[6][7] "Wilson was on the CIA's payroll, and doing the agency's bidding, all the time he was employed by one of the largest labor unions in the United States as its international representative in Europe.
He served as an advance man for Hubert H. Humphrey in the 1964 campaign, thus playing an active role in partisan politics, while still working for the CIA.
For example, cargoes included disassembled boats sent to central Africa where they were welded together on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and used to intercept Soviet arms being ferried across the lake to rebels in the Congo; arms to Angola; crowd-control gear to Chile, Brazil and Venezuela; all kinds of equipment for intelligence-gathering facilities in Iran; supplies for a group of dissident army officers planning a coup in Indonesia; and barges sent to Vietnam.
However, the unit's remit was wider and later described as “the U.S. military's only network of undercover agents and spies operating abroad using commercial and business 'cover' for their espionage.
He reportedly amassed a fortune of over $20 million through these businesses, and continued to offer covert shipping services at the request of the CIA after his official retirement.
Wilson claimed that a high-ranking CIA official Theodore "Blond Ghost" Shackley asked him to go to Libya to keep an eye on Carlos the Jackal, the infamous terrorist, who was living there.
Wilson also recruited a group of retired Green Berets—decorated Vietnam veteran Billy Waugh among them[12]—to go to Libya and train its military and intelligence officers.
The Libyans used Wilson's provisions to advance their interests around the world, including training terrorist cells to build explosive devices inside radios.
He claimed that he was still working for the CIA despite the government's continued denials, and that his supplying of weapon to the Libyans was an attempt to get close to them and gain valuable intelligence.
[3][failed verification] Most of Wilson's connections were still under the impression that he was working for the CIA and a wide network in the United States supported his actions.
The prosecutors, led by Lawrence Barcella, knew this and they sent a con-person with links to the CIA named Ernest Keiser to convince Wilson that he would be safe in the Dominican Republic.
[19][20][21][22] Wilson's friend Ricardo Morales, a longtime nemesis of Villaverde in the Cuban exile community, would die in a bar fight in December 1983.
[23] Wilson was found not guilty of trying to hire a group of Cuban exiles to kill Libyan dissident Umar Muhayshi (his co-defendant Frank Terpil never stood trial as he was a fugitive the rest of his life and died in Cuba in 2016).
Eventually, he found information linked to the memo and hired a new lawyer, David Adler, a former CIA officer who had clearance to view classified documents.
[6] In October 2003, by U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, overturning his conviction on the explosives charge, found that U.S. Justice Department prosecutors knew Wilson had worked for the CIA.
[27] On 10 September 2012, Wilson died of complications from heart valve replacement surgery, survived by his sons Karl and Erik,[28] sister Leora Pinkston and girlfriend Cate Callahan.