Edwin P. Wilson

Edwin Paul Wilson was a former CIA and Office of Naval Intelligence officer who became a private international arms dealer. A federal grand jury indicted him on April 23, 1980 for exporting explosives to Libya, acting as an unregistered Libyan agent and conspiring to solicit the murder of a Libyan dissident. Wilson remained outside the United States and lived in a villa near Tripoli while a fugitive. Federal agents induced him to leave Libya in June 1982; Dominican authorities refused him entry and placed him on a flight to New York, where he was arrested on June 15. Wilson received consecutive federal sentences totaling fifty-two years for firearms and explosives exports and for later attempts to arrange murders while jailed. A federal judge vacated the Texas explosives conviction in 2003 after finding that prosecutors had used a CIA affidavit they knew was false. His other convictions remained, and he was released on September 14, 2004 after twenty-two years in custody. He died on September 10, 2012.