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Judge tosses ex-CIA agent's Houston conviction

A federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals.

Edwin Wilson was convicted in Houston in 1983 of smuggling arms to Libya at a time when the threat of Libyan terrorism was major news. Congress was mounting investigations into controversial CIA activities around the globe, and CIA administrators were actively trying to deflect criticism.

Wilson, now 75, has been in prison ever since, serving a 52-year sentence. His conviction was vacated in a decision made Monday and announced Tuesday.

Wilson claimed he shipped 20 tons of plastic explosives out of Houston Intercontinental Airport at the request of the CIA. The federal government denied this, and at the heart of the case against him was a CIA affidavit submitted by prosecutors stating Wilson had not done any work for the CIA since his retirement in February 1971.

But U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes spelled out in his order vacating Wilson's conviction, that the CIA forwarded a memo to the U.S. attorney's office a few days after he was convicted -- but before he was sentenced -- alerting them that they had since discovered at least five projects Wilson had worked on for the CIA after 1971 -- including a planned trip to Iran with the CIA's deputy director.

The CIA forwarded the memo to the U.S. attorney's office, Hughes said, but after debating the issue for months, decided not to inform Wilson's attorneys. Wilson appealed, but the government failed to acknowledge that the affidavit was false.

The Justice Department has until Feb. 6, 2004, to initiate a new trial against Wilson.

Hughes said he could not comment on his decision to throw out the conviction, but his written opinion communicates his perception that there was a miscarriage of justice.

"The court has identified about two dozen government lawyers who actively participated in the original non-disclosure to the defense, the false rebuttal testimony, and the refusal to correct it," Hughes wrote. "Government regularity -- due process -- requires personal and institutional integrity."

Documents provided for the court showed that Houston prosecutor Jim Powers participated in lengthy meetings at the Department of Justice, Hughes wrote, "where they discussed techniques for dodging the plain meaning of the (CIA) affidavit and its contradictions."

The federal government continues to claim that Wilson has not proved that prosecutors knew the affidavit to be false, Hughes noted.

Dan Hedges, who was U.S. attorney in Houston at the time Wilson was being prosecuted, said Tuesday night that he had not read Hughes' opinion, but said, "It was a complex matter. We received records from the CIA and relied on them, and I'd be curious to see what the judge had to say about that."

U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby of the Houston-based Southern District of Texas said his office was reviewing Hughes' 24-page opinion and had not decided whether to appeal. "Obviously the charges (against Wilson) are very significant, and we want to make sure we do the right thing," Shelby said.

Wilson's attorney, David Adler, said he called his client at the Pennsylvania prison where he's been for the past decade. He spent the decade before in solitary confinement in Marion, Ill., Adler said.

"He's greatly relieved the truth has started to come out about what he did and did not do," said Adler.

Adler said the Reagan-era officials who pushed the case against Wilson had been embarrassed by revelations they were trading arms for information. It was a defense mechanism, he said, to make individual operatives rather than CIA policy the scapegoats.

But the problem in the Wilson case, Adler said, was the Justice Department -- not the CIA. The CIA informed the Justice Department, albeit belatedly, that the affidavit should not be used.

Hughes, who keeps a bust of Abraham Lincoln displayed prominently in his office, wrote:

"America did not defeat the Axis because it locked up Japanese-Americans. America did not defeat the Soviet Union because it tried to lock up its philosophic fellow-travelers here. America will not defeat Libyan terrorism by double-crossing a part-time, informal government agent."

Adler said Hughes could have easily fashioned a mild rebuke against the government officials responsible for the conviction.

"But that's not really what a judge is supposed to do. There are just some rulings that demand this kind of intensity," he said.