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American Electronic balked at the size of this order. Wilson then recruited another CIA supplier, Scientific Communications, Inc., of Dallas, to provide a second batch of prototypes. They were delivered to Wilson and Mulcahy at a motel near CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., by Joe Halpain, the Dallas firm's president. The final Gaddafi order was for 500,000 of the timers, for which he promised to pay $35 million. They cost only $2.5 million to produce. Explosives to go with the timers were illegally supplied by J.S. Brower & Associates of Pomona, Calif, another CIA contractor. Some 40,000 Ibs. of the high explosive RDX—the largest nonmilitary shipment on record—were flown to Libya in 55-gal. drums marked "industrial solvent." This was a risky enterprise since the drums could have exploded in flight in turbulent weather.
Mulcahy finally decided his partners were acting on their own, not for the agency, when they directed him to arrange for purchase of a Redeye ground-to-air missile for Gaddafi. Mulcahy feared Gaddafi might be planning to arm a Redeye with a nuclear warhead. Alarmed, he searched through his company's files, found documents he had never seen—and reported his findings to both the CIA and the FBI.
The documents, according to Hersh, disclose that Wilson and Terpil had set up a training program in Libya in "espionage, sabotage and general psychological warfare." It included a laboratory near Tripoli for making assassination bombs disguised as ashtrays, lamps or teakettles. An active CIA agent, Pat Loomis, allegedly helped induce some Green Berets training at Fort Bragg, N.C., to leave the Special Forces and join the Libyan operation as instructors.
Mulcahy also discovered that Terpil had provided arms, explosives and torture devices under a $3.2 million contract with Idi Amin Dada's brutal government in Uganda. Terpil had once bragged about testing a new poison on someone in Uganda whom he had no reason to kill He also told two New York City undercover police posing as arms buyers, ""If you're knocking off Americans, it will cost you 40% more.""
Fearing retaliation from his former partners after talking to federal investigators. Mulcahy went into hiding under assumed names. It took until April 1980, nearly four years after Mulcahy talked, for Wilson and Terpil to be finally charged with conspiring to sell explosives to Libya and to commit murder. Both are fugitives overseas and federal investigators believe they are still training terrorists in Tripoli. Their work pays well. They have bought more than $5 million worth of real estate in the U.S. and England.
Federal prosecutors contend that jurisdictional problems, lack of effective laws and the priority of other cases caused the long delay in following through on Mulcahy's information. But some Justice officials suggest that CIA agents had impeded faster action. One prosecutor told TIME, "When you deal with the CIA everything is done with a wink and a nod. And there was a lot of winking and nodding going on."