FRANK TERPIL, PART I

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09S00048R000100020006-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 16, 2011
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: November 7, 1983
• Content Type: MISC

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RADIO IN REPORTS, IN C.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM
Morning Edition
STATION WAMU-FM
DATE
November 7, 1983
7:40 A.M.
NPR Network
cmr Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT
Frank Terpil, Part I
BOB EDWARDS: Today we begin a four-part series.profil-
ing Frank Terpil, ex-CIA officer and international arms dealer.
Charged with a variety of crimes, including an assassination
conspiracy and running a terrorist training school, Terpil faces
a?53-year prison sentence. He's been a fugitive for the past
three years.
Three months ago, reporter. Jim Hogan got a telephone
c9ll from Terpil. He was still hiding and wanted to talk. The
two had met earlier when Hogan was working on a television
documentary abo4t Terpil and his partner Edwin P. Wilson. But
right after the TV taping, Terpil disappeared. His wife said
he'd been kidnapped.
Terpil now spends his time in Eastern Europe and the
Caribbean. He arranged a meeting with Hogan, and these inter-
views appear in Penthouse magazine this month. The interviews
are also. part of this report from Jim Hogan.
JIM HOGAN: Three years ago Frank Terpil, an arms dealer
.and former CIA officer, was having coffee with clients in a New
York City. hotel. Suddenly the doors burst.open, the police
rushed in with shotguns, and. his clients revealed themselves to
be undercover police. Terpil was indicted on charges of unlaw-
fully conspiring to sell ten thousand submachine guns and charged
with providing samples of his wares to undercover detectives.
-While comfortable in dealing with Third World dictators,
such as Libya's Qaddafi and Uganda's Amin, Terpil feared the
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So, what they tried to do was really fabricate a case
that I was a CIA agent.
HOGAN: Which is not true.
judgment of 12 average citizens. Released on bail, he awaited
the trial for months, his nervousness mounting. Some three days
before the trial was to begin, he sought reassurance from his
attorneys.
FRANK TERPIL: Even my own lawyers told me, "Now we've
got a problem. Definitely, when you show up tomorrow," which was
September 5th, said, "show up on Monday, they're going to
incarcerate you. You are not going to be released on further
bail. And we're going to have to take it from there."
.So it seemed to me it was a one-act play at that point.
HOGAN: Terpil fled the United States on a stolen
passport, leaving his wife, his children, his home, a small
office building, and a multimillion-dollar income tax lien
behind. Finding haven in Damascus and_then in Beirut, he set
about rebuilding his life. He purchased a restaurant near the
American Embassy and was preparing for its grand opening when
Syrian intelligence agents put guns to his head and forced him
into a waiting Mercedes. The fugitive had been kidnapped, taken
back to Damascus. He found a dungeon awaiting him.
TERPIL: The initial accusation, of course, was that I
/ was a spy for the CIA. Then they thought _I was a spy for Mosad.
/ Then they went back and they questioned me, or' attempted t.o
question me about my travels in the Middle East, why I was always
there. 4
TERPIL: It's not true. But the more I denied it, the
more they were convinced that that had been the case.
HOGAN: While the prison conditions were harsh, and
Terpil claimed that he was tortured., he later joked that the most
upsetting thing of all was that his jailers had had the temerity
to confiscate his Rolex wristwatch.
TERPIL: That was` my -- that was the. heartbreaking
thing. They stripped me'of''my Rolex, which denied me -- because
of the conditions of the prison, I didn't know what time it was,
what day it was, how long I was there. I attempted to keep track
of time by counting the meals..
HOGAN: In fact, he had been. in prison for exactly six
months when, as suddenly as he had been seized, h'e was released.
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Blindfolded, he was driven from Damascus and pushed out of a
moving car on the road to Beirut.
TERPIL: I probably looked like a thinner version of
Howard Hughes, but a filthier version at the point. Because at
that time, I had not had a shower since late December.
Yeah. I went from size 44 waist to 32.
HOGAN: It was late May 1982. No sooner had Terpil
settled into his apartment in Beirut than, as he explained with
tongue-in-cheek:
TERPIL: The hell-inspired Zionists who sought to
destroy world tranquillity broke my bubble in Beirut with their
artillery. _
HOGAN: The Israeli invasion had a silver lining,
however. At least it did from Frank Terpil's point.of view.
TERPIL: The initial reaction, believe it or not, was
one of relief, one of elation, because very few people leave
Syrian prisons alive, and those that do have a high morality rate
on the street. I had anticipated it would only be a matter of
time before the Syrians would come down with one of their
assassination squads and attempt to get me again.
The Syrians were busy trying to fight the Israelis, or
actually trying to preserve themselves. They weren't worried
about me at this time.
HOGAN: Hunted by more sides than one, the fugitive gun-
runner was caught in the crossfire between East and West Beirut.
Car-bombs exploded in the streets beneath his penthouse apart-
ment, while artillery shells demolished buildings nearby. It was
a vicious battle. And according to 'Terpil, it was also a cynical
experiment.
TERPIL: Beirut was a testing ground for live experi-
ments on the latest developments of U.S. ordnance. For instance,
the vacuum bomb, which they felt was a major breakthrough in
bombs.
I'll give you an example of what a vacuum bomb is. A
Z.vacuum is an ordnance device dropped from an aircraft which
explodes above the target. The causing a.ir rush. implodes
--Implodes the. building or the target, causing no damage to the
.surrounding area, but killing everything within that building.
They killed 283 people, mainly to prove that the vacuum
bomb was a. feasible weapon.
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And now, what differentiates myself from the Pentagon
sales office, except they've got access to much more material
than I do? My material was basically on a one-to-one basis.
Their material was in mega-units
HOGAN: He had escaped from the U.S. and, he suspected,
from a Syrian assassination squad. But how did he escape the
Israelis in Beirut?
TERPIL: The PLO. I had the fighter's uniform. I had
my kaffiyeh, my uniform. I had my AK. I looked like a -- sun-
glasses,.of course.
HOGAN: Had your Rolex?
TERPIL: My Rolex was -- I had my uniform buttoned down
over the Rolex. Not too man PLO were wearing Rolexes that day.
HOGAN: Blending into the ranks of the PLO, Terpil
managed his escape from Beirut under the eyes of the U.S.
Marines, taking a freighter from the port and eventually finding
his way to a tranquil beach in the Caribbean. There, he talked
about his life as a fugitive and his. need to carry a gun.
TERPIL: It'.s not really -- it's not a cowboy
atmo- sphere. I'm not a cowboy. But I'm not ;going back. I'm not
going-back and negotiate a 53-year sentence.
HOGAN: In speaking with Terpil, it occurred to me that
/ the former CIA communications technician had finally become the
/ spook that he'd always imagined. In earlier years, he had prided
himself on his respectability, while at the same time devouring
the novels of Robert Ludlum and John LeCarre.
Today, Terpil is the central character in a real-life
pulp novel of his own making. And as he is the first to admit,
it's a dangerous book to be in.
EDWARDS: Tomorrow, a report on how Frank Terpil sold
the skills he learned as a CIA officer.
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