DESCRIPTION WITHOUT PLACE.

criticism. decorum. innards. bric-a-brac. nostalgia. nausea. polemics. diatribes. litanies. symphonies. polaroids.

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• He worked actively for the CIA for 15 years, destabilising European labour unions by using anything—Corsican mobsters, plagues of cockroaches—and setting up his front companies. The work was “a hell of a satisfaction” to him. He left, officially, in 1971, but only for Task Force 157 of the Office of Naval Intelligence, another super-secret outfit. Then, in 1976, he went “freelance”. The CIA contacts, and all the front companies, continued—sending arms to Angola and boats to the Congo, bringing intelligence back—right up to the moment when he stood in a federal court, in 1983, accused among other things of shipping the explosives and sending the guns to Libya without a licence.

  The third-highest CIA officer in the land declared then, in a sworn affidavit, that since 1971 the agency had had nothing to do with him. Not directly; not indirectly. Contacts zero. For good measure, Mr Wilson was found guilty of offering $50,000 per head for the murders of the federal prosecutor, six witnesses and his wife (from whom he wanted his gold ring back, preferably still on her finger).

  The Economist, “Edwin P. Wilson Obituary” [9.29.12]

  I don’t read this magazine just for the obituaries, but someday I will.

  • #Economist
  • #Obituaries
  • #Edwin P. Wilson
  10 Oct 2012 / 4 notes