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By Susan Schmidt
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has opened an investigation of alleged misconduct by about two dozen current and former government lawyers involved in the 1983 prosecution of former CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson.
A federal judge in Houston this week overturned Wilson's conviction for illegally selling explosives to Libya in the years after he left the agency, writing that the government "knowingly used false evidence" in Wilson's trial and his appeal. Justice Department and CIA lawyers concealed the fact that Wilson did work for the agency after he left its official employ, said U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes.
"The government could have produced records supporting Wilson's claim that the CIA knew -- even authorized -- the shipment of explosives to Libya," Hughes wrote in an opinion that lambasted Reagan-era CIA and Justice Department officials.
Whenever a court makes a finding of misconduct by federal prosecutors, the professional responsibility office is required to open an investigation. The U.S. attorneys' manual states that in such an event, "OPR shall conduct an expedited inquiry without awaiting further judicial or appellate proceedings."
Justice Department officials said that if the OPR found misconduct, it could recommend disciplinary action against current employees and suggest that state bar associations levy sanctions. It also could refer suspected crimes for prosecution.
Department officials said they could not comment on the OPR investigation other than to confirm that it has begun. A spokesman for the CIA said the agency "will certainly cooperate with their review of the matter."
CIA officials reiterated this week that the agency was not involved in and did not authorize Wilson's decision to sell explosives to Libya. Wilson remains in prison on two other convictions, including conspiring to have prosecutors and witnesses against him killed.
Hughes cited the government's decision to use at trial an affidavit from the CIA's executive director, Charles A. Briggs, showing that Wilson did not work for the agency "directly" or "indirectly" after leaving his job in 1971. Hughes found that the CIA had more than 80 contacts with Wilson in ensuing years and used him to gain intelligence about Libya, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The affidavit, Hughes wrote, was "nothing but a lie."
"In the course of American justice," he continued, "one would have to work hard to conceive of a more fundamentally unfair process with a consequentially unreliable result than the fabrication of false data by the government, under oath by a government official, presented knowingly by the prosecutor in the courtroom with the express approval of his superiors in Washington."
Former CIA general counsel Stanley Sporkin, now retired from the federal bench, unsuccessfully argued at the time against including some of the language in the Briggs memo because he was not convinced the agency could be sure about Wilson's indirect contacts with the CIA. But he said yesterday that Justice Department and CIA officials did not knowingly submit false evidence.
"It's ridiculous. It could not have happened. Look at the people who were involved -- myself, top officials of the Justice Department, the CIA. They are honorable people," Sporkin said.
Those officials did not believe they were submitting false information to the court, he said, and only learned later of Wilson's extensive post-employment contacts with the CIA.
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