International Man of Mystery

In 1971, Wilson quit the CIA to run shipping companies for a secret Navy intelligence organization called Task Force 157. By the time he left that job in 1976 to make his fortune in the international arms business, the gregarious Wilson had a network of powerful friends that included Pentagon officials, pols, retired generals and several CIA officials, including Theodore Shackley, the famous "Blond Ghost," who ran the agency's clandestine operations.

"Everything he did had the aura of the CIA," recalls Charlie Wilson. "Certainly he was working with CIA people. They'd come in when we were sipping Scotch at 6 at night."

Business Was Good

"Charlie Wilson said, 'Why don't we go down and see Somoza?' " Ed Wilson recalls, sitting in the prison visiting room. "So we flew to Miami to see Somoza, who was there with his mistress -- a fiery broad but not too good-looking."

The prisoner's telling stories again, this one from the late '70s, when Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was fighting the leftist Sandinista guerrillas who later overthrew him. Wilson drew up a proposal to provide mercenary soldiers for Somoza, then flew to Miami with Charlie Wilson and the congressman's girlfriend. They met Somoza and his mistress in a hotel, but when the dictator started dancing with the congressman's girlfriend, his mistress got mad.

"The mistress takes this goblet of water and she throws it in Somoza's face," Ed Wilson says, laughing. "He was pretty cool about it. He wiped his face off and said, 'It's kind of damp in here tonight.' "

Wilson never struck a deal with Somoza, but he soon found a better customer -- Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

"The reason I went to Libya," Wilson says, "is that Shackley asked me."

Shackley was an old friend and a frequent visitor to Wilson's farm. In fact, Shackley's daughter kept her horse there. Wilson says Shackley asked him to go to Libya to keep an eye on Carlos the Jackal, the infamous terrorist, who was living there. (Shackley is unavailable for comment: He died in 2002.)

"I missed Carlos but I hung around a bit," Wilson says. "They gave me contracts and I stayed till 1982, till I got arrested."

When Wilson arrived in the late '70s, the oil-rich Libyans were on a weapons-buying spree. Wilson got contracts to sell them army uniforms, ammunition, explosive timers and 20 tons of C-4 explosives.

"Please put this in there: None of that C-4 was ever used for terrorism," Wilson says.

In 1979, he arranged for an associate to smuggle four American pistols to the Libyan Embassy in Bonn, West Germany. Later, one of the pistols was used to kill a Libyan dissident there."That I feel bad about," he says.

But everything he did, Wilson claims, was designed to befriend the Libyans so he could obtain information to pass on to Shackley and the CIA. "I was buddying up to them," he says.

He was also making millions of dollars. He got a contract to supply the Libyans with foreign aircraft mechanics and a crew of former Green Berets, who helped train the Libyan army.

"I made good money on that," he says. "The net profit was about a million dollars a year."

In 1980, one of the Green Berets traveled to Colorado and shot a Libyan dissident in the head. Wilson says he knew the Libyans were trying to hire his Green Berets for hit jobs.

"They were always trying to recruit my people to do that," he says. "I had to fire people who talked to them about doing illegal things."

He tells a story: When he learned that one former Green Beret was planning to become an assassin, he fired the man. The Green Beret left Libya, returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., and walked into a tavern. He slapped a $100 bill on the bar and ordered drinks for the house.

"Then he took out a pistol," Wilson says. He forms his own right hand into a pistol -- the index finger serving as a barrel -- and he points it at his temple. "And he blew his brains out."