R A M
9NE R T S R ^ ~ LEE
WE RID
D E CAL W11
I D A CA R
1~ 1A r! P ^ A T O IT]
[!4T G R A P E
4 N E N 10161L E 1A T 2. ME
BEE f Y 1 R E
I S N T I T I N
G E T g SEA T
M
Approved For Release 2011/08/17: CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020035-3