(3 of 3)
Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner, who inherited the Wilson-Terpil problem in 1977, promptly fired two agents, Loomis and Weisenburger. Shackley's role is still being studied. Action against former agents is difficult because there is no law, or even a CIA regulation, banning them from selling their expertise, short of national security secrets, or exploiting past CIA commercial connections once they leave the agency. One formidable reason is that the CIA often wants to use such "former" operatives in future undercover work.
The CIA's apparent reluctance to help push the Wilson-Terpil case faster carries more ominous undertones. Wilson's lawyers have hinted to the prosecutors that they would turn any trial into a case against the CIA and would include the claim that Wilson, at the time of his deals with Gaddafi, was still working for the agency. Some investigators suspect that Wilson would try to link other former and even current senior CIA officials with similar arms deals for private profit.
Joel Lisker, chief counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, doubts that the number of former agents involved in such traffic is large. "But it doesn't need to be," he adds. "Terpil and Wilson alone could keep Gaddafi and Idi Amin supplied with everything they need." Lisker suspects that the CIA probably did know about the Wilson and Terpil dealings with the Libyan dictator, explaining, "Gaddafi is the No. 1 guy the CIA wants to get next to. He's a bad guy —and so are Wilson and Terpil. How else could the CIA get close?"
But the problem of former high U.S. officials profiteering in shady deals with unfriendly nations may go beyond the CIA, if Mulcahy is to be believed. He told TIME last week, "I know former U.S. military officers of flag rank who are in illegal arms sales. The problem is so big that people in Washington are afraid to deal with it." —By Ed Magnuson.
Reported by Jonathan Beaty/Washington